Employee Engagement - Nurture or Abandon?

Employee engagement – Now is the time to nurture not abandon
So you might have heard of this excellent employee engagement initiative practiced in a leading US firm. Let me illustrate it for all readers - 2 chairs are kept on the lawn, one chair occupied by an employee representative and another hung with a message board. Different employee topics for different days. Employees participated and shared their thoughts and concerns on issues ranging from management to work to co-workers.

Brilliant idea, isn’t it?

Those 2 lawn chairs measured the pulse of employee thoughts and fears. It helped employees to open up and speak out.

During recession or otherwise, I think an organization can do a world of good for itself and employees if it can engage employees through work and recognition. Engaged employees will do things in a better way and do better things more efficiently. What else can empower a business during a slowdown. Job cuts won’t do. It can only raise the mercury on insecurity. Probably now is the time to go face-to-face and do honest communication with your employees.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Leading Green Brand !!

The global "green" enterprise IT study released by Strategic Oxygen and Cohn & Wolfe today reveals that Dell is the number one green technology brand, recognized for its extensive recycling program, the top ranked attribute sought by IT buyers. HP, IBM and Microsoft were noted for their energy efficient products and use of sustainable materials, while Apple held its position in the top five for designing products that are perceived to have a green look and feel.

"The technology brands that make the authentic connection between the environmental soundness of their products and their sustainable business operations and policies, will be long-term winners," says Claudia Carasso, managing director of the global technology practice at Cohn & Wolfe. "We also know that CIOs who are committed to green strategies depend more on blogs and forums than their non-green counterparts for gathering information on technology solutions. This is an important finding for product and service providers who are looking for current and credible ways to reach the coveted C-suite buyer."

GREEN MARKETING, is it????


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

IPL & Voter Turnout

Amidst depressing news about the economy: bank closures, bailouts, rising unemployment, fraud, declining consumer confidence and the other long list of sad stories… there is one bright spot – Indian Premier League. Probably, the cricketing nations and especially the marketers in India would like to view the IPL season 2 as a mini stimulus package that could trigger consumer spending. Or is it consumer watching?

But the fate of IPL is now in the hands of the Indian Government. Because the home ministry stated its inability to provide security for the matches since the general elections are also scheduled around the same time.

So who will be the immediate beneficiary if IPL stalls – may be the news channels. The majority of the viewers might take a liking to national politics and probably cling on to the news anchors and analysts. People might get out of their favorite chairs and vote. Might participate and select a better leader to govern them.

So is 'shifting IPL dates' a ploy by election commission to increase the voter turnout? Stop kidding!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Are Business Buyers Emotional?

We need to dwell deep into the minds of business buyers to understand the intricacies of corporate decision making process. Let us imagine that we are in a court of law and two advocates representing emotional and rational clients argue the case…

Emotional Advocate: Companies don’t buy from companies. People buy from people.

Rational Advocate: Purchase decision depends on a matrix of tangible features and price.

Emotional Advocate: “Buyers make most decisions by relying on their two-second first impressions based on stored memories, images and feelings.” says Malcolm Gladwell, author of the book titled Blink: The power of thinking without thinking.

Rational Advocate: Business decisions are not made by an individual. It is often done by a group of informed people.

Emotional Advocate: Even a big team can be overwhelmed by choices, features, data and metrics. No matter how disciplined a buying process is, human mind will use heuristics to simplify the decision making. It can be conscious or subconscious.

Rational Advocate: A group of number crunchers can analyze and interpret any complex data and store them within the confines of a spreadsheet.

Emotional Advocate: A business buyer may not be congratulated for making a good purchase decision. But a bad decision can put him/her in an ugly spot.

Rational Advocate: Exactly why business buyer will be overcautious and will not take a decision in haste.

Emotional Advocate: So, buyer weighs purchase decisions both rationally and emotionally. Since brands operate on an emotional level, by creating and sustaining the right brand associations in the buyer’s mind, business seller can close the deal in his/her favor.

Now after a bout of intelligent arguments let us hear what the Judges had to say: “In the industrial world, where rational purchasing decisions tend to be the rule, human factors can also play a critical role in differentiating products and services from the competition. Even if your company sells so-called ‘commodities’, the human factor is often an unexploited element that could strengthen your competitive position. At the end of the day, all business transactions involve people selling product and service solutions to solve other people’s problems.” – By Philip Kotler & Waldemar Pfoertsch – B2B Brand Management.

So, it is evident that business buyers are both rational and emotional. Court dismissed.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Terror through Social Media

Apart from ground artillery and maritime warfare techniques Islamic extremists are also being trained on how to use the popular video-sharing site YouTube! This is to propagate terror through videos.

Social Media is all about community building. And the smart Islamic extremists have understood that well and have identified the most user-friendly tool to form a suicide bomber community for their shamefully cowardly acts.

It will be interesting to see how YouTube, a unit of Google, will handle inflammatory as well blatant terror postings. Freedom to one is weapon to another!!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

IPTV - Pulls Consumers

From Govt regulated Television to Cable to DTH to IPTV.

As of now there are only approx 12,000 IPTV subscribers compared to DTH’s 11 million. But the trend is catching up.

What is most striking about IPTV is that it will not depend on 'Push' advertising but on 'Pull' advertising. That is, Advertising on demand ;)

What is 'Pull'? - you can select from a given category, say second-hand cars, choose the brand, click to know more and the best part : you can simply navigate through the video clips on A-Tube and decide for yourself. On other mediums, you look at the brand, get convinced but still the 'buy action' needs to wait. In IPTV, you just press the button. Red-hot call to action. Money spinner.


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Taming Attrition

In the last couple of years whenever I bump into HR heads of outsourcing companies or BPOs, they never fail to mention about the hairy beast called attrition. They have tried everything from Mercer techniques to swank get-togethers to astrology;) … but more employees walked out on them.

Surprise… Surprise… the economic slowdown has apparently done what crazy employee engagement activities, crazier salary hikes and craziest perks and incentives couldn’t: keep more employees of outsourcing companies and BPOs on the rolls.

Sometimes, the best CEO is the market condition !!


~ Satish Chathanath
Call : 9884011654
Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in