Symbinar 2.0 Series - Mr. Rakesh Borah

As part of the second edition of the live online webinar series “SYMBINAR 2.0”, which focuses on the ideas of Reset, Resilience and Resurgence, we hosted Mr. Rakesh Borah, Director- Total Rewards, Volvo Group India who expressed his views on the most pressing topic in the current times, Employee Engagement is Evolving – Are You?

Mr. Borah categorised his talk in a systematic way which led to better understanding and clarity of the topic.  He touched upon the definition of employee engagement, explaining the impact it has on the company’s vision and goals. He also spoke about the importance of employee behaviour that leads to increasing employee engagement and how technology is a key factor in this regard.

Going forward he spoke about the motivating factors such as intrinsic and extrinsic factors, where he quoted Noam Chomsky, the great philosopher and historian, implying how human nature of the employee is impacted with the behaviour of the managers or the colleagues that further depicts the degree of employee engagement.

Further, he discussed about evolution of employee engagement and gave various examples from the past as to how the significance of achieving goals, smart work and flexibility of working has escalated in comparison to the previous era. 

In such unprecedented times, he offered his perspective from the organizations’ point of view as to how they are dealing with the Covid-19 scenario. The organizations have strategically shifted towards mental wellbeing of the employees by arranging counselling sessions to solve the problems arising out of financial, health or family related risks due to the situation.

Mr. Borah brought a degree of practicality to the session by giving examples from his own organisation and what steps they have taken at Volvo to address the issues of employees so that the mission, vision, aspirations and values of employees are not put at stake in terms of bringing them together and contributing towards the society.