It was a heartening experience to meet Abha Sharma – Head HR of William Penn and gain insights about the warm, friendly and respectful culture of William Penn. Respecting every individual is one of the core values. This was evident right from the word go as the lady at the front-desk assured of a response to e-mail request as she was unable to connect the call to HR Manager at that moment. The prompt e-mail response which followed by the HR manager reflected the ease of accessibility. When I reached the corporate office reception, I couldn’t help marveling at the huge model of the glittering pen in the reception. The black splendor shone and gleamed in the corner. I was escorted to HR Head’s chamber by the lady herself which spoke volumes.
Role of self-motivation in development: As she started introducing about the culture of the company, she mentioned about being self-motivated.
I was keen to know how she developed this valuable trait of self-motivation, where did it come from?
She said “It comes back to my parents. It is something which I normally don’t talk about. But to explain why am a self-motivated person, I would like to go back there. Both my parents are physically challenged. Though both of them are physically not able to do certain number of things, they are themselves very self-motivated people. My dad is very well renowned and a scientist and mum is a homemaker. They have 4 kids and all of them are similar in thought process. I have never seen my parents give up. Having been brought up by that kind of parents, self-motivation was instilled in me”. She quotes her dad saying “people who are otherwise abled have more abilities than a person who is fully abled”. She added that being self-motivated herself she loves being and working with people.
An important factor to be noticed in self-motivated people is that they love what they are doing. They have the clarity of the role they have chosen which is an energy booster. These intrinsically driven individuals are an asset to an organization as they perform very effectively to reach their goals. Organizations providing a platform for building up self-awareness and reflection for the workforce can build self-motivation in the employees. It is a power that drives them to move ahead in spite of everything. I would personally thank her again for sharing her source of strength which is truly inspiring to everyone.
As she spoke about the values of the company, she pointed out to the values which are very well-defined and framed. She says “I believe in each one of these values. Our founder Nikhil believes in it and the same gets percolated down to every employee right at the induction process itself. The founding members arrived at the values. We start with the delightful experience for the internal customer (meaning employees) and that experience is transmitted to the external customer. The employees get the right clarity of the values and helps the new ones also to abide by them. The values are printed and displayed at the work place at most places in the entire office. Thus, the values are ingrained and alignment becomes much easier as each one of them are walking the talk. This is surely an implementable takeaway for every organization. I couldn’t help clicking a picture which is included as shown below. The company diary starts with the values on the first page.
What is the approach towards employees who have built invisible strong walls of barriers around them and how do you break these walls?
When someone becomes unapproachable, I see it as a challenge. I have to break the wall. I am a persistent person. I have figured that persistence approach for the unapproachable has worked very well. Everyone has a threshold, just being a bit ahead, helps in breaking the mind barriers positively. Being in the recruitment background gives me an edge to know if a person is withholding back or not. When a person is restricting himself/herself, gentle probing in the form of questions helps to break the ice. Constant communication and interaction with them helps in understanding them easily.
Aligning to goals of organization: One of the best ways to align to goals of the organization, so that it benefits the company is to provide the right form of training. Training holistically and the sense of belongingness, openness can turn into high performance. It has worked very well with William Penn which has seen very low attrition rates.
The value where “everyone an entrepreneur” makes a person own up a huge level of ownership and they go the extra mile to build delightful customer experiences. All the outlets across India are company owned company operated (coco model) and not into franchising.
Had the pleasure of visiting this multi brand unit in two malls of Bangalore to get the delightful “WOW” experience.
Watch this space for more pathbreakers. If you would like to be featured in “joyful-workplaces” blog, do feel free to write to us. Our editorial team would be happy to get in touch. Write to us joyworkshop@hasovan.com. Catch the work-place philosophy of William Penn in the book “Erupt with Joy” by Hosamane Savitha.
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