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Royal Enfield has kicked off an initiative called ‘Red Talks’ as part of its efforts to keep employees constantly engaged during the lockdown.
Clearly inspired by the Ted Talks concept, which is a video created from a conference presentation, Red (Royal Enfield Discussion) Talks likewise seeks to motivate the company’s staff through video speeches.
Vinod Dasari, CEO of Royal Enfield and the brain behind the idea, told BusinessLine that anyone who is interested in a subject, or with expertise in any area, is welcome to participate in the series. He decided to take the plunge in the first Red Talk on leadership, with others in the Royal Enfield family scheduled to follow suit.
Like the Ted Talks, which have featured celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan, the Red Talks are 15-20 minutes long. The audience, comprising Royal Enfield employees who have signed in, then participates in the Q&A session. “We will also do a series of Red Talks on the history of Royal Enfield,” said Dasari.
This will help new recruits learn more about their company beyond being the manufacturer of the iconic Bullet motorcycle brand. “Essentially, this will help folks within the system understand more about Royal Enfield from their colleagues,” he added.
Beyond work, one of Dasari’s interests was to learn how to make a proper aloo paratha, since “I always mess that up”. So somebody who is an expert would be welcome to deliver a Red Talk on this fun aspect of Indian cuisine.
‘Play and purpose’
The idea, said Dasari, was not to trivialise issues but to deliberately go beyond professional and technical subjects in order to keep everyone involved, especially when they were all cooped up at home. He referred to a “nice article” from the Harvard Business Review , which he had read recently, that spoke of keeping people motivated during a downturn.
One of the tools suggested was ‘play and purpose’ which is essentially about giving employees cross-functional team projects to work on. “This means problem solving and interaction but also working on their potential as a prime focus,” elaborated Dasari.
All this becomes particularly important during this lockdown, which has already lasted over five weeks and is due to end on May 3. During this time, Royal Enfield employees have begun getting used to the reality of working from home.
“Ultimately, people will start to get demoralised and demotivated sitting at home,” conceded Dasari. Keeping this in mind, he asked his colleagues to prepare a list of things that they did during the lockdown which they would not have done otherwise.
Likewise, he urged them to catch up on the things “that you regret not doing during this lockdown which you could have”. The message yielded positive results with all the “regret things” now becoming the action plan for Lockdown 2.0, which kicked in on April 15.
Clearly, the idea was to keep people’s minds ticking all the time since despair can set in during this period of near solitary confinement, especially for those who are singletons. Additionally, there were a lot of online learning courses which worked out to nearly 10,000 hours of learning.
Essential projects
“Recently, we also looked at our business plan initiatives for the year and told ourselves that there is nothing that stops us from working on them,” continued Dasari. Consequently, 10 projects were identified as being essential for the business with aggressive targets set for each of them. “The idea was to achieve these as early as possible despite the lockdown,” he said.
Everyone within Royal Enfield is now setting up teams and action plans so that the process of problem solving and interacting is happening without a hitch. “We can see that people’s creative and emotional juices are flowing as a result,” said Dasari. From his point of view, the business momentum will “come back eventually” when things are back on track post-Covid.
“Let’s all solve what is internal to us and keep people encouraged and motivated. When things come back, it will be the same for everyone. We should be sharper physically and mentally as an organisation,” declared Dasari.
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