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PURPOSE
THE paper seeks to explore the concept of Employee-Centric Organizations (ECO), to identify its drivers and study its impact on employees, customers and the organisation.
Research Design/Methodology: This a study based on review of literature, taken from varied journals and online sources.
Findings: The study identifies the three major drivers of ECO, i.e. Employee Engagement, Employee Empowerment and Employee Enablement, along with identifying the drivers of these three constructs. It also suggests a positive link between ECO and employee-related outcomes and seeks to study its larger impact on customer-related as well as organisation- related outcomes.
Research Limitations: The paper provides a conceptual model for employee-centric organizations. However, it needs to be empirically validated.
Managerial Implications: It highlights that employee engagement, or empowerment, or enablement in itself may not be sufficient for organizational success. Rather, managers shall focus on creating employee-centric organizations, in order to take benefits from the synergy produced by the combination of these three constructs.
Originality: The paper provides insights into the concept of Employee-Centric Organisations and suggests a conceptual framework for ECO, along with its drivers and consequences.
Key Words: Employee-Centric Organisations (ECO), Employee Engagement, Employee Empowerment, Employee Enablement.
Introduction
An employee-centric model formalizes the common mantra of "Our people are our best asset" (Jones, 2014). In the current World, "Employees" are being seen as the biggest source of competitive advantage for a company. With many companies being in close competition to one another, it is their employee that actually gives them the distinctive edge. Companies which earlier focused on nurturing a customer-centric culture have realised that the most important customers for companies are their internal customers, i.e. the Employees of the company.
Nayar (2010), in his book - "Employees first, customers second" talks about turning the conventional management upside down and achieving organisational transformation through a series of employeecentric measures. For years companies have been focusing on the concept of customer-centricity. This means that everything the company does and the systems & processes that run the business has the customer in mind. The customer-centric organization wins because it focuses on the customer (Hyken, 2012). But, in order to take care of the company's external customers, it is required that the employees support each other internally. The way our internal...