Infosys’ MaQ gathers employee feedback online, ensures accountability of managers

The strategy is aimed at improving the Company’s managers and making life easier for the junior staff.

0
8325

Modern workplaces face much discontent with workers’ voices often going unheard, especially that of the junior staff. The environment becomes quite intolerable if the junior employees are unhappy with their managers. This results in demotivated teams and a lot of negativity at work. Infosys has come up with a unique solution to get genuine feedback about its managers.

The Indian multinational IT services company has created a digital platform to gather feedback on its managers and team leaders. This ensures accountability of the managers and makes the workplace more tolerable for the junior staff.

Many Indian organisations have now willingly adopted the modern system of encouraging the junior employees to give feedback on their managers or seniors.

Nandini S, senior vice president and group head, organisation development, human resources, Infosys, created MaQ, which allows managers to evaluate themselves continuously.

The MaQ dashboard offers managers feedback from the team about their ability to motivate and mentor the team, provide inspiration, establish a bond, innovate, as well as execute projects. The scores of the managers are calculated, based on the different metrics collected from employee engagement surveys and exit interviews held throughout the year.

The system is expected to help managers stay focussed on their role and play it to the hilt. It also allows managers to utilise their strengths (which are marked in green) and work on getting rid of their weaknesses (which are marked in red). The platform even suggests ways to ensure improvement.

MaQ, which has been tested out by the Company for over nine months now, is already being successfully patronised by 60 per cent of its managers.

Infosys is not the only company that believes in peer feedback. Havells, Hindustan unilever and State Bank of India have also used similar systems to help employees assess themselves.

Bengaluru-based IT company, Mindtree, that has been collecting feedback about its managers digitally, both anonymously as well as openly, realised that there was a huge difference in the results between anonymous and open feedback. More valuable and honest information is shared when the feedback is anonymous. The report that is presented to the managers, based on this feedback helps them work on their weak points or drawbacks.

However, such systems will only work well if the evaluation criteria are clearly defined. Care has to be taken to ensure that employees do not give negative feedback based on their personal grudges or biases or just to get even with some managers.

Comment on the Article

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

6 + fourteen =