3 Takeaways to Create an Ownership Mindset

Our key takeaway from recent virtual group discussions was that making your employees feel like they own their work is a key way to keep them productive and engaged. By being a proactive stakeholder in their work rather than merely accountable, increases purpose and sense of accomplishment at work. Read to the end to find out more about how to get your workers into an ownership mindset.

Here's what we learned from our most recent sessions:

1. Ensure Professionalism

One of our attendees stressed that maintaining a sense of professionalism has been hard during the WFH period. A lot of peoples’ inclinations are to work in bed, wear pyjamas, and get distracted when working from home. So how can you counter this? Have mandatory conference calls, and encourage workers to set up productive workstations. You don’t want to be draconian, but a professional mindset and routine can boost productivity.

2. Encourage Learning through Shared Takeaways

Many attendees have stressed upskilling and live seminars to build a stronger workforce, but how do you see the results without subjecting your employees to tests that might make them feel spied on? One attendee this week shared an eloquent solution; encourage employees to share takeaways from these sessions. If employees critically think about the topics, share opinions, and engage with other employees on topics they’ll internalize the skills they learned through active learning. Encourage your employees to voice their opinions, and have leadership involved in the process too!

3. Highlight your “Best Failures”

One attendee paradoxically described how their employees were asked about some of the firm’s best failures over the prior few months. You must be thinking, what’s a best failure and why are we talking about it? It’s simple, encouraging communication over what didn’t work is the only way we can move forward. We learn from our mistakes far more than our successes. How can you implement this? Encourage all your teams to share both wins and learnings on a weekly basis, like we do at inFeedo, to harness collective brainstorming and overcome obstacles together!

4. Establish an Ownership Mentality

One attendee stated that their firm has focused on making their employers feel like owners of their own work, rather than merely being accountable to it. Ownership and pride in your work encourages you to give 110% on projects big and small. How can you build an owner mentality? Imbue your work and your workers with a sense of purpose. Through communication and strong leadership you can get your employees invested in their work to the point they own it. 

These sessions have so far been a treasure trove in terms of learnings and we will ensure the word gets out for every organization to implement and navigate this stressful, changing period together.

We would love to thank the HR leaders who make time to do their bit for their people and business as we cope with COVID-19 together.

• Raghavender Yadgirkar, GM HR at Greenko Group
• Ashish Gakrey, Founder at HR Shapers
• Vinay Trivedi, Head HR at ToneTag
• Gurvinder Singh Gill, Team Leader- HR at Fortis Healthcare
• Rohit Shenoy, HR Head at Sterlite Power
• Viraj Kalra, Executive Coach at White Ladder Consulting (Ex-CEO Planman)
• Mussarat Hussain, Head - Leadership & HR Transformation at Maruti Suzuki
• Mohanavalli Shankar, Director of Human Capital at Make A Difference
• Akshada Kadam, HR Manager at Ferring Pharmaceuticals
• Mitansh Sanawar, Zonal Head- HR at Pramerica
• Jossie Suryadinata, Director of Human Capital at PT. ESTA DANA VENTURA