“Home away from Home”

To create a healthy environment at workplace as well as in hostels for female employees  is my task. Female employees are working with us who has come from rural background ,  less educated and are from far flung areas. Most of the girls have not come out of their  hometown earlier. Girls are not aware how to use toilet facilities or how to take care of  their hygiene & health. Girls get easily influenced with the lifestyle of the people around  and couldn’t manage to save money. The number of girls have increased rapidly in last two  years and hence the challenges to help them in acquainting with the culture has also  increased.

To face this challenge & coming up with the sustainable solution that can help in fulfilling  the objective of creating healthy environment for female employees and at the same time  guiding them to groom & develop, we adopted the storytelling  design thinking tool . I  really got impressed with the story of the George & the Geoff which was told in second  video of week 2 and hence chose to adopt this design thinking tool.

We identified female employees who are already associated with us and have come from  such background and are associated with us for more than 3 years. We organized forums  where the older employees can interact with the new one. We also displayed the stories  of girls and their achievements on the hostel and unit’s notice boards.

We asked the older employees to share their stories with new girls so that they can learn  how they can adjust in new environment. The challenges they face like hesitation,  inferiority complex or lack of confidence & shared how they learnt that change is law of  nature. The girls told them how the company has helped them in learning & growing. They  told them that they attended the induction programs, Health & hygiene programs  organized by the company & how these programs have transformed their life. They were  told to approach the senior female officers for any guidance they needed. The girls told  them about their financial saving methods so that they can become financial independent.  They told them about how effectively they utilize their time after work in hostel e.g.  learning new activities like tailoring, painting, dance, self-grooming (beauty tips) etc. The  girls shared that they have saved money and given to the family to build house, to help  brother in the business, helping in the education of the younger brother & sisters. They  told that the learn the healthy life style and why it is important.

This story telling tool helped in influencing girls to retain with us and also helped in  amalgamating in the company culture. The girls are more engaged and feels belongings

at work place & in hostel as well. The diversified culture helped them in building new  relationships with the people belongs to different states.

Story telling tool helps us in communicating our objectives to new girls effectively as they  can relate themselves to the person whose story is being told. To develop a sense of  belongingness and care this tool gave me a different prospective of doing the same thing  differently. I felt that this shall give me immediate help in retaining those girls and at the  same time they will feel home away from home.

I would like to add mind mapping tool in this activity so that I can develop the training  modules to develop the girls and help them in day to day routine.

