Titan: The High-Touch and High-Tech Approach for Increased Employee Engagement

Titan is an Indian lifestyle company that manufactures and retails watches, jewelry, eyewear, Indian dresswear, and personal accessories. Established in 1984, it transformed the Indian watch market with futuristic quartz technology-based watches and international styling. The company has introduced renowned brands like Titan watches, Titan Raga, Titan Clocks, Xylys, Fastrack, Sonata, Nebula, SF, Octane and Zoop, and had introduced innovative products like the Titan Smart, Smart Pro, Fastrack Reflex, IRTH and Fastrack Reflex Curv. In 1996, Titan entered the gold ornaments market with its jewelry brand Tanishq, followed by Zoya for luxury consumers. The company was India’s largest specialty retail network, with over 2400 stores and a total retail area of over three million sq. ft., and had also expanded its international business division to global markets. With a leadership change in 2019, the new Managing Director (MD), CK Venkataraman (CKV), introduced the initiative of ‘Speak-to-the-MD’, which allowed 50 employees to talk directly to the MD. As the scope and scale of the employee connect increased, the number of employees speaking increased annually. Along with the Executive Vice President (EVP) and Chief People Officer (CPO) Swadesh Behera, CKV discontinued the annual online survey, using these annual connect sessions to directly experience the employee pulse, drive policy changes and accelerate the number of listening posts across the organization through multiple leaders replicating this practice within their domains. By 2023, technology support made the process transparent and presented dashboards on the inputs’ status, thus dynamically tracking and reporting all issues raised at this forum. This case examines the role of leadership in enabling employee voice and changing well-established employee engagement survey practices with direct contact across the rank and file of the organization.