‘It boils down to engagement’

The Wanderers was agile enough to quickly move from real to virtual during the pandemic, conducting virtual employee engagement activities and reducing workplace loneliness for corporates and their employees.

Hazel Jain

When employee engagement started to take a whole new meaning altogether during the pandemic, The Wanderers, a big player in the M!CE segment, quickly made the move from real to virtual. Abhik Dutta, Director, The Wanderers and Colour Purple Event, says, “The first thing that we did in April-May 2020 when we realised it was going to be a long road to recovery, was to figure what is it that event companies do for clients and how we can offer that virtually. It all boils down to employee engagement. This means that your content is very important. What we do within that conference or the incentive is very important because every single activity is towards building an engagement.”

With this understanding, Dutta and his team completely pivoted and came up with their own 10-12 virtual activities for corporates. These include team-building activities such as treasure hunts to assimilating new joinees into the company culture. “We have done it for more than 20 companies so far, including Unilever’s global Dove team, JP Morgan Chase, and Asus. Many of them have come back to us again and again,” Dutta adds.

These activities, about two hours each, also helped employees living away from families who were getting lonely during the lockdown. “They are all intelligent activities that involve the management trainee as well as the country managers and CXOs,” he says.

Another advantage of going virtual, Dutta explains, is that earlier, his team couldn’t approach countries out of India as it didn’t make sense. “But, we realised it was possible to do that in the virtual space,” Dutta adds.