The initiative shows how structured employee engagement can break silos, build leaders and boost employer branding in a competitive talent market. The brand’s aim is to enhance cross-team collaboration and drive a strong workplace culture as it achieves scale.
Bengaluru: In a competitive talent market, employee engagement initiatives are critical to driving retention, collaboration and a strong workplace culture. At omnichannel jewellery brand GIVA, GIVAlympics—an internal sports and wellness initiative—has become an integral part of the company’s human resource management strategy.
Launched three years ago, GIVAlympics addresses a common challenge in growing organizations: maintaining interpersonal connections across expanding teams and functions. As GIVA scales, traditional team structures can lead to silos. GIVAlympics counters this by creating cross-functional teams and encouraging participation across all levels—helping employees connect beyond job roles and departments.
The 2025 edition featured 25 activities, including high-energy sports like football and badminton, as well as inclusive games such as chess, ludo and darts, in addition to unique challenges like paani puri-eating and saree-draping. This diverse mix ensured broad-based employee participation, reinforcing inclusivity and team spirit across the organization.
The initiative was led by the Human Resources and Administrative teams, who managed everything from game selection and scheduling to logistics, team jerseys, and venue coordination. Team captains and vice-captains, drawn from different verticals, played a key role in driving engagement and ensuring participation. This approach enabled cross-team leadership, boosted morale, and helped surface informal leaders across the organization.
GIVAlympics contributed to key organizational objectives: strengthening internal culture, improving inter-departmental collaboration and enhancing employee satisfaction. It fostered a sense of belonging and emotional connection, that will go ahead and support long-term employee retention. More importantly, it turned company values into lived experiences, where teamwork, creativity and shared success were actively celebrated.
Externally, the initiative also played a role in employer branding. It demonstrated GIVA’s commitment to employee well-being and culture-building, offering potential hires a clear signal that the organization values more than just performance: it values people.
As GIVA continues to scale up, culture-led initiatives like GIVAlympics will remain critical to maintaining cohesion, discovering new leadership potential and sustaining a motivated, connected workforce. For HR leaders navigating the complexities of organizational growth, GIVAlympics offers a clear example of how structured engagement can deliver measurable value.
Launched as a digital-first brand in 2019, GIVA quickly scaled through e-commerce before entering offline retail in 2022. Now, it has more than 200 stores across India. This omnichannel strategy has driven strong growth, with offline stores now contributing significantly to GIVA’s Rs 500+ crore annual revenue.
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