As I Travel

The prospective candidate in a job interview is almost through with the selection process and now his employer and he are onto the discussion on the salary part. The candidate is asking the employer as to what he would offer. The employer says that he would start off the first month with Rs 3,000 and then progress to Rs 4,000 the second month and eventually firm it up with Rs 5,000 in the third month. The candidate gets up, thanks the employer and says that he would be happy to join them and that he would report for duty in the third month from thence. This is how the expectations and attitudes of the present day employees are!
There is something called an ‘employee avarice’ very strongly evident nowadays almost beating the degree of the earlier days ‘employers’ ‘exploitation of labour.’ Nobody wants to go through the motions of a structured and an organic growth. Added to that is the hype of ‘B-schools’ stories of six figure salary per month signed up for their students even before they would pass out.

To gratify the ‘growth hunger,’ in the last decade the banking sector did away with many an intervening hierarchy that would come in between a manager and a general manager and straight away started from manager to AVPs. Sounds good, feels good and pays good too. But is that all to the title? The other day I was meeting with the Vice President (Mktg) of the renowned company M/s SKF Bearing. During the business chat, out of curiosity I asked him what SKF stood for. And he said that it was the Swedish name of the original Swedish company. So far so good. But he didn’t knew what it really stood for. And he had no ill-feeling for not knowing it either. Eventually on my own, I googled around and got the expansion for SKF – Svenska Kullager Fabriken meaning Swedish Bearing Company in the native tongue.

Where is the involvement in one’s job going missing, we do not know. Certain companies in USA have a position called an evangelist on board. You may be wondering what a religious guy doing on the board of a business concern. As you know, an evangelist not only sells God but also believes in God. The same way, an evangelist here not only sells the product but he believes in it. I have seen many a teacher putting their sons and daughters in a different school other than the very schools they are teaching in. They are just the opposites of the evangelists.

Certain companies have corporate story tellers as necessary part of their team. Their job is to acquaint the newcomer in the company with the evolution of the company as to the five Ws & one H of it (Who, What, When, Where, Why & How – as to who started, when and where and how started etc). That will give the necessary and the much required initial anchoring and bonding for the new employee.

One of the Indian companies that had and is still having, I suppose such repute is the Tatas. There is always a saying in professional circles that one may come across a person who could be an ex-this or an ex-that but not an ex-Tatas! I always fondly recall the Tata Steel ad where they talk about the employees’ welfare measures like schools and housings and the gregariousness of their executives hobnobbing with the workers etc and then finally freezing that shot with the wordings ‘We Also Make Steel’! That is the mark of a successful orientation and bonding for a successful company.

Another fabulous company is the Brazilian company called Semco of which Ricardo Semler (famous for his autobiographical work ‘Maverick’) is the CEO. Semco even pays for the court expenses in case a disgruntled employee decides to sue the company and goes to the court of law.
The hotel and now the airline industry as well do witness the highest turnover of employees. The attrition rate is so very high that within a year they change companies as many months as there are in a year. When somebody joins the company, he may not have his visiting card immediately. What he does is to take the company’s plain card out and add his name on that and give it. But the days have already arrived in where the prospective employee has his card ready with his name and a blank space for the company’s name and fills it as he keeps moving from company to company.

Employee loyalty is not a stand-alone concept by itself. Employer loyalty is also equally a moot point. It is high time for both the employees and the organization dropped their mutual distrust and start understanding the other side.

Come to think of it, the very term ‘union strike’ is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. How can an entity called a union strike? A union can embrace and not strike. A union can and should only unify and symphonise rather than create discord and destroy.

Let us make our workplace a better place because the place where we work plays a major role in our life and takes the better part of our time.••