Just Joined! Itchy Hands Looking To Change?

When Mr. X joined the mid size Company, within 2 weeks he felt everything needed a change and makeover. The first thing that required major modification was the Company Policies and immediately he got to work of designing new ones. At the end of 4 weeks from his joining date he had a new set of policies ready and looked forward to furnishing them before the Management, get an approval and be the proud creator of them.

A proud creator yes, but the policies never got approved! Several reasons could be possibly attributed to it like: how could it be that not one policy was perceived as a fit to the Organization Culture; what was the urgent need of modifying them, that too in such a short time of being on board; copied from internet resources. Plus rapport building became a huge task which couldn't be overcome with time!

A conversation with a friend led to the question: How long can an employee recruited for a crucial decision making position take, before he/she can start rolling out the decisions and the Organization would listen to him/her? The friend said ideally not more than 3 weeks and by then he/she should be well acquainted with the operations/systems flow and all that his responsibilities demand. However when it comes to introducing changes the 3 weeks is too short a time. That’s the easiest way that can lead to his being crucified before public eye. Neither would he be able to please the Management nor gain the confidence of his subordinates/colleagues or the employees.

Company policies are something that is based on the common vision and goals of the builders of the Organizations which are duly passed on down the level of hierarchy. Playing with them is a sure shot way of receiving heavy criticism and resistance. But this holds good only for Organizations that fall in the bucket of being Tier-1 and/or Tier-2. There are still quite many of those who form the bulk of mid size Organizations – for some of them their respective policies are nothing but copied material from Internet (CiteHR in fact is an excellent resource for anything that has to deal with HR) and they have always been mavericks in the way they operate and implement activities. Introducing a change out here would mean disturbing the fine balance between Management, employees and the new person hired from a corporate HR background. The others are those who are bound tight by their policies and find changes nothing less than unnecessary fingering just to prove the newly hired individual is a capable addition to the team. Both ways it’s too premature to believe that nothing is going right in the first place. No doubt the new addition may have been hired to well implement the necessary visions of the Management, however for being effective the right time would begin only after months of careful scrutiny of the culture and the way employees respond to it.

Being a Techno Geek

The routine of a mid twenty / thirty year old at workplace is sit for those blissful 8 hours of work in front of a desktop. Not even for a minute flinch away from that insane stare and the lunch hour seems like we are missing a lot of things. 7 pm back home and after another hour we have our home desktops switched on, either for work from home purposes or merely for the fact that some of us are computoddicted!

We can imagine no task complete without a few clicks here and there and rap tap goes the keyboard. We form the brigades of employees who are completely paralysed when power failures occur.

But to imagine a whole large chunk of those employees, who have taken onto manual working all their lives. So much so even today with the advent of this revolutionary technology they still find themselves among piles of papers, innumerable files and cupboards full of 3 decades old stock of data maintenance that nobody ever would give a glance to! Layers of dust gathering on those historical data that form the base of the Organization’s inception and the well laid out building plans.

A manufacturing sector somehow tends to a clear demarcation of two genres of employees. One being the old horses that grow along with the aging organization and the other being the newbies. It’s said that it’s hard to get in-depth technical competence from the newbies when compared to the golden period of engineers of the 1970’s, 80’s and early 90’s era. Similarly it’s like taking the horse to the river but unable to force it to drink water, when the old horses suddenly find a rectangular inanimate object on their tables with a mouse. From right away dismissing the idea to initial hiccups and slow motion clicks around in vain; many ultimately end up resorting to following their old ways. Along with an explanation that 5 years more and retirement knocking their doors, these rectangular objects best lay assured at newbie desks. The hindrance seems to be pushing limits when critical data needs to be retrieved and the concerned person wishes how lucky would he be if they were a click away, rather than flipping pages amidst a land full of dust. Compiling information also feels like a Herculean task, as years need to be matched and the corresponding data needs to be fed and worked upon. Lot many things have no information, as back then nobody thought it could lead to a link in the new strategy background work or maybe the CEO wanted to see the attrition levels of the last 10 years.

What’s a predominant feature of not being techno geek for some is that their great ideas face premature death, because of the inability to present them in the sweetest and shortest way. How would a VP of the organization devote some 30 minutes to listen to a new thought if the same idea can be caught within a span of 2 minutes via a presentation? Afterall things seen visually are recalled stronger than pages of thesis work on the matter which ultimately land up in some corner of the office. Similarly being techno geek can save a lot of time in hand to do more work that could help clear out backlogs if any and give in more space to think of the innovative and untried. By and large the whole of 8 hours is consumed in doing the routine task and when does one have the time to think something new and fresh? What may form to be 6 points of a job description when examined closely may turn out to be just 2 points when computerization of the same collective is implemented! What management may think is eating up their financial resources and adding onto the weight of employees may be eventually sorted out such that the manpower count is reduced, kind courtesy disinterest in learning the technology!

So if the fear of getting redundant by introduction of technology is of prime concern, then how about the fear of getting redundant by not knowing the ways of the techno world? Why when one doesn’t shy from acquiring new machines for increase in production, is there a hesitating human in front of a rectangular inanimate object?

Sick Human Unit

A ‘Sick Industrial Unit’ as defined in the ‘Sick Industrial Companies Act, 1985’ is said to be a unit or a Company (having been in existence for not less than five years) which is found at the end of any financial year to have incurred accumulated losses equal to or exceeding its entire net worth. There are 2 basic factors which may result in the sickness of an industrial unit, which are:

a). Internal Factors,

b). External Factors.

And there is a 3rd factor that attributes differently to a unit being ‘Sick’ which is the “Human Factor”.

It is then maybe even Government bailing out aids cannot help. And what becomes more irreversible a process is when the whole of the unit’s resources is plagued by the sickness effect. Then what ceases to matter is whether the unit is churning huge profits or taking a huge shelf space in the markets. All that happens thereafter is it being fed to a slow death, of the operations within the unit / Company.

Taking a closer look of how such sickness spreads, at times we cannot consider ourselves to be distanced from its roots. Looking around we can observe much exhibited a behavioural change in our colleagues, subordinates, superiors who begin to breed the notion that for all Gains they belong to the Company; but for all Losses it’s the CEO’s shoulder that takes the blow. And with this thought in mind, they start caring a less where matters require immediate attention and correction. The most unfortunate part shows up when they berate at those who think they are very much part of the Company’s shareholder policy without physically being one. And one thing leading to another, when the employees of the unit/Company start taking things at a pace slower than the need of the hour, delaying the process, the delivery of the services, and a number of back-logs within the system of outflow of materials/services.

The ‘Human’ approach to releasing past grudges and grievances at the wrong cause, making the working environment lose the balance is every Company’s’ Management’s nightmare. Coz they realise once started, this cycle is unstoppable without a few blows here and there. A good work culture is something every individual joining a Company yearns for, something they can relate to, the whole of their lives. But at times the unit/Company gets indefinitely ‘Sick’, because of the culture that is being built within a group of people; who start acting tangentially to the requirements of the unit/Company.

The top 10 ways to identify the behaviour/attitude of a colleague/subordinate/superior around you contributing to the ‘Sick Human Unit’:

1. It’s not my job.
2. The 5 minute paperwork shoved beneath piles of other files.
3. What’s there in for me? Do I get my margin?
4. It’s the owners’ headache; he needs to deal with the growing protests.
5. Why would I job rotate, I’m happy here since past 2 decades!
6. What’s the point in learning new things; I have just 5 years to retirement!
7. It’s not my responsibility either; I know nothing of it; despite the previous documentation bearing my signature.
8. Marking the paperwork to somebody else and the marking continues endlessly.
9. Changing decisions/stands when caught off-guard.
10. Will do it tomorrow or maybe next week.

Would I like to work in such a unit/Company? Definitely not! Neither would you! Least one could do, is take medication with the slightest of the symptoms.

But Precaution has been stated to be always better than Cure!