Super Spolier

The other day in the hair-cutting salon, while I was being trimmed by my ends, a conversation ensued between the barbers seemingly about some customer who had just left the salon. I was the only customer in the salon at that time and they didn’t seem to mind my presence in their verbal freewheeling. This is a small reproduction of their interaction –

Barber 1: “He thinks himself to be Salman Khan. The other day he instructed me that not a hair of his must be out of place and he should look like Salman.”

Barber 2: “Does he look like Salman Khan! B##### cockroach…He does not how to talk even!”

Barber 3: “Next time he comes put some fevi-kwik (strong adhesive brand) on his hair, then not a hair would be out of place.”

Barber 1: “Or send him to Vinod (some disastrous barber) and he will know what he is…Vinod will make him Salman Khan…”

And they all break into loud roar of laughter…

Informal interactions of people are many times true representatives of their actual feeling. Their emotions and feeling are mostly ventilated through such interactions.

Recently in a survey conducted by talent management expert DDI found that one in three employees do not consider their boss to be doing an effective job, while almost half of the workers think they could do their boss’s job better than them. The research was based on surveys of more than 1,200 full-time employees from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India and Southeast Asia.

Prominent reasons for such high levels of dissatisfaction with their bosses or supervisors were:

1. Poor Motivators (Low motivation from their supervisors, to give their best effort).

2. Poor listeners (Most bosses never or only sometimes listen to worker’s work related concerns).

3. Non-involvement (bosses do not involve their employees in to decisions that impact them).

4. Non-respectful (damage self-esteem of employees).

5. Temperamental (d not remain calm & constructive while discussing problems).

6. Missing basics (low on courtesy, respect, honesty & tact).

The study also found that most employees surveyed had left the job because of their supervisors.

You many well imagine what most employees would be calling their supervisors…terms used by the barbers or may be even worse…!

When it comes to competency of a leader or a manager, there is no much differentiation in terms of ability, knowledge or skills. The truest form of competency for a leader/manager is emotional leadership that consists of Self Awareness (being aware of his/her actions and the impact of the same on others), Self Regulation (being able to change oneself), empathy (ability to put oneself in other person’s situation & think from his/her viewpoint) and finally, Social Skills (courtesy, respect, fairness and tact in dealing with others).

India Salary Survey 2012

'Despite talk of a slowing economy, improved sentiments of late have warmed India Inc to the prospects of another year of double digit salary hikes. Indian companies plan to dole out an average of 11.9% salary hike this year, compared to 12.6% last year, according to a survey conducted by human-resource consulting firm Aon Hewitt.'

The important trends -

Highest in Asia-Pacific
The salary increments in India will remain the highest in the Asia-Pacific region. While salaries in China are expected to go up by 9.5%, in Philippines employees will get a 7% hike. Globally, India ranks among the top five countries with maximum salary hikes.

Surplus Cash to Reward Employees

With the rupee appreciating considerably over the past one month and consumer spending on better lifestyle on the upside, the survey shows that companies are concentrating on allocating the surplus cash to reward employees, who contribute significantly to their organisations' growth.


Steeper hike for Talents

Even as the average salary hike is expected to be in the 12% range, the survey pointed out that the hikes given to critical talents will be 2%-3% more than the overall increments in an organization, a trend which has been witnessed across organizations in the last three years. The trend continues for 2012, with a projected increase of 15.1% for this employee group. Moreover, the salary increase for employees rated as 'far exceeding expectations' is almost two times the salary increase compared to those 'meeting expectations'.

Better for some Industries

While the IT industry may see muted growth this year, growth across industries like FMCG, real estate, finance and others will be relatively better leading to good salary hikes. "For IT industry, hike in salary will be around 7%-10%, slightly lower than last year. Other industries, however, will see increase in the range of 8%-12%." As far as sectors go, this year's salary increase will be the highest for the Indian pharmaceutical industry, with a projection of 13.3% hike. The engineering design/services ranked the second highest on the salary hike table with a projected increase of 13%, which is 1.1% higher than the India average. The lowest hikes are expected to come in for the telecom and financial services sectors with an11% and 10% increase respectively.

More Variable Pay

Another big trend across India Inc has been the increasing focus on variable pay as part of total compensation. Top and senior management see 23% of their total compensation as variable (up from 16% in 2001) and even the lowest-rung entry staff get approximately 13% of their total compensation (up from 10% in 2001) as variable pay.

Inflation fueling Attrition

High attrition rates are expected to plague companies owing to high inflation rates. Overall attrition rate is projected to be at 19.8%, with financial sector to top the charts at 29.3%.Companies are adopting different strategies to boost growth and rationalizing manpower is an option they may look at. 

S-leap beneFIT

Travelling by the morning bus to the campus, I have always been a witness to some people continuing their night’s slumber on their seats, till they reach their destination. I have often wondered how people fall asleep in the bus with so much of light all around and all kinds of noises – from the blaring horns of other vehicles to the ones screaming for a way on the roads. While I have never got answer to satiate my curiosity, it has nevertheless been fun (no pun intended). There are ones who sit and sleep with almost Buddha-like ability to hold themselves straight; there are others who are swaying like tall eucalyptus trees sway on a windy day; while there are still others who have not forgotten their kinder-garden lessons & dutifully put their heads-down on the back-rest of the seat in front on them and snore (silently) in bliss. Finally, there is the ‘freefall’ category, those who keep tumbling on others and wake-up as surprised as the one on whom they have cascaded, to go back to another round of deep slumber & another round of tumbling all over again.


All of them however have one thing in common. They all seem to have an uncanny sense of destination. When they are sleeping, it always appears to me that they would have to be shaken-out of the bus once we reach the campus. But every time, I am proven wrong and all of them wake-up just at the right time and hurry-out of the bus, before I can.

Amongst all this slumber tales, when I look at many other passing-by public transport buses with passengers stuffed like onions, spilling-over each other, jostling, shoving, pushing, either trying to hold themselves to their seats or hanging like broken electric poles, I think folks like us have really earned the comfort to be able to sleep in the bus.

Benefits are always engaging when they serve the real need of the people. Good transport systems arranged by organizations for their employees in cities like Bangalore or other huge metros is definitely one such benefit. Wipro recently became the first private sector employer to introduce the national pension scheme. The talent development & engagement team at Wipro has already got an overwhelming response to this scheme & more surprisingly from the younger lot in the company. Wipro introduced the NPS benefit under the Wipro benefits Plan (WBP) in July 2011 and hopes to get a 50 % enrolment of their 100,000 plus employees, in the first year. The average age of employees enrolling in the scheme is said to be 29 years.

Fine is not fine

These days you hardly get letters in postal mail box. The mails that come are seldom pleasant ones, for they are mostly bills to be paid, sometimes the credit card bill or the landline bill or the electricity bill. On other occasions they are mutual fund statements (they aren’t looking good either these days). However the other day, something else came in the mail box. It was an inland letter. I opened it to find that a traffic violation notice had been served to me. Not pleasant by any stretch of imagination, either! Anyways the details were as follows: Date of violation was mentioned to be 1st Feb. 2012; Time of violation 1305 hours; Nature of violation – Using mobile while driving; Place of Violation – Sadda Halli Junction (I did not even know where this junction was!).

I never use mobile while driving and was wondering how I possibly violated the rule. But even otherwise, I could not have possibly violated the rule because on the date and time of violation mentioned in the notice, I was actually in my university teaching my students. And, my university campus is some 60 kilometers away from the place where the violation supposedly took place. My car was parked safely inside the campus during the alleged time of violation. So I wondered how in the world I flouted the traffic rule. There has to be a clone of me and also of my car to have possibly been there at two places, at the same time. To the best of my knowledge cloning has yet not been tried on human beings or maybe I am the first one to be cloned.

Anyways to seek further clarification on the ‘misdemeanor’ that I had not done, I called-up on the number mentioned on the violation notice. The voice on the other side listened to my innocent pleas but still maintained that I have committed the violation. The voice on the other side was so confident that I began to suspect myself. On my repeated requests, he gave me another telephone number of the police station that had supposedly recorded my ‘alleged felony’. I repeated my pleas to the person who took the call, who was perhaps a sub-inspector. He listened to my story and asked few details like my car registration number etc. and found it difficult to believe me. Yet, he took a sympathetic view and advised me that I should come to police station and present my case in front of the inspector. When I told him that I was a good 60 kms away from the police station, he very kindly connected me to the inspector. I repeated the same exercise of trying to convince him that I had not committed the violation, besides telling him that I had all reasons not to be there when the violation was committed. He listened to me patiently and thankfully seemed to believe my version. He also conceded that it may have been a clerical error as the number had been noted down manually by one of their staff members. Thankfully, someone believed my truth…however the advice that he gave me was very practical yet funny. He told me that it would take me a long time to convince everyone and get this violation notice cancelled. Hence it will be in my interest to pay the fine (which was only 100 rupees). He sounded very helping yet helpless. Further, he told me that most of his colleagues manning the roads are armed with BBMs and if they find that I have not paid the fine, they shall catch me & speak to me harshly. He believed me every bit but was kind enough to tell me that my welfare lied in paying-up the fine ad in not in trying to convince people of my innocence.

I thanked him and told him that I had actually written a column in Business Line (Driving towards Safer Roads) emphasizing the importance of driving safely and hence the likelihood of my violating the traffic rules was perhaps even more remote. He apologized for the error & the inconvenience caused to me (It was very nice of him to do that but I guess he thought that I was some journalist) and pleaded that I should pay the fine and he would ensure that nothing of this sort happens in future. Undoubtedly, the inspector (I think he introduced himself as Inspector Srinivas) was very polite and cooperative. His helplessness lied in the system that made it so difficult to undo a mistake on their part. But still I have every reason to thank Inspector Srinivas for he not only helped me to have a closure on this but also saved me from future misery through his ‘practical’ advice. I, ultimately, paid the fine for a violation that I never committed.

Rigid, bureaucratic systems kill engagement. Mistakes are always possible since to err is human. But flexible & open systems help not only to minimize these mistakes but also help to minimize the damage caused by such mistakes. This always promotes better engagement of the stakeholders.

Coming back to my case, one who has stopped on red light traffic signals in the dead of night when most other vehicles had been jumping the lights, this notice and eventually the fine that I paid further reduces my faith on our traffic management system. And yes, I am certainly not amongst the 'happiest Indians' but I am happy...

Indians are 'happiest'...Really?

A recent poll shows that Indians are amongst the happiest people in the world. Really! then we should also be rated as the most optimistic country in the world. I am sure that those who did this happiness poll took into account the following –


• According to the Human Development Report 2011, the human development index (HDI) positions India at 134 out of 187 countries and territories. Bangladesh and Pakistan are ranked at 146 and 145, respectively.

• India fairs poorly on Gender equality. Actually it is ranked a poor 129th out of 146 countries on the Gender Inequality Index, below Bangladesh and Pakistan, which are ranked at 112 and 115, respectively. In fact, Afghanistan is the only country ranked below India in the South Asian region on the Gender Inequality Index.

• Among BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations, India has the highest inequalities in human development.

• Newly released United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs ( UN-DESA) data for 150 countries over 40 years shows that India is the most dangerous place in the world to be a baby girl. An Indian girl child aged 1-5 years is 75% more likely to die than an Indian boy, making this the worst gender differential in child mortality for any country in the world. Infact India and China are the only two countries in the world where female infant mortality is higher than male infant mortality in the 2000s. The UN report is clear that high girl child mortality is explained by socio-cultural values. Higher female mortality from age 1 onwards clearly indicated sustained discrimination.

Ode to happiness! What an irony!

• 53.7 per cent Indians have been placed in the bracket of multi-dimensionally poor (612 million), the largest concentration of such poor persons in the world. Multidimensional Poverty Index indicates deprivations on multiple counts such as health, education and living standards.

• Fifty-eight per cent of the world's open defecation is attributed to India, making it one of the most dirtiest & filthiest country in the world.

And still we are happy...sorry happiest? I am sure those who were surveyed in the poll are the ones who sit in their office with no work, except watching videos on their mobile handsets.

True state of a country or an organizational happiness does not come from wishful thinking or ‘planned’ surveys. To know the state of engagement of citizens of a country or an organization, one has to first get the data right...but even before that one has to have the courage & intention to face the reality.

The funny part is that most of these surveys are also conducted by organization for whom it is important to have more clientele. The client also wants to have a fancy tag. So, both of them join hands. And, so the client is happy, the surveyor is happy...May be that is how they get the ‘happy data’.

Painless Partings

'Soon after Citigroup let go of 100 employees across India last month, many functional heads received an unusual brief. They were asked to scout for jobs for those who had been terminated. Counsellors were also roped in to soften the blow and professional services firms were hired to make the career transition of the terminated employees - some of them star performers - smooth. At this moment, Citi is not the only company trying to find jobs for the people it has let go. A few others, including Bharti Airtel and DLF, are also doing it right now or have done so in the recent past, officials at these companies said. India Inc, now in the throes of its second round of layoffs since the Lehman Brothers collapse in late 2008, is slowly learning to treat executives well, even as they are being led up to the exit door. Job cuts are inevitable. But the cold, insensitive and sheepish way of handing out pink slips is slowly being replaced with responsible and supportive approaches. HR gurus say how a company parts ways with employees will have a significant bearing on the morale of the remaining workforce and also on the company's ability to attract talent in the future. Managing layoffs well is important for the sustainability of the 'employer brand'.

"Citi provides services of global outplacement firms to employees displaced during any review," says Stephen Cronin, managing director, human resources, Citi South Asia. It helps such employees with coaching on job search skills, interview techniques, placement support and even basic application letter-writing skills. The bank foots the bill. GE is another example. "In the past, we have either absorbed the affected employees in other GE businesses/roles or engaged outplacement agencies to help them get suitable opportunities externally," says David C Lobo, senior VP-HR at GE India. Bharti Airtel, which has made hundreds of jobs redundant in recent months after a restructuring exercise, now works with an 'ecosystem of partners to identify suitable placement opportunities' for employees it lets go. "We do our best to facilitate the career transition," says an Airtel spokesperson.' (Source - On layoffs, India Inc still leaves employees in the lurch, Saumya Bhattacharya, The Economic Times, Feb. 9 , 2012)

The article goes on further to show how in India outplacements is an exception rather than  a rule. Companies tend to think why should they care for a person who is leaving anyways! I remember I had written an article 'Keep them in Fold' in Outlook Business (Aug. 2009 issue) as well as in a column in 12th June 2009 issue of Business Line titled 'Lay off the lay-off idea' on the perils of letting-go people in the worng way and the alternatives that companies might have in either seeking better utilisation out of them or letting them part in a way that smoothens the rough edges, normally associated with layoffs. The impact of lay-offs is not only on the employee who has been asked to leave but on the other employees who have been asked to stay. Further more the impact is on their families. Treating people with respect is important even when they are asked to leave. Resulting enagagement of the employees, who stay back, is amazing for they will always have at the back of their minds that their companies shall never short-change them, even in the worst case scenario.

Leadership Brand

‘Leadership Brand’ by Dave Ulrich & Norm Smallwood (HBS, 2007) defines leadership brand as – understanding customer expectations and translating the same in employee behaviour. The point takes us to asking what a firm’s identity is and what is their leadership identity? For example – Wal-Mart is known for everyday low prices (firm’s identity) and its leader’s are known for managing costs and optimizing resources (leadership identity). Similarly Apple is known for innovation (firm’s identity) and its leaders are known for creating an entrepreneurial mindset amongst people (leadership identity).

It is very important for the firm’s to ask themselves what their firm’s identity is & consequently what their leadership identity is and continuously introspect the same. Can firm and leadership identity change? Yes, they can but for that the identities must be shared, debated and practiced.

One company that got it amazingly right and then terribly wrong is Toyota. Toyota is known for quality (firm’s identity). They actually pride themselves in the same, their punch line reads – ‘Quality Revolution’. Their leaders are known for continuous improvement (leadership identity) that comes from their legendary ‘TPS’ or Toyota Production System. TPS embraces continuous experimentation and improvements as a part of the work. Sometime back when they started to get complaints of faulty foot mat & brakes and cases of ‘unintended acceleration’ the leadership forgot for sometime what they are best known for and that is continuous improvement. For a company that prided itself on quality, it probably thought it was an embarrassment to accept that they got the same damn thing wrong! As a result they forgot their leadership identity and that in turn violated their firm’s identity (quality). By the time they reconciled and accepted the problem, much of the damage had been done.

Leadership is much used and almost an abused term. Everyone preaches and claims to know something on leadership. But the truth is that there is a serious dearth of leadership, although there are many leaders. The bottom-line is that leadership has to outlast the leaders in an organization and that happens through embedding an engagement with the external (customers, investors) and translating that into an engagement with the internal (employee behaviour).

Blooming Flowers

There was a time when I used to study about flowers and what I learnt out of my limited forays is the way a flower shall turn out after blooming was not only dependent on the species or variety to which it belonged. The general environmental conditions played a huge role in determining the intensity of its colour, its volume, its shelf-life etc. For example, the commercial cut flowers that are grown at high altitudes, where the temperatures are much lesser, then those grown in plains, have darker colour shades, are more voluminous & have greater shelf life and hence fetch better price. Simply put, the value of the flower goes-up by the way it blooms.


Engagement also has similar effects. Greater levels of engagement help a talent to bloom much fuller and colorful, hence appreciating his/her value. And of course the talent lasts much longer in the organization and the organization outlasts it’s leaders.

As you rush towards the much awaited weekend I leave you with this beautiful video on the life of flowers. Enjoy…

God, Gold & Engagement

Reports suggest that devotees in India are offering less gold to God in the recent months, due to the rise in gold prices. The gold collections in all the top temples in India – Tirupati (A.P.), Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple (Kerala) and Siddhivinayak Temple (Mumbai) have dropped by as much as 11% on an average. The individual collection drops in some temples is as much as 20%. Interestingly though, during tough times, the number of prayers go up significantly, since more wishes are to be answered to steer clear the rough patch. Prayers are expected to keep Gods happy & engaged, when gold fails.

In a country where around 46% of the kids are suffering from malnutrition due to poverty, a third of whom are stunted, which can have serious long-term implications for health, psychosocial well-being and educational achievement; a country which ranks a poor 134th on the Human Development Index out of 187 countries, even behind economically less developed countries, including the war-torn Iraq, people still see offering gold to Gods as a path to their welfare and salvation. Reportedly, a US-return techie has started a free community kitchen for the poor after he saw a seriously deprived man eating his own feces, out of hunger outside a very famous temple known for its riches. He was so moved that he left his plump-job in US and relocated to India to start this free community kitchen. He has devoted his whole life to this cause and runs the initiative purely on donations.

So if gold collections are dwindling, there is not much to worry for Gods are also not worried. The only ones who seem to be worrying are those who think that by offering less gold to God, their influence on the almighty may be affected or those who are counting the gold coins. But true engagement with God for both appear to be zillion miles away, for engagement has to do more with purity of intentions rather than the glitter that one can project with the yellow metal.

Organizational and leadership intentions towards true professional and personal well-being of its people are the true harbinger of engagement and not the glittery rhetorical overtones. Many times companies offer ‘gold’ but take the ‘God’ away from their people.

Sycophancy Virus

I often wonder why is there so much sycophancy in this country! Chief minister of a northern state expects every visitor to take-off their shoes before they enter the CMO and people are happy to comply! Even the IAS officers are not spared (not that others should have any less self-respect). Politicians, film stars are worshipped as deities, their temples or statues are constructed (many times by themselves) and people are rolling in reverence! Then there are political parties where dynastical successor is worshipped and seen as the only bail-out for the party’s future. There are corporate houses in this country where the employees have to bow in displayed respect and use special salutations when the Chairman passes-by (without of course looking eye to eye with the supremo).


But why go too far? All this starts many a times from one’s own family. In most families kids are not expected to question parents, teachers (even if they are wrong).; wives are expected to treat their husbands like ‘pati parameshwar’ meaning ‘ my husband is my god’, although the husband may often be struggling to make it to the list of being a decent human being; or our society where no one can question the self-styled custodians of religion.

Most of us are sycophants and minority of those who refuse to be ‘one’ are also forced sometime or the other to become a sycophant. Sycophancy is sign of incompetence, a high politically-charged atmosphere and a society based on short-term transactions. Such sycophancy gives rise to illegitimate power in families, societies and organizations and destroys first the engagement of the stakeholders and then the organization itself. Sycophancy is a self-destructing virus that destroys the holder as well as the beholder.