The Importance of being (not) Important

Someone is ‘important’ somewhere, and whoever gets importance becomes ‘important’. The other day at a Puja Mandap in Baroda (on holiday with my family at my sister-in-law’s place for the Bengali Durga Puja) a lady in saffron saree had been invited for the inaugural speech of the Maha Saptami cultural evening. She spoke something ‘important’ that some people seemed to notice, less for the content, more so that she was after all the chief guest. Those who listened or did not listen but saw her through her speech were not so lucky that she sits through any of other evening cultural roller-coaster in the offing. She left immediately; after all she must be having something more ‘important’ to catch! Her gait was interesting; she hardly looked at anyone and had a very serious expression on her face & walked briskly. Following her were the ‘important’ post-bearers of the pujo committee and two more ladies in saffron sarees. Those must have been the followers of the lady who gave the speech. One of those ladies was trying to hold the hand of the speech-lady on the pretext of helping her in her brisk walk. This I guessed must have been a ritual elsewhere but here in presence of some dhuti-panjami & tat-saree clad  intellectual bongs, this human crutch was not the ideal PR tool perhaps. The speech-lady kept pulling her hand away and walked even more briskly out of the pujo madap. This made her look even more important. However the audience seemed to forget her moment she left the venue. Nobody appeared even aware of the fact that she was there, forget about remembering anything that she spoke.

A bong’s pujo is incomplete if he does not visit some 10-20 more pujo-mandaps, besides their own ghoroa pujo mandap, although all seem to look the same. In out one such visit to one such pujo-mandap we learned that this pujo had a historical value. It was the oldest pujo in Baroda and the venue was housed in the local legendary Maharaj’s palace premises. It was Maha Ashtami evening and  such pujo evenings of bongs is not without some koltoral anushthan. One such cultural evening was about to begin in this venue as well and her giving the inaugural speech was a saffron-clad man, with a saffron headgear. He spoke of youth movement, awakening and Vivekanand in his speech. After our dorshon of Durga Maa’s idol, we were kind of browsing through some handicraft stall in the venue. While my family was busy in appreciating the craft and bargaining it’s price, I was ‘unimportantly’ idling nearby, when I saw the saffron swamiji getting into a car  (obviously his speech was done and it was time for him to leave). One devoted pujo committee member who was there to see-off swamiji, touched the feet of swamiji as he settled down on the car seat, as on-lookers looked-on. ‘Importance’ of swamiji was not lost on anyone, not even on swamiji! He did not even look at his reverent feet worshipper and signalled a blessing sign with his hand in thin air. On-lookers found swamiji even more important but the importance faded before his car tail-lights could fade completely.

That is importance for you… Someone is ‘important’ somewhere, and whoever gets importance becomes ‘important’, yet ‘importance is so fleeting. Yet people and organization seek it more and more, blissfully unaware of the fleeting nature of importance. A boss who is only important in his office, a professor who is only important in the class, a politician only important to his servile sycophants, a chief guest who is important only at the venue… Oh! at times this importance is sickening.

What is important to you may not be important to me and vice versa. Similarly what is important today may not be important tomorrow. Take the latest Linkedin survey among the Gen Y reveals that formal attire and 9 to 5 jobs will soon be a passé. LinkedIn’s survey titled ‘Office Endangered Species’ said the top three office tools targeted for extinction by 2017, among professionals in India were the tape recorder, standard working hours and desktop computers. Fax machines, Rolodexes, USB drives, cubicles and landline phones were some other items that were set to become extinct in a few years.

Importance is not engaging; engaging is!

Gen Y Games - Reveal

Online games are emerging as a recruitment tool. For tech-savvy millennials, games are fun and constitute a higher engagement model. For companies, they allow them to better quantify a candidate's performance.

At L'Oreal India, the cosmetics and beauty products company, graduates and post-graduates being considered for a job have to play a game called Reveal. It simulates the work environment; players move through various challenges across departments - finance, sales, marketing, operations and research and innovation.

Candidates pick an avatar and interact with graphical characters in different departments. They start with product development, and then navigate their way through three rooms and answer over 500 questions. Meanwhile, a computer program keeps a tab on time spent to complete each task and assesses logical reasoning and analytical skills.

(Source: The Times of India)

'Leave' me, but be with me!!!

Few days back I heard of a company having some engagement events on a weekend. Bad idea, I thought. I am sure nobody wants to go on a prized weekend, after the extremely busy  and tiring week for any of such events. However some organizations seem to be realizing that rather then spending on such weekend events and causing more disengagement than engagement, giving some time-off to their employees with their families is a much better idea.
Companies are increasingly realizing that in this fast-paced world, for their time-famined executives one of the best forms of engagement is to give them some quality time-off, so that they can address their personal concerns and priorities.

"While most organizations offer maternity leave, ICICI Bank has gone a step further. It has introduced 'fertility leave', in addition to 'childcare' and 'adoption' leave. The bank allows 180 days of leave to employees seeking to undergo fertility treatment. Besides this, 36 days of paid childcare leave is available every year to women and single fathers working at the bank. The new leave policy is part of the bank's 'Saath Aapka' programme...

Compassionate leave is another format that has been introduced by many organizations. AtKPMG, employees can avail of seven days of compassionate leave in a year in the event of the death of a close relative...

In other firms like Apollo Hospitals, compassionate leave also covers marriage or studies. Apollo Hospitals decided to offer compassionate leave (7-10 days in a year) over and above the regular leaves available to employees as a gesture of appreciation...

Thomas Cook has a 'special leave' to provide assistance in times of accident, surgery, medical emergencies and hospitalization. 

Accenture also implemented a similar provision this year which allows the primary caretaker, regardless of gender, eight weeks of fully paid leave on adopting a child." (Source: Companies say 'we care' with fertility leave, Namrata Singh, TNN)

Special leaves seem to be the new engagement mantra and rightly-so.