'Bank on Women' OR Bank for Women

What could have been more ironic then on the day first All-Women Bank was announced in India, a woman bank manager was attacked in an unguarded ATM in Bangalore by a miscreant man for money that left her paralyzed and critical. Just couple of days later, a woman journalist has accused a media honcho of sexually assaulting her in a hotel in Goa. The woman and her family have also reportedly received threats for the accusation that she has made against the media bigwig, reportedly by his henchmen. Another couple of days pass and 93 school girls are sexually assaulted in a moving train in Bihar. Their ‘fault’ was to ask to protest the occupation of their reserved seats in the GangaDamodar Express by a large group of men claiming to be examinees of the railway recruitment exam. Their teachers were beaten-up and the girls were sexually harassed for more than four hours. No co-passengers came to their rescue.

Can the All-Women Bank really change the fate of girls and women in this country? Can it really empower them? Can it help them to get their due?

All talks about women empowerment and equality currently seems mostly limited to political circles (plain rhetoric), intellectual circles (lackluster research) or social circles (page 3 stories). If there has been any change in the state of women or in the participation of women then the credit goes to these women who have excelled at home or outside home.

Last week two of our students came to interview me on the reasons for existence of glass-ceiling in organizations that prevents women from reaching top echelons of the leadership, thereby restricting their talent and capability. The students were doing this as a part of a project given to them by a colleague of mine.

Do such glass ceilings exist? A whole lot of statistics and ‘lived experiences’ would tell you that the women have often found the ‘stairs’ suddenly disappearing in their organization in their quest for summit.

Causative? Undoubtedly this is a Cultural issue.

The smallest and most basic element of any society is a family. While some of us may have been lucky to come from beautiful families, most families suffer from a Cultural dys-functionality. Man of the house rules the roost. He takes all major decisions and all financial decisions, almost. The house runs on his commands. His moods decide the mood of the house; he smiles, everyone smiles, he frowns, none dare speak and if he frets then everyone ducks in the ‘trenches’. Often the lady of the house is reduced to a mere ‘worker’ and is dehumanized’.

If the house has both boy and a girl, then the boy always gets preferential treatment. The boy is treated like a ‘Prince’ pampered and spoiled and the girl is made to the chores of the house.

Take this incident for instance - It is not uncommon to find people running and crossing busy roads in India with complete disregard to safety. The other day I witnessed a mother running across a busy road with two of her children, a boy and a girl. And guess what, she was holding the hand of the boy and the girl was all by herself running behind her mother. The mother was not even looking whether her daughter was making it or not.  Heart breaking to me!!!

But this discussion is not about families. All this is to underline something deeper that runs across our families to societies and to organizations – the Culture. Culturally we refuse to treat another woman as equal or many a times even a human. Men do maximum damage, but since it is a cultural issue that is why even some women fall into this trap and treat the other woman with less dignity.

Harassment of women, violence against women or glass-ceilings in organization are all by-products of this Culture. The same people, who populate the families, populate the society and the organizations too.

What is the solution?

German government is reportedly pushing for 30 per cent quota for women in supervisory boards in all German companies. The move has been opposed by major companies like Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Opel since it will lead to major upheaval of their management.

So is Quota a solution in India too? Reserve a fixed per cent of leadership positions of women in organizations?

Quota always contradicts merit. And leadership positions should go to the most deserving and not to the one because of his/her gender.

Then what’s the solution?

Solution is no different from the problem. Even in cultures like ours’ companies can create an organizational culture that ensures women do not drop out at middle-level positions. Take ICICI Bank for instance. They have made it possible for women employees to also choose responsibilities what they want to do; they have made it a taboo in organization for anyone to say that he does not want to work with someone or does not want someone in the team just because that person happens to be a woman. The women employees also get vacation during the exam months of their kids, but largely, in the interview of Mr. K. Ramkumar, ED atICICI Bank (published in Business Line, a business daily), seemed to suggest that the bank is trying to create a organizational culture that breaks bias and glass ceilings against women.

Organizations may not get compete success, but by creating such cultures within themselves they can still insulate the larger culture to a large extent. It is only by creation of such cultures that it can possibly change attitudes and pre-dispositions of people towards women.

Certain section of societies and families can also do so as well by creating a micro-culture that is different from the larger culture. That is why some communities and families are better. 

Engaging women is a not a charity but a recognition to an equally good talent pool that is needed and is indispensable.

All-Women bank is welcome but we need to bank on women more to bring about a real change.

The Burger, Ginger and Hair Story

Documenting experiences of mine and of others whom I know has been one of the best ways to introspect and gather insight about organizations and their culture. Engagement is always an outcome to the same, often a preceding one to other outcomes like efficiency, productivity, performance, OCB, commitment and contribution.

Out of all experiences that we have, our experiences as customer are the one that perhaps takes us closest to a company.  I attempt to summarize a few recent ones, some my own and some of my close acquaintances that have interesting perspectives –

Are Policies more important than the stakeholder?

Customer loyalty has increasingly become a rarity in the age of competition and plentifulness of choice. Hence each company tries to buy that loyalty in some or the way - one of the easiest ways being the ‘Membership Card’. One of my friend hold a membership card for a unisex beauty salon chain called 'Naturals'. On her recent visit she was told that this card will expire soon. She remembered that she had paid Rs. 500/- when this card was issued to her last year. And now when the card expires she would again have to pay Rs. 500/- again to renew her card. 

She was puzzled and asked why would a membership card expire and why would she have to pay again to renew. The front-office lady, without even looking at her,  replied to her that this was the company –policy. When my friend protested, she was told that she had saved enough on the services that she had availed from naturals because of this card, so she should not be protesting. My friend very rightfully suggested back that as much the card had got her some nominal discounts of the services availed by her, 'Naturals' had also got assured business all through this period and she did not go to any other salon. 

The front-office lady had no reply for this and feeling defeated in the argument she said with a lot disenchantment that my friend was the first customer to be protesting against this policy. My friend asked her whether they would do anything with the feedback. The lady told her that one customer’s feedback will not change anything. They would only consider a feedback if few hundred customers complained. She also told my friend very clearly that she could nothing about because this was her ‘company’s policy’. My friend left the salon vowing never to be back.

Interpretations: There are two inferences that can be drawn from the experience of my friend:

1. For naturals policy that they have framed is more important than the customer.

2. There is no value of the individual. The individual will be sacrificed on the altar of collectivism. C.K. Prahlad’s n=1 formula whereby he suggested to treat each customer as an individual, fails to make any sense in companies like 'Naturals'.

Hindsight Wisdom: How many times have you experienced something similar where an employee has expressed his/her helplessness despite the fact that he/she seems to understand & appreciate your logic? Policies that a company frames cannot be set in stone. This is not to suggest that things got to be laissez-faire but enough flexibility has to be kept to be able to modify or change a policy that does nothing to serve the stakeholder’s interest, be it be customer or an employee. 

Mc Delivery – Burger or Disillusionment?

McDonalds has always been one of my favourite brands, not only because they are pioneer in fast food retail chaining but also because of the fact that experience in their stores has always been top-notch. In fact in one of my previous posts, titled ‘Some balloons fly…’ I had written about one such experience. But recently McDonald’s home delvery service left me disillusioned. 

McDonalds started home delivery sometime back. Recently during a kids party I tried to call their centralized home delivery number that takes the home delivery order. The usual address, contact details etc. were taken down, that took some time. After which the lady told me which McDonalds outlet was closest to my location. I was on phone all this long and after few minutes the lady on the other side tells me that the number of the outlet closest to my location was busy and I should hang-up and call the centralized number again. I was puzzled and asked her that couldn't I just hold for a while because if I hung-up and called the centralized home delivery number again, I may have to go again through a long process before I can reach this stage. The lady told me that she could not do anything and I will have to hang-up. 

On my repeated request that I was having a kid party starting in my home in few minutes and I had depended on McDonald’s home delivery menu for the snacks, she was kind enough to give me the mobile number of the closest outlet and asked me to call directly. I hung-up and called on the number given by the lady and guess what comes from the other end – a pre-recorded voice, that tells me that this number is temporarily out-of-order. 

I was stranded! 

The customer care lady had been successful in deflecting me out of her way by giving me a number that is out-of-order!!!

I felt cheated...

Immediately I picked-up the Pizza Hut home delivery menu and ordered for Pizzas instead. In the next 20 minutes I had the pizzas and coke delivered. The party was salvaged. Thanks to Pizza Hut! As far as McDonalds home delivery menu is considered, that can do better in a garbage bag.

Interpretation: 

1. Home delivery was never the forte of McDonalds but having started this service, home delivery seems to be last on their priority.

2. The home delivery order receiving executives have not been chosen as carefully by McDonald as it chooses the buns, potatoes and other ingredients for its 'assembled' Mc Burger. The people taking the customer requests are least empathetic about customer needs.

Hindsight Wisdom: There is no use offering a service if you do not mean it. Often a company customer or employee helpline is more a decorative showpiece than a real support service. It’s better not to have them in the first place. 

Something is better than Nothing, but Nothing is better than Non-sense!

Should you forget the humble bread when you have a sumptuous buffet?

Ginger hotels from one of the most revered business groups in India – The Tatas has been such a let-down, much contrary to the expectations. A friend of mine called one of their hotel numbers to make a booking. After the initial  receptionist talk, his call was transferred to the reservation desk. The booking details were discussed and the tariff was agreeable to my friend. The dates he was looking for the booking were the peak rate dates considering it being Christmas and New year week. The only hitch, Ginger wanted the customer to pay the entire tariff for the two rooms that my friend wished to book in advance to confirm the booking. Additionally he was told that there would be no cancellation or refund since it was the peak season. 

My friend communicated to the reservation executive his definite intention to visit and also the fact that he had chosen Ginger based on his previous good experience. He also requested he be given the option to get his booking confirmed by paying 50% of the tariff at least or given some option of cancelling the booking in the eventuality of a unavoidable exigency considering that he was travelling with his family that included kids and an elderly couple. 

The reservation executive promised to discuss the request with his senior and arrange a call back by 4 p.m. the same day. The day ended, no call came from Ginger. Late in the evening, my friend called the hotel again and he was told that a call would be arranged the next day. The next day came and when no call came even by noon, my friend decided to call again. This time a new person took the call. When my friend searched for the reservation executive with whom he had talked the day before, he was told that there was no person by this name working in the organization. 

How is it possible?, thought my friend. 

Anyways he again had the entire conversation. This time he was told a tariff that was higher than the tariff that was told to him the previous day. How could the tariff change in a day? ‘Peak Season Sir’ – is what the executive told him. By this time my friend was exasperated. He again inquired for the person with whom he had conversation the previous day. After much confusion, it came to light that the previous day he had conversation with a reservation executive from the centralized reservation desk in Mumbai whereas the next day his call had been transferred to the reservation desk in that particular hotel (Ginger has many hotels across different locations). 

My friend then requested that his call be transferred to the centralized reservation desk. Once that was done, a lady on the other side greeted. It was still not the same executive but thankfully that lady confirmed that an executive by the name my friend told her actually worked at Ginger. She again listened to the entire story and my friend repeated his requests. The lady again told him that this was not possible as this was the peak season and they were getting many customers. My friend told her the promise that the 'elusive executive' had made to him – of checking back with his seniors and calling him back! He also wondered that will the hotel treat its loyal set of customers, who chose the hotel in every season, in such a way, simply because they were assured of more ‘rush’. The lady executive again promised to check with the senior and call back. And guess what, the call did not come…

Interpretation:

1. No one cares at Ginger (at least that was what my friend inferred).

2. Ginger like many other local hotels was busy cashing the season rush and does not remember or value it’s all-season patrons.

Hindsight Wisdom: Tata, a revered business house in India stands for ‘trust’. The trust in this case had been ripped-off by the reservation desk. Trust gone, means everything gone. Plus, the fact that companies fail to recognize their value customers and become oblivious of their needs at times when the going is good, reflects a cultural mindset. In difficult times, this set only bails you out! 

When it comes to employees is the company counting on the headcount or value heads depends on whether they have a ‘platform’ approach, where trains come and leave, or a ‘bank’ approach where people come and trust to leave their ‘valuables’ with an intention to come back and a belief that when they come back they will find the same intact and appreciated.

Engagement Touch Points

Absence from work is considered as temporary avoidance of work, more so when people avail sick leaves when they are not actually unwell or visiting a doctor. A recent survey by a job site Careerbuilder.com reveals that more than a third of employees become imaginative when it comes to cooking-up an excuse for taking a sick leave. The resultant impact is in the form of replacement costs, overtime costs, productivity losses, all of that adds up to something like 35 per cent of an employer’s base payroll.

Shocking? And it hits the employers hard! But who takes the blame. 

Another recent study strategic consultant Gallup shows that by a whopping 91 per cent of Indian employees are not psychologically committed to their organisations or are not as productive as they can be. Gallup in its latest annual report titled State of Global Workplace has revealed this startling finding that effectively means that 91 per cent Indian employees are either ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ at their workplace. Lower engagement not just affects productivity, but also the potential for innovation. However, the biggest worry comes in the wake of high proportion of ‘disruptors’ — the 31 per cent of employees who are actively disengaged. According to the report, “these employees are not just unhappy, but busy acting out their unhappiness and undermining their engaged co-workers’ accomplishments”.

Put two and two together, manufactured sick leave excuses should not come not as a surprise. All that is popular is not a common practice. Engagement is one of them.

At the CMO roundtable organized at Bangalore on 25^th October, 2013, by Paul Writer and Ma Foi Analytics and Research, brought together some talented marketers in this country under one roof. The cool and comfortable confines of the five star location did not in any way lessen the heat generated by the discussion done with the same passion and fervour with which these marketers competed in the Indian market space. 

Some excellent perspectives were shared in the round table conference that hold some interesting lessons in engagement. I attempt to conceptualize the discussion, without necessarily intellectualizing the same. My objective is to draw the crux of the discussion and present a practical insight into engagement. 

Managing engagement touch points becomes primal to engaging the stakeholders. Every time a brand comes in touch with a customer, employee or a channel partner, it is defined as a touch point. Aggregate of such interaction goes on to define a brand.

Managing engagement touch points would include:

1. Discovering Engagement Touch points: Tube Hotels, a hotel chain in South-East Asia found out that customer, out of all the facilities and services in the hotel, valued their bed, the television in their rooms and the shower in their bathrooms the most. They made sure that these three aspects in every room were of the highest standards and although rest of the facilities were just about ok or average, the customer satisfaction of this hotel was very high.

Apollo Hospitals gets patients from 100+ countries. Along with ensuring that patient gets best medical attention, Apollo also ensures that the patient’s’ attendant gets adequate care, is looked after well, often ensuring that they get their native cuisines in their food.

ITC’s food division was taken by surprise when a customer from Gujarat asked them which of their food products did not contain onion or garlic. After some effort, the customer query was answered but it exposed a hitherto unexplored touch point. Gujarat a predominantly vegetarian state would have many such consumers who will be sensitive to presence of even onion and garlic in the food products. Some other northern states of India had similar consumer population. ITC food division thereafter began to specifically label the packages of their vegetarian products as having ‘no onion, no garlic’. The appeal that it created among consumer segment was huge.

ITC also found similar engagement touch point when it came to wheat flour. Traditional customers in India were used to buying wheat, drying it in sun and then taking it to a local mill to grind the wheat into flour. The whole process not only used to be tedious & cumbersome for the customer but because of inconsistency of the quality of wheat available in the open market, the quality of flour also used to fluctuate. ITC kept this fact in mind and created a brand called ‘Aashirwad’ that promised hassle free readymade flour and ITC ensured that the high quality of the flour was consistent.

Flipkart introduced COD (Cash-On-Delivery) and ‘30-Days Return’ policies understanding customer sensibilities. Many customers want to pay only after they have received the product. The customers also wish to have the flexibility to return the product if they are not happy with the same, once they start using it.

1. Different Individuals, Different Touch Points: As much discovering engagement touch points is important, generalizing such touch points when consumer base is heterogeneous is not a good idea. 

One of the senior marketers in the roundtable who earlier had stint in Club Mahindra shared an interesting fact. Club Mahindra a family holiday destination resort generally gets families in its resorts. A typical family comprising of ‘father’, ‘mother’ and kids has different needs and hence different touch points. While the ‘father’ wants a lazy holiday, preferring no connectivity of any kind with the outside world, if possible; the ‘mother’ wants a more active holiday with yoga, exercise, etc. Young kids are hyperactive during holidays and want to run around and have as much fun as possible. Contrary to this the teenage kids want Wi- Fi connectivity and just need a cosy corner for themselves with their gadgets. Understanding these different touch points and addressing them becomes significant in engaging the entire family.

A 100 year old jewellery chain C. Krishniah Chetty & Sons gets broadly two kind of footfalls in their retail stores – 70% of its sales comes from repeat purchases and hence from old timers and more loyal set of customers; while the rest 30% of its sales comes from new customers walking-in the stores. The former set of customers are looking for long-term value and usually purchase in bulk, while the latter are the new-age fashion conscious customers who are looking for trendy designs and are essentially deal driven. The new-age customers’ churn-out rate is high, not because any love is lost, but since they love to wander about and shop more randomly. Both sets of customers have different expectations and hence different engagement touch points. The challenge is always in terms of translating owner’s passion into frontline sales to deliver better experience and drive engagement.

1. Dynamic Touch Points: The engagement touch points are not always static. ITC continuously experiments with its biscuits and creamy range of biscuits to bring-in new flavours and tastes to its very demanding set of consumers – the kids, whose tastes and choices keep changing very fast.

The dynamic nature of the touch points can also be looked from the perspective of speed with which a brand delivers on the engagement touch points. Take Club Mahindra for instance, they have installed touch screen kiosks in their resorts to gather feedback from their customers on a continuous basis and make correction or amends, if required, before the customer leaves the resort, rather than waiting for him/her to arrive next time. They understand that the ‘next-time’ may simply be too late.

Discovering, understanding and delivering on these engagement touch points becomes primal to engaging customers. However, it is pertinent to note that such engagement may not be possible without engaging the ‘internal customers’ or the employees. 

Internal Engagement

Similar to the external customer, discovering engagement touch points for the employees is equally important. These engagement touch points could be essentially functional or psychological, that may be discovered in pre-employment stage, On-boarding stage or during the employment stage. The functional variables may include job content, infrastructure, technology-in-use, compensation etc. While the psychological variables may include Psychological Support, Organizational Culture, Leadership, Respect, Psychological Job Fit, Growth & Development, Recognition & Reward, Involvement & Influence etc. Having said these employees cannot be generalized into a homogeneous set. They are also individuals and hence their individual touch points for engagement may equally vary. C.K. Prahlad’s n=1 formula whereby he treated each customer as a unique entity with unique set of needs & expectations holds true for employees as well. And finally, the engagement touch points for a particular employee may not remain consistent over a period of time. Understanding this dynamic nature of the touch points is no less important.

To conclude, it will be only fair to say that managing engagement touch points becomes critical in ensuring both external and internal engagement.

This article - 'Engagement Touch Points' was originally published at Paul Writer's Website. The link to the article is -http://paulwriter.com/articles/item/1043-cmo-roundtable-customer-engagement

Sachin Tendulkar, 4 Employee Types and Engagement

Sachin Tendulkar will go down in the annals of cricketing and sporting history as one of the greatest that has ever played this game. He had his own share of controversies, humongous public expectations and pressures; and of late everyone had been worried when Sachin would retire. Much to the comfort of those predicting and wishing his retirement, Sachin is finally signing-off and hopefully he does so, on a ‘high’. There has been a lot of unfair criticism of Sachin that he is delaying his retirement. How long a player wants to play is purely his/her decision; as much it is the selectors’ discretion to select or not select that player in the team. It is the selector’s job to see that a player earns his place in the team by the virtue of his non-substitutable merit rather than any other factor.  Sachin’s eagerness and desire to play this game at the highest level for about a quarter of a century was driven by his passion for the game of cricket rather than any other motive, and even if there was one it could have been nipped by the selectors. If they failed, do not blame Sachin.

In the words of his teammate and counterpart for long, Sourav (Dada) Ganguly, Sachin stands-out in the entire cricketing history because of the ‘way he played this game’. No one can deny this fact. When Sachin stepped-out yesterday in the historic Eden gardens, one could see the same enthusiasm and child-like eagerness to play as one had seen when he made his debut as a young teenager. Few have also questioned whether Sachin played for himself rather than for the team, but leaving this argument aside, one thing that has always been unquestionable has been his passion for the game.

On similar lines, engagement of an individual employee could be categorized as Engagement to the Profession (that he/she practices) and Engagement to the organization (where he/she is employed). Those who are engaged to the profession are intrinsically motivated and self-driven. They do have to be told or directed. Organization must ensure that no worry, either on professional or on personal front, ever engulfs them. These types of employees will then just go on do their jobs and making meaningful contributions.  On the contrary those employees whose engagement to the profession is not very high, have to told more, directed more, supervised and guided more.

When we do the classical two-by-two (refer diagram below), four employee types are generated:

Type A: Their engagement to both the profession they are currently practicing and as well as to their current organization, are both low. They are likely to ‘switch’ not only their current organization but also choose a different profession altogether. They are the poor job-fit and poor enterprise-fit people. Trying to retain them doesn’t seem to be a very bright idea. However if they seem to be very good prospects then a role change may be the right thing to contemplate. A change of vertical within the same group may also be considered.

Type B: Their engagement to their current organization is high and in all likelihood this is a more functional engagement rather than a psychological engagement. This is well exhibited by the fact that they do not practice a profession because they are passionate about it, rather they do it because they are good at it. Functional variables at work and rationale engagement works far more than emotional engagement with ‘Type B'. At a later stage, they are likely to choose a second career for themselves.

Type C: They are the darlings for any organization where they are employed. They are engaged to their profession and hence are self-driven and intrinsically motivated, very passionate about what they do and the organization where they work also seems to have done things right on its part. ‘Type C’ are high potentials with high chances of retention. I could have as well called the ‘Type C’ as type S or ‘Sachin Type’.  ‘Type C’ are real assets for any organization. Focusing on ‘Type C’ and do everything possible to keep their engagement levels high is pertinent.

Type D: Engaged to the profession but not to the organization. Recently Gallup in its annual report has stated means that 91 per cent Indian employees are either ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ at their workplace. Out of that the 31 per cent of employees who are actively disengaged are not only unhappy but they also undermine the achievements of the engaged workers. ‘Type D’ is very likely to ‘switch’ their current organizations, very soon. Organizations need to immediately get into diagnosis phase for the ‘Type D’, if it values their presence.