‘I will lose my job, if I let you use the toilet’

That’s what the hostess of this upscale restaurant near the Piccadilly car park told me when I requested her if I could use the toilet to pee as it was a sort of emergency.

We had just dropped a close friend visiting London at the Buckingham Palace and I was trying to park my car. My wife was accompanying me. Finally, I found this car park, immensely costly, but at least somewhere to station my car for a short while. It had been a long day and having this habit of drinking lots of water meant that my bladder was full, and I urgently needed to pee.

This upscale area does not have a close by public toilet and I did not have time or patience to search for one. I entered this close-by Pret-a-Manger whose cashier told me that they did not have toilets. I walked to the opposite side of the eatery and found this upscale restaurant. I cannot remember its name. Anyways, I walked in, told him my ‘emergency’ and requested the man on the counter if I could please use the toilet. He hesitated, half-willing to help me but then directing me to this lady who looked like a hostess-cum-manager of the restaurant. This man was clearly not the decision-maker.

I repeated my request to this lady and she replied rather curtly - ‘I am sorry Sir; toilet is only for customers. I will lose my job if I let you use the toilet’.

And as she said this, she also showed us out of the door and said – ‘Let me show you where you can find one…’ And she pointed to the Pret-a-manger outlet, where I had been just told that they didn’t have a toilet.

Clearly, no one wanted to help.

My wife who was with me said why don’t we buy something from this restaurant (we could afford at least the salad, I guess) and then we become her customers. Then she will let you use the toilet.

Technically, I could have done that, but frankly speaking I did not want to, even though my bladder had reached its maximum stretch. Something within me said that I don’t want to do this. You can call this self-esteem, but I felt that now I never want to be their customers ever in my life. The disengagement was permanent.

Contrast this with my experience when I visited for this international food festival at Portsmouth (about two and a half hours drive from London) in July. This time we were with friends, some of whom had young kids. The kids needed to use the toilet and once again we were not able to find a close-by public toilet. I walked into this beach side amusement centre for kids and requested the people at the counter. I even offered to pay for use. But they were so kind that they let all of use the toilet. We did not buy any service from them that day but believe me if I must recommend someone a place like this, I will definitely recommend them. Their random act of kindness assured me that they would serve well.

In defence of that lady and that man at the Pret-the-manger counter, what if they started allowing anyone to use the toilet. Would that not offend their customers? That’s a hypothetical situation though. In all likelihood this would never happen. It’s always a judgement call when you are presented with a genuine request (you can always know if it is one). And there is something about character and ‘smell of the place’ that comes across depending on how people react or respond to these situations.

What actually struck me was the second statement of the lady. Something must be broken in a place where one would fire their employees for helping someone in dire need, if what the lady was saying was true. I remember once a Chief Human Resource Officer of a watch and accessories company recounted an incident wherein their store manager went beyond the call of the duty to help a walk-in customer to one of their stores and had a cardiac arrest. The store manager himself took the person to the hospital, phoned his family and waited until the family members reached the hospital. By this time the treatment had already started and the person could be saved. Had any time been lost, the man would not have survived. And, mind you, the man had not purchased anything from the store. Nothing of this sort was in the job description of the manager, but he did what he thought he should do and knew his organization would back him up for the same. He left the store at a busy time and could have been easily penalized. Instead, the company rewarded him for his magnanimous act. And guess what, he very unintentionally created an army of loyal customers as the news spread in the city. So, even if we talk business, then remember customers may not always walk-in as customers first time.

I still wish well for the lady and for all those who turned me away that day. I hope they meet kinder people when they are in need. 

(Photo credits: Photo by Ericson Fernandes)

Can Companies Arm-Twist Employees to Work-from-Office?

 Around 14 years back, at a time when millennials had started entering the workforce in large number, an IT major in India, let’s call it ‘I’ well-known for its progressive HR policies, made a huge blunder that led to not only poor publicity of the company, but also damaged employee engagement and tarnished its reputation and employer brand. In the subsequent best employer surveys, the company dropped sharply from being the number one company to 5^th or 6^th rank. One of the prime reasons that came out of these surveys as the cause of this drop was poor internal communication and decisions of leaders that did not reflect contextual realities.

Cut to 2024, is it once again on the path to commit similar blunder again? Have they and their contemporaries not learnt lessons from their past mistakes? Let’s see.

It all started for this company around 2010 when they started receiving lots of complaints about poor resolution client problems. The company in turn hired an independent consultant to investigate into the matter. The investigation revealed that many employees in client-facing role had been promoted out of retention pressures, rather than merit and hence may not be well-prepared to meet the demands of the role. Owing to this, their ability to understand client needs and resolve their problems was not as efficient as it should be. To resolve this issue the consultant developed a role-based assessment that would reassess the competency of every member of the company in client-facing roles. The implementation of this new role assessment led to around 5000 demotions in the company.

The employees were angered by this approach of the company and their anger burst on social media where they started venting their frustration. The company fearing a serious backlash gave a knee-jerk response to such protests and attempted to clamp-down the same by introducing a strict social media policy. The obvious attempt to gag the employee voice led to such expressions going ballistic on social media. Many employees created anonymous accounts and started posting abusive content about the company on social media. In short, it became bad to worse!

This also drew serious public criticism about the company. Clearly the internal communication had not remained as efficient as it used to when the company was smaller. The internal communication strategy had not been able to keep-up the pace of its growth. Result, many leadership decisions had not been communicated well down the ranks, resulting in misconstrued perceptions and strong emptions against the company among the employees. The leadership decisions, their response when faced with criticism and then backstepping revealed that they had a poor understanding of the new generation, their life and their media. Finally, after much damage had been done, sense seemed to prevail in the company when they decided to introduce a Facebook equivalent within the company (like an internal Facebook) for the employees to freely express their opinions. They also introduced a company radio service for the employees to communicate important decisions and the rationale behind those decisions.

Déjà vu Moment?

14 years later, at a time when now Gen Z entering the workforce in hordes and are set to dominate workforce, along with younger millennials, in years to come, the company’s leadership seems to be in similar conundrum. Recently, it has started introducing policies to force employees to work-from-office for most days of the week. Employees who choose to work remotely would face repercussions if they do not work from office. This is seen mostly as an arm-twisting technique by the Gen Z employees and younger millennials who would like to have greater autonomy in choosing their work approach – remote, in-person or hybrid, depending on their choice, rather then being forced to come to office for work. As long as the work gets done and the productivity is maintained they see no reason why companies must arm-twist them into physically attending work. The Covid era has clearly thrashed-out the myths propagated about remote working. Besides, high rental cost, higher commute cost and time considering the clogged roads of most metros, have encouraged younger generation employees to work remotely more often than not.

                                    Image Credit: Microsoft Designer via LinkedIn

Other contemporary company have followed suit. Another IT company let’s call it ‘W’ has reportedly sent emails to their employees giving them an ultimatum that if they fail to report physically in the office for a minimum of 3 days in a week, they will lose their paid leaves. Another company let’s call it ‘T’ has linked variable pay to presence of employees in office. If their attendance in office falls below a particular percentage, they would lose all of their variable pay and as their attendance in office would improve, so would their chances of getting a higher variable pay. And all these years we thought variable pay was linked to performance, but now it seems it is linked to attendance!!!

The logic behind such arm-twisting seems hazy and not linked to their performance. It’s either poor HR or poor leadership thinking who continue to poorly understand the Gen Zs and younger millennial generations and impose irrational arbitrary policies on them. Such decisions are once again reflective that the leaders of these companies have poor understanding of new generation’s life realties and expectation from work. Gen Z employees who value work but value life equally, flexibility at work goes a long way in engaging them. Rather than losing 3 hours in commute every day, Gen Z would rather prefer to use that time to finish their work early and get on with their life. Work-from-office cannot be simply imposed if there is no evidence that it leads to better performance or productivity.

The signs of growing opposition from the employees are already evident. For instance, ‘Coffee Badging’ is becoming commonplace thing where employees are coming to work to show their faces and then leaving after they have a coffee. This rise in tokenism to thwart the forced office attendance will only erode productivity, lead to higher loss of work time, poor engagement and in the medium run might lead to rise in attrition and losses.

Are these companies committing the same mistake that ‘I’ committed 14 years back? Have they and their contemporaries learnt from those mistakes? Is it time for leadership to reflect on their decisions and accept the new direction in which the future of work is heading?

Learning from mistakes is wise, progressive and need of the hour. Lest they risk losing reputation and relevance. 

Language of Love

My son was playing Japanese City Pop on the car stereo. This is his latest love, and frankly we don’t dislike it either. At times we listen to Korean songs and even at times Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada or a Marathi song. Other than Hindi, English and Bengali, we do not understand a word of other songs, yet love them. 'Language of love' trumps all!!!

 Cut to today’s news on a news site - a woman was reportedly harassed for not speaking the local language. This is not an isolated incident. Throughout the world,  since time immemorial, we have fought over many things, language being one of them. Such a vainglorious thing!

Image Credits: Arnab Sengupta (Created on Canva)

Learning a new language is amazing. There are no two words about it. As Nelson Mandela had once said, language is not only a means of communication but a reflection into a culture and history. Having said this, learning a language should be a matter of choice and not a compulsion. Language imposed on people erodes their likelihood of liking that language ever in the future. In certain places, because of this imposition, kids in schools are forced to learn three languages at a time. That’s not only unfair, but also unnecessary. Instead, if we want people to learn a language, then we need to create an environment where people start loving a language and want to learn it, so that they can explore a new culture, history and contemporary art and literature. In short, it needs to be a ‘PULL’ not a 'PUSH' strategy.

The greatest language of all is the 'language of love'. Even if you do not understand a word of what other person is saying, if you apply the language of love, you can always understand what the other person means or needs. How come we claim to understand what our pets ‘say’ although they do not speak a single word, yet cancel another fellow human who cannot speak the language that we speak?

DEB (Digital Everyday Behaviours) with DEB | Ep1: Phubbing

 Has it ever happened to that you are talking to someone, and that person starts checking their phone? Check out this video -

#DigitalBehaviours #DigitalEverydayBehaviours #DEBwithDEB #Phubbing #BeingPhubbed

Energy and Experience needs to be married to Engagement

 A professional contact recently sent me an article that claims that there is a ‘growing undercurrent of scepticism surrounds the managerial capabilities of Gen Z…’ I feel that in many ways this article sends wrong signals and shows a rather shallow understanding of the author about younger generations and their engagement into the workforce.

Gen Z are relatively new to managerial roles hence there is no doubt will require capacity building and mentoring, and so did earlier generations as well. So, although it is an uncontested point, but there is nothing new or uniquely missing about Gen Z. Hence, I find a bit strange is how quickly people start labelling a particular generation. That is a bit of a hurried conclusion and tad bit unfair towards Gen Zs. All we need to do is provide Gen Z with adequate training opportunities, good mentoring and coaching that helps us to groom them as better leaders.

I agree with the fact that every generational cohort has its own strengths. This is why multi-generational workforce can be a strength, provided there is greater generational empathy and right understanding. Experience and Energy need to be married to Engagement.

The article also once again reveals glaring areas of poor understanding of younger generations like Gen Zs. This is evident in statements like –

‘Gen Z’s approach to workplace culture and hierarchy can also be a point of contention…’

or

‘Gen Z’s approach to work-life balance also raises eyebrows…’

or

‘One of the primary concerns employers have is Gen Z’s rapid rise in aspirations…’

Or

‘Respect for hierarchy and seniority varies significantly across generations. Gen Z’s informal communication style, influenced by social media and digital platforms, sometimes clashes with the expectations of older generations who value formality and respect…’

Or

‘Employers fear that Gen Z managers may prioritise personal goals over organisational needs…’

And there are many more. These all are signs of poor understanding of Gen Z and reasons why engagement levels are poor. 

I have studied Gen Zs right from their adolescent and teenage days and hence have had the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into their life realities and the shift in the environmental dynamics around them.

 In the last 10 years I have had the opportunity to work with progressive and visionary organizations in India, Dubai, UK and US and help their managers and leaders develop a deeper understanding of millennial and Gen Z employees and customers, to drive stronger engagement. Similarly other organizations who recognize these issues and invest to train their managers on how to engage the younger generational workers and customers, stand a much better chance in the marketplace.

This articles states that some employers are avoiding hiring Gen Zs. I have recently read more such articles. However, one cannot ignore or avoid Gen Zs and that is the reality. Very soon they will form a major proportion of the global workforce and firms can choose to ignore them at their own peril. The better and wiser route is the route of engagement and that is only possible when we have a right understanding of the generational cohort and can find ways to engage them first and then groom them to bring about a planned change. Any other route is an ‘Ostrich Choice’.

 

 

CAST(E) AWAY

The invitation was for Satyanarayan puja, the worship of Lord Vishnu [1]. Frankly, I do not prefer to go much to any such ritualistic ceremonies. But this being a close friend’s invitation, I could not ignore it. We reached the designated time but were kept waiting for the arrival of the purohit [2], who was supposed to conduct the religious rituals. Even ‘God’ was waiting!

Finally, he arrived, a good hour late. Wearing traditional yellowish-orange dhoti [3] and janeu [4]. It was all decked out for the ‘show’. The purohit gave some finishing touches and then started his commentary on mantras [5]. Along with other friends and their families who were also invited, we were mute witnesses to the puja. When the puja was almost over, my friend’s wife seemed to be unusually worried about something that she had supposedly missed. I tried to be of help. This would also give me a break from the rhythmic chants in Sanskrit that I hardly understood. I soon found out that she needed four coins of one rupee each. I volunteered and went around the neighborhood to arrange those coins in time.

After the puja was over, I observed the purohit whispering something in the ear of my friend. He nodded obediently, and soon after I saw him distributing a coconut, a beetle leaf, an areca nut, and a one-rupee coin to four other friends present there. Somehow, he chose to ignore me, not making me the recipient of this set of goodies that looked like a return gift. Not that it mattered much, but I was curious about my omission. I kept quiet until all the rituals were over. A cab was arranged for the purohit, and he left with a bag full of fruits, sweets, other goodies and dakshina [6].

After most people had left, I confronted my friend and asked him why he had chosen to make me devoid of his goodies. It was then that I realized that the ‘goody bag’ was meant only for brahmins [7], and the purohit had instructed my friend via whisper to give the same to any four brahmin men. I was terribly disappointed and made no bones about expressing the same to my friend, who was both apologetic and empathetic to my complaints. I was his closest friend, yet somehow today my caste seemed to make me a tad inferior to others, and I was suddenly this second-class invitee in that group of people. It really hurt. As I have aged, my belief in traditional rituals and practices has increasingly diminished owing to such belief systems.

How can the caste determined by the birth of a person be a determinant of his purity or piety? Why should upper-caste people be put on a pedestal? Why should caste and not the karma (deeds) of a person determine his worth? How can we discriminate against people based on their birth, created by the same God? And how can we please the almighty when we do not care two hoots about hurting a fellow human being? If we are all children of God, then would a parent be happy if they found one child discriminating against or hurting another child?

And finally, why did my friend choose not to defy the purohit when he issued such diktats? But to be fair to him, I cannot blame him too much for his behavior. Afterall, most people find it comforting to conform, rather than confront.

 Footnotes

[1] The second God in the Hindu triumvirate, according to beliefs, is responsible for the upkeep of the world.

[2] the sacred brahmin blessed by a guru.

[3] A loose piece of clothing wrapped around the lower half of the body.

[4] a sacred thread (yagyopavita or janeu) that is received by a brahmin boy during the Upanayana ceremony marking acceptance of a student by a guru teacher and an individual's entrance to a school in Hinduism and that he continues wearing across his chest thereafter.

[5] A mantra is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit believed by practitioners to have psychological and/or spiritual powers.

[6] Cash or money paid to Purohit for his religious services.

[7] Brahmins are the upper caste cohort. Hindus have four main castes: Brahmins, Vaishyas, Kshatriyas, and Shudras, in decreasing order of their status in society. 

Photo credit: Andrii Yalanskyi