productive – Ven India

India is suffering from a disease called ‘Democracy’.

Everyone can’t be a speaker. Some have to be listeners. Because listeners are the Doers. And doers are the change-makers.

So democracy or dictatorship?

India has a better chance to grab the business opportunities from other Countries as an alternative to China. Since China has created a paranoia with minimal justification, the forecast is, many countries depending on China for their’ manufacturing support will move to India. The other option the world has is Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

India might seem a lucrative option compared to any other country to the Investors. We might win the competition over any other country due to the statistics our country shows – 130 cr population, 68 million graduates, 43% of the total population in the age group of 18 to 44 yrs ( the highly productive phase of the age) and nearly 10 % more in the age group of 44 to 54 yrs (still the employable group) keeping the average age of an Indian to 29 years according to 2011 census , (rightly called – Young India) , which has grown proportionately now, 7th largest country in the world, ranking 4th in the world in natural resources. What else? But, how will we sustain?

How will we accommodate these countries and the business opportunity? How will we prepare to accommodate them?

What is the transformation we need to undergo?

A country with a mindset of the population – ‘Degree is the criteria for getting a job’.

Companies are always on the hunt for good resources. Industry is suffering due to unavailability of the right resources. Higher rates of attrition are causing project delays. Here we have headlines stating unemployment as a burning issue. Resource availability, Skill issue or will issue? What is the underlying truth?

Designations are more attractive than the quest for knowledge and zeal to deliver.

Resource approach: Everybody wants to be a Manager, dictate terms, enjoy the luxury of the authority and higher pay package, not understanding their contribution to the system from their current role.

The way we revolt….

We have a voice, so we will voice out everything coming to our mind through revolution, strike or with the support of media. Everyone’s pain needs attention by blowing it out of proportion. Resolution isn’t the only aim. Noise is also the aim. ‘You need to stand for yourself, no matter what’. But the way we do it is so ridiculous. We revolt in a way which yields to our own long term damages. These revolts cause irreversible damages. Any fair chance of recovery takes years and decades.

No one wants to follow the right leader. Everyone wants to be one. We follow a leader with destructive ideologies rather than constructive ones. There are very few leaders – wise and selfless. Else most of them are keen on making a statement, irrespective of the chaos the statements may create. Leaders need to be orators only or strategic thinkers?

Most of them think adversely or momentarily than aligning to the benefit of the Country and Community. Too much wisdom about unnecessary and nonproductive things exhausting the bandwidth further delaying the growth of the country. Personal and individual gains are priority as compared to community gains.

Only one set of people is in alignment with law making and law abiding process. Rest of the majority are only commentators. These people can debate for days and months, to prove the law or the rule as wrong. Such approach lead to delay in Implementations. This delay results into non availability of data to measure the outcome of amendments made. It dilutes the purpose of amendment by the time data is available.

The definition of hard work means number of man-hours, quality and quantity of work. Management of resources is on extreme sides at both ends. Either the management is too ruthless or the workers are too dominating, lazy and take advantage. Laws do not give an upper hand of control to the victim in any case either, in a defined time period.

Industry suffers from attrition, underperformance, lack of accountability and ownership in the deliverables. No yardstick to measure and record workers’ performance or integrity.

No common forum by Govt or a central body to define the benchmark and SOP of any technical, non-technical activity.

Industry is slowly reducing the efforts in the development of the employee. Either by means of training or any other investment on employee’s development. The reason is eventually the investment on resources is a loss, when the employee leave without adding value to the organization.

Government’s changing decisions and processes with every new party who replaces the earlier. Every Govt coming to power within 1,2 3 or 5 yrs at state level have different agendas. These leaders push behind the running projects to the backstage creating fear for the MNC’s by keeping their projects on status quo for longer duration delaying their ROI schedules. Time overrun takes the project cost higher. There is no audit mechanism of projects to secure the investment and complete projects on time irrespective of which Govt is in power.

The Grants, licenses and documentation are time consuming. Its complicated because of people’s non cooperative approach, is another roadblock. Superficially every process seem like ‘one window support’ as written and published. But ground realities vary drastically.

There has to be a platform which will give control to the Govt rather than the Employees. The Corporate Governance need better rules. On the other hand develop an attrition control method. Devising compulsory fixed tenure for employees in each organization. Introduce automated evaluation mechanism to measure employee performance giving the Employer better confidence to develop the Resource. Save time and money of the Industry, lost in all this transition of resources leading completion of assignment or projects without hassles.

Our Country’s financial strength is visible in times of pandemic, recession or any other natural disasters. Our turnaround-time to come back to normalcy will portray the strength of our Economy. We ought to redefine the meaning of ‘democracy’ in India to reduce the impact of such a scenario benefiting every single person in this country.

Evolution in Employment trends.

How to have a productive work from home model yielding to a win-win situation for both employees and employers?

The industry is figuring out every possible way to accommodate this model since we aren’t left with any option.
Employee’s safety, Client Service, Company’s Survival are all equally important.

But, for Work from home model to be successful, employees need to accept that this is going to be a permanent solution for many of their problems of past and present. Personal, professional problems like travel time to the workplace due to traffic, pollution, uncertain food schedule, family time compromise, work-life balance, COVID Infection, social distancing; and Organization’s problems of today which have enormously increased due to COVID – Economic crisis, Opex, Company’s sustenance, Competition, Cashflow, Governance problems, Communication problems, Adherence to Compliance and Rules of Govt.

How should this be structured?

Every employee has to work to overcome the problems of their Company. All these years, risks belonged to the Company alone. The volume of people facing the uncertainty and directly affected by the risks in an Organizations was majorly the Senior fraternity. They had to risk a significant share of their salaries as a performance incentive – a performance incentive based on the Company’s performance and not just individual performance. The performance, which was at risk with every right or wrong decision since the right decisions and erroneous implementations, also impacted the Organization negatively. The remuneration or incentives of these Senior leaders were dependant on the whole crowd of people working in the Organization. Additionally, their credibilities also were at stake.

One of the possible initiatives could be passing nominal risk downwards. The industry has anyways announced a pay cut as a precautionary measure as a preparation for the uncertain scenario Companies might face in the next two years. The revoking of this decision isn’t having a definite timeline either, as on date. Why not convert the same to incentivize the resource against their performance monthly. This eventually would shift some risks of the Organization to the employee and also focus on the theory’ Survival of the fittest.’ There are ‘n’ number of people who have lost jobs due to this pandemic. Why not allow them to be paid proportionately to their performance.
Making an opportunity of every disaster has been a boon to the thought process of humankind. Why not the employees and employers make an opportunity to survive and thrive towards success following this theory?

We have had consulting engagements for specific roles in most of the organizations. How about increasing the ratio of people in these roles, passing down more accountability for most of the functions?