HResonance

Maruti Suzuki: The Arrogance of Success

2012-01-24T17:07:00.002+05:30

In Ramayana, Maruti or Hanuman is depicted as a strong,loyal, and a follower of Prabhu Ramachandra sans ego.

But look at the Maruti executives. They seem to be arrogancepersonified. Here is the statement of Maruti’s MD Shinzo Nakanishi: “I hope theworkers in Manesar understand that an internal union better represents theirinterests.” [TOI Jan 7, 2012]

There are several issues with this statement – Firstly theunderlying assumption is that an internal union serves workers’ interestsbetter than external union. There is no basis for making this statement. Thereare several organisations where external unions have represented theiremployees and without much problem. So Mr Nakanishi’s statement only discloseshis bias and not a fact.

Secondly, the statement may be true if he means that ‘aninternal union better represents their interests as far as the Maruti management is concerned,’ one must appreciatehis audacity to say it. The newspaper reports have captured in detail howMaruti handled the recent strike and promoted an internal union. Such unionsare called ‘puppet unions’ and obviously not without reason.

Even so, Maruti MD’sstatement only smacks of arrogance and a tendency to ‘manage environment.’ Thosewho followed the strike will recall the rumours that Maruti actually paid Rs 1Crore to its worker leaders for taking separation. Mr Nakanishi’s statement canonly make people believe that the rumour is true.

A mature statement came from Toyota Kirloskar which tooexperienced labour strife. [Quote] SaidVikram Kirloskar Toyota Kirloskar Motor vice chairman: "We're trying toimprove communication with team members and instil ownership in the company.When we started out, we ended up with fresh hands and failed to understandtheir demographic and personal requirements. That's why we had labour problemsin the first plant but the second plant the going has been smooth. We havepromoted career development and ensured a mix of experienced and newpeople."[Unquote]

The language discloses your thoughts. In the case of Maruti,those are far from encouraging. “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. Thearrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficientfor tomorrow” said William Pollard more than a hundred years ago.

It standstrue even today.

Do you get me Mr. Nakanishi?

Vivek

Photo Courtesy EcoTimes

What's Happening at Bandra HR Forum

2012-01-23T17:59:00.000+05:30

There was a sense of guilt with which I went to attend ameeting of the Bandra HR Forum. They had actually invited me to meet them inDecember and like an old man [‘like’ because I do not think I am one, J] I forgot about it. SoI made it up by going there in January.

Bandra HR Forum is a small group of HR professionals whomeet once in a month. The idea is to interact with like minded people and gainsome new thoughts and perspectives. That is very laudable. Sujata said thatthey are not there for ‘networking.’ Nobody gave me their visiting card [and Idid not give mine too]!

It was not a formal meeting, we chatted for a good ninetyminutes. At Eat Around The Corner at Bandra. They serve good breakfast, but itappears that the HR fraternity in Bandra is very calorie conscious so they werenot eating much. That is okay, that is the problem of the restaurant owner. Therestaurant owner is obviously a shrewd businessman who understands that thiscrowd can only swell, so he did not object.

The discussion focused on industrial relations [what else,with me there?]. I have always said that I am an IR person to the core, and theworld seems to agree. But later our discussion later veered around careers, practisingfairness in all dealings as the most important value. I picked up some good thoughts;it was a very interesting meeting.

In case the readers of this blog post with to join thisgroup for their meetings, which I strongly recommend, get in touch with AnuragShrivastava, or any friends seen in the photographs.

Keep the good work going...

Vivek

Revisiting Some Thoughts And Some Issues in HR & IR

2011-12-30T20:11:00.000+05:30

A glimpse of some posts and thoughts. It will refresh our memory about some events and also help us rethink on some issues in HR and IR. All this work in 2011. Click on links to read full posts.

The union has established a medical trust. The approach isthat they should be self reliant to the extent possible. It has also persuadedmanagement of Thermax to extend financial support to at least three students,workers’ children, studying in USA and Germany.

Thermax Union hasparticipated in several major cost reduction studies and projects. It wasinteresting to note that they always ask for ‘facts first’ before talking ofsolutions. They talk the language of RFT, TPM, Kaizen [on an average eachworkman has done 30 Kaizen projects] etc. They claim that they have saved over18 crores in inventory and have improved productivity several times. And theytalk about it with ‘facts and figures.’

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/01/industrial-relations-thermax-union-way.html

I spoke to one of them who stood close to me. “This struggleis very long drawn, you must have suffered,” I said to initiate conversation.“We used to work twelve hours every day. Yes they paid us overtime, but it waspaid only on basic wage and they kept it very low. The allowances were high” hesaid. Another joined the conversation, “They employ contract labour. They mustbe employing ten contract workers for every permanent worker. They don’t payany attention to our grievances. It does not matter now whether the Press runsor closes down, but things must change.”

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/02/untold-thomson-press-story.html

The predominant experience with cooperation in our societyconsists of having a group of people work together in order to defeat anothergroup of people. The group may be a basketball team, a company, or, in its mostdangerous incarnation, an entire country. While some activities featuring ablend of intra-group cooperation and intergroup competition, such as sports, arewidely acclaimed precisely on the basis of promoting teamwork, the most salientlesson they actually teach is that the ultimate reason to cooperate is todefeat a common enemy. Such a message is mixed at best and exceedingly damagingat worst.

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/03/dance-of-inclusion-and-exclusion.html

Wikipedia mentionsthe rules and regulations for the ‘Singapore Girl’ of Singapore Airlines, hereare some: [Picture courtesy Wikipedia] [Quote]

The airline requires stewardesses and stewards to colour their hair black or dark brown. The airline does not allow for stewardesses or stewards to use highlights. Acceptable shades of hair colours are black or dark brown. Stewardesses with long hair are to coil their hair into buns or French Twists. Stewards are to sport short hair above their collar lines and sideburns no longer than the ear lobes. Fringes (bangs) of Stewards do not touch eyebrows.

The Singapore Girlmarketing concept has been criticized as being sexist - apart from theinaccuracy of the term "Girl", the concept has been accused of beinga stereotype of Asian women as being desirable and subservient to white males.[Unquote]

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/05/recruiting-for-looks.html

The first of thesenight classes started with a trek to the roof of the YMCA building and aquestion. Participants were asked to look at the sky and to tell the instructorwhat they saw that aroused their curiosity. The amateur astronomer jotted downa series of items that were of interest to the group. On returning to theclassroom, he used this "curriculum" in a relaxed, straightforwardway, avoiding the didacticism that had initially alienated class members from asubject in which they had a deep interest. At the end of the session, heinvited them to his home for the next class where they could view the starsfrom the comfort of his private observatory. By the second meeting the groupmembership had mushroomed from a dozen into eighteen.

Knowles had foundthe model of an effective teacher for his institution and for his owndeveloping image of what an adult educator and adult education ought to be.

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-not-to-make-learning-boring.html

The real threat that managers feel, with a union at the doorstep, is of losing ability to influence their employees. If the processes arecreated around reaching employees then the need for unions may be obviated tosome extent, at least in a small set up. My experience is that manyorganisations begin the exercise of 'reaching out' to employeesafter receiving a letter from union.

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/07/responding-with-responsibility.html

There is an interesting duel which is going on for decades –it is between the Employers and the Judiciary. The unscrupulous employers aregiving narrow interpretation to provisions of labour legislation and thejudiciary is reacting with expanding its scope!

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/09/subjective-rules-and-sacred-principles.html

This way of introducing coaching essentially creates asituation in which a [prospective] coachee makes a choice of coaching; it doesnot come as a result of HR’s initiative. It also does not come as a result of amechanical procedure which says ‘arrange coaching inputs for all those who havebeen promoted or are likely to be promoted.’ Essentially it recognises thatcoaching will succeed where the need is felt and where the manager makes achoice voluntarily.

http://hresonance.blogspot.com/2011/10/coaching-making-it-work.html

Vivek

"Uncorking The Mind": Thane HR Group's Annual Event

2011-12-09T20:44:00.001+05:30

The Annual Event of Thane HR Group which was held today was a big success. Over 130 participants attended the event.

The theme of the event was Uncorking The Mind. Mr Ajit Joshi, MD of Croma explained what innovation in HR was not and then proceeded to explain how innovations in HR must strike at the basic issues to make the any organisation a place where people will experience good values and growth.

Mr HN Srinivas of Taj Hotels Group [Tata] explained how Taj dealt with the traumatic situation created by the terrorist attack was handled by the organisation. He explained vividly how the organisation practised, without any pomp and publicity, sound human values to address the distress and trauma. The role of leadership which contributed to leading and raising the commitment levels to welfare of those who suffered, or those whose families faced bereavement was inspiring.

Mr Jayesh Pandey of Accenture spoke regarding Workforce of One and had clear message for HR managers on the new realities.

Mr. Jivan Bhatt, CEO of TechNova Imaging Systems spoke on Organisation renewal. He explained the concept and then shared his experience. A highly evolved understanding of renewal leads the organisation to take a very mature and evolved stance on many organisational and employee relations issues. TechNova Imaging which was started by Dr Jagdish Parikh, the Harvard Professor, has not lost a man-day to employee relations issues in the last thirty years so far.

Dr Krishnamurty shared his thoughts on the current Industrial Relations scenario as well as changes that are happening. He covered the new forms of employment contracts which are being introduced. He explained how the younger workforce is thinking differently and should be managed.

During the panel discussion on the M&A issues, Mr Sharad Gangal [Thermax], Mr VJ Rao [Suzlon] and Mr Jagdish Acharya [CEO, Asian PPG] several HR issues were discussed. Mr Acharya said that arrogance must be avoided at all cost by the acquirer to ensure the success of the acquisition. Mr Gangal said that the communication of overall business plan creates trust and confidence among the employees of acquired companies. Mr VJ Rao shared his experience and said that communication, openness and shunning 'mine is better than yours' attitude holds the key to success of M&A. Vivek Patwardhan facilitated the panel discussion.

Mr Prashant Karmalkar conducted quiz and his witty remarks enlivened the atmosphere. Mr Suresh Ogale proposed the vote of thanks.

Thane HR Group is an informal group of HR professionals in Thane. They organise guest lectures of eminent personalities for the benefit of HR professionals. Their events are free and open to all. Their annual event is usually held in December every year.

Vivek

Placement Interview : From Many Angles

2011-11-18T19:21:00.001+05:30

Recently a student sought a meeting with me to discuss thedos and don’ts in a placement interview. Here is a record of my discussion withher – you can easily make out that the name is changed to prevent identity; butthis record of our discussion is true.

I then circulated the draft of this post to some of mystudents for their comments. Yashaswini and Naveen responded with brilliantobservations. Those are insightful. [I am reproducing their views with theirpermission.] I trust this entire post will be useful to many. Do not hesitateto place your comments; I am sure that you must have a point or two to add.

Madhuri: Hello Sir, I am going to appear for a placementinterview and I have a lot of questions on my mind so I sought this meeting.

Vivek: Tell me what those questions are, let us discuss.

M: I am quite nervous about facing the panel in the first place.

V: You should not be nervous about it, all MBAs get placedand surely those with your talent get placed on the first day. And nobody staysin the organisation till his or her retirement, so joining a good company isonly a good head-start.

M: yes, but I get nervous facing the panel....

V: It is natural for a young person to be nervous at thatstage, but there is a simple trick that you can follow. When the interviewerasks you a question please hear him carefully and then repeat it in your words.

M: Why?

V: If the interviewer knows that you have understood thequestion well, it reassures him that you are an active listener. But this can’tbe applied to small and direct questions when he asks about your hobbies.

M: So give me an example.

V: If the interviewer asks you as to how you will increasemarket share of a certain product by 2%, please say “I heard you say that Ishould talk about the strategy I will use to improve market share of product X by2% in next one year, right?” This is a simple trick that does two things,firstly it allows you some additional time to prepare your answersimultaneously, and secondly it reassures the interviewer that you got thequestion right.

M: Interesting.

V: How will you answer it?

M: Well, I will talk about increasing number ofdealers......

V: Stop there. The interviewer is interested in knowing howyou think more than specifics of the answer.

M: So?

V: The way to answer such questions is to disclose yourthinking....first talk about what the drivers of market share are, and thentalk about how you will handle each one....share of preference, voice anddistribution. Remember to move from basics to specifics. That will tell aninterviewer how you think.

M: May be I must practice answering such questions......itis interesting. Tell me how should I answer when they ask “what are yourstrengths and weaknesses?”

V: As an interviewerI was always amused by answers to this question. Students know this questionwill be asked without fail, so they come very well prepared. They tellstrengths disguising them as weaknesses – “When a job is given to me I becomevery impatient and cannot rest unless it is over” is passed as a weakness! Haha!!

M: I too feel that it is so funny. How should I answer it?

V: I have always felt that a good many people do not knowtheir own strengths and weaknesses. I too fall in that category. Moreover thereare people who believe that strengths and weaknesses are context specific.

M: Yes....

V: The interviewer wants to know you as a person to come toa conclusion whether or not you are suitable for a job he has in hand.

M: Yes....

V: Then why no tell him how you have changed over last sixor seven years; let us say since you passed your 12^th.

M: You mean how I have developed as a person. And I should lead the discussion to mydevelopment ....

V: Yes. That is the point. Tell the interviewer that it mayhelp him to understand you better as a person. Then tell the interviewer thatyou have a greater awareness of social problems as a result of your training inthe last two years, or that your interactions with union leaders made you awareof different reality, or that some books have made a mark on your mind. Andthere is a technique of telling this to others.

M: Really? Tell me.....

V: Make a statement first, give example and then explain thepoint you made. Three steps.

M: Tell me how.....

V: Hmmm.....For example, you may say that a certain book,say Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, or Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning or thefamous book Tuesdays With Morie, - and I am naming these books because theseare read by a large number of students – left a mark on your mind. Then steptwo – explain which book you read and what is the subject of the book – and then step three - tell the interviewercrisply what it did to you or what appealed to you most. You can do thismentioning an event too.

M: I am now clear about how I should prepare for aninterview. One more question....What is one thing I must avoid.

V: Just be your natural self, authentic. Any mask that youput on is easily seen by others and it does not make a good impression. Do notbe anything but authentic.

Vivek

Dear Sir,

It was a very good read. Infact it took me to my interview preperationdays. I loved the paraphrasing bit.

As far as a critique is concerned.

If you want yourconversation with Ms.M to be posted, you can surely go ahead and post it. However, if you are thinking of postingsomething which will be useful for students to prepare and attend interviews,then you will have to add some more bit.

For me, The Interview is like a movie, the interviewer is the audienceand interviewee is the director. For the movie to be impressive, effortsdirector puts behind the screen is as important as how he presents it to theaudience.

I was hit hard in my summersbecause I did not prepare for it. I did not want to make the same mistakes infinals. I had devised a plan for my preparation. I hope my preparation helpsyou in helping other students in preparation.

There are three types of questions any interviewer might ask.

1. General Life and Self questions

eg. Tell me about your self,Strengths and weaknesses, Achievements etc..

2. Resume Based questions

eg. Projects done, peoplemet, competitive participations, key achievements on resume.

3. Academic questions

eg. Questions related toLaw, Comp and Benifits, PMS, OB etc....

The strategies for answering these three types of questions is quitedifferent.

1. General Life and Self questions

These questions are usually asked to find more about the person. Most ofthe questions are already known. Tell me about yourself is surely a starterquestion. However, the difference one can make is through his/her clarity ofwhat is said and the effectiveness of the tone and the speed at which we say.The answers for these questions should not be too long neither too short. Thereshould be a clear message at the end of answer.

One key point is to make the answers our own. If I dont feel thatsomething is my strength then I can never feel comfortable saying this toothers. Hence, even though we say something, We would have told them I didn't really meant what Isay.

When I started my preparation, I collected few of these questions (Firstgot a collection of 20 questions from the net). Selected, 5 questions out of it(Considering my laziness at that time :P). Wrote answers for each of thequestions. Got it vetted by my mentor (Snigdha our senior). Incorporated herinputs and rewrote it again.

When I started practicing it, Icould find that it was not easy to put things written in spoken. There was alot of tweaks that had to be done. I virtually used to go on a walk with thepaper with these answers written in it in my hand. Imagine a interviewer,Imagine his reactions when i answer each one of the question and practiced mytone, facial expression, speed and even body language.

Finally, when I was in a position to answer all these 5 questions. Icould find my self to have understood me better. I was more confident and clearin what I said.

2. Resume Based questions

eg. Projects done, peoplemet, competitive participation, key achievements on resume.

These questions are asked to understand what the person has done inpast. Indirectly saying I want to know What you have done not who you are orwhat the company is doing. I spoiled couple of my interviews in summers withthese kind of questions, by mixing things up and not answering the what partproperly.

Resume preparation(which includes preparing yourself based on resume)becomes the most important trick. Everything in our resume and every word wesay based out of that resume should be known to ourselves. {am hinting that ifwe don't know something or not confident about something, we should not putthat on resume.}

1. Make sure redundant datais not part of your resume

2. Make information asspecific as possible.

3. Structure resume basedon your strength [Highlighting is a way to invite questions...]

I had framed answers for each and every project I did. A simple trickhere is to relate each project with something which you have read or worked on.During my fieldwork days, I used to apply leadership theories, in a trainingmodel I created. I used expectancy theory in the Summer project working oncompensation restructuring. Relating things builds a lot of confidence andgives the interviewer a taste of our application orientation. In other words wetell the interviewer, I not only know things but also can apply based on requirement.

3. Academic questions

eg. Questions related toLaw, Comp and Benifits, PMS, OB etc....

I was weak in this section, These questions are asked to test theknowledge level of the candidate. Usually the consulting company prefers thesequestions. FMCG might be more concentrating on law questions.

all my days in TISS, it was more of a experiential learning. So, I hadto really sit with the books. My approach was to take project i have done inthe past. Read all the theory related to the project, so that I can relate eachother. Once that is done and feel confident I used to read other chapters ofthe subjects.

Say, If interviewer asks what is expectancy theory, then I will tell himthe definition, how i used it, how is it useful otherwise. With this approach,I had selected only few subjects (Law, Comp & OB) I had taken a risk by notreading all the subjects, however I thought my resume which is in front of themwill rule the interview more than the subjects which I have read. Even if theyhad asked something on which I don't know or I have not worked on, I wasprepared to say "Sorry I don't know" {After all you also got to tellthem that you are honest ;) }

Sir, hope it helps.

Thanks

Regards

Naveen Keshava

Dear Sir

This was a great read... got me reflecting on my days as an interviewee,dreading the campus placements. And then in the last 2.5 years have been on theother side of the table. I have been to a couple of campus interviews, watchingas student after student comes in each carrying so much hope.

There are some things that struck me in this...

The first is your last statement about authenticity. I have been ininterviews where I have said “I don’t know” so many times and yet got selected.Where I have been pulled into a discussion where I took a stand and eventuallyhad in the course of the discussion was made to see a different point of viewand say “Yes you are right and I am wrong. Your way makes more sense”. But Istill got through. I never understood why till I actually stood on the otherside and was a listener. I realized it doesn’t matter what u do or don’t knowtoday. What matters is how transparent you are. You need to stop thinking aboutwhat they want to hear and think more about what you need to say. I find thatthe more you think about the former the more you tell yourself that that ISYOU. And then you end up coming across very strange in the interview. The Penpicture of you that an interviewer draws up is incomplete.

So I was glad to read about that piece on authenticity. I don’t know ifit is possible for you to elaborate on that further. But it would be great ifyou could point out how. Everyone tells a student to “be themselves” but it isso hard to capture how.

Also that thing about weaknesses. So many interviewers ask that. Themost charming one I have heard (we hired this girl) was “Oh I get so angry attimes with people. I have a nasty temper, very low tolerance and can getextremely impatient and when that happens I am highly ineffective and verydispleasing to be with”. I wish people would just say it – I can’t plan my timeor I am not a good multi tasker or I am not a very good team player, I like towork on my own… an organization that can’t accept or allow weaknesses can’t bea very real place to work in can it?

Finally, almost every time I go to campus, this happens – we interviewsomeone, find him/her highly unsuitable. But we hear in a bit that some othercompany (usually quite a good one) has picked him/her up. I always used towonder in the beginning how they could have done so when the drawbacks were soobviously clear. Today, reading this post, it came to me. That one interviewwith Nokia is NOT who the person is. Nor are the many “bad” interviews. Everyinterview is a confluence of the moment and the person and the panel and thenthe biggest of all – chance! All four come together to make the interview agood one. The moment might be wrong and the student may be nervous and trip up.The panel might be a particular kind and not like particular kinds of students.You might have revised Pay for Performance but they asked you about EmployeeEngagement surveys. Someone told you they grill you on acads but you faced whatwas an out and out behavioural interview. You never know and no matter how hardyou prepare you can never foretell what might happen in that room. So at somelevel, students need to stop over preparing for interviews and learn to go withthe flow. When you go with the flow there is no good or bad interview. This is somuch easier said than done and often can only be said by someone NOT goingthrough the process themselves.

I would really like to know your thoughts on this too...

Warm regards

Yashaswini Vishwanathan

Creating A Helping Organisation

2011-11-12T02:38:00.001+05:30

Ganesh Chella made a brief speech atthe publication of his book ‘Creating A Helping Organisation - 5 Engaging Ways to Promote Employee Performance,Growth and Well being.’ As always he spoke a few words, came to the point directly but his message has the characteristic clarity and insight.

As a coaching practitioner, Ganesh’s research led to threediscoveries, one of which was “I discovered that employees had several otherpressing needs beyond performance and development which were affecting their well-beingand for which they required other forms of helping relationships. ....This ledme to understand the entire range of helping needs of employees including theirpsychological well being and explore the kind of relationships that can make adifference.”

The book goes on to explain in detail the five layers ofhelp – Community Help, Barefoot help, Qualified Help, Professional Help forExecutive Coaching and Professional Employee Assistance with the help ofspecific case studies. A quick browsing has convinced me that it is a book thatmust be read by HR managers.

The book was formally published [Tata McGraw Hill, Rs ] at the hands of Ms MalaRamadorai and Mr R Shiram, the founder of Crosswords yesterday.

In his brief talk Ganesh expressed his concern about scantattention paid to mental health of employees and asserted that this situationmust change; and that the organisations had a role to play in providing support.

Ganesh is a thinker, teacher and a prolific writer. He has promised to write more books; one of which I expect to be on Employee Relations.

Vivek

Coaching: Making It Work

2011-10-24T18:29:00.002+05:30

Dear HR Manager,

I would like to share a few thoughts on launching Coaching program in your organisation.

Before we launch a coaching program in an organisation, it is desirable to have some discussion with the prospective coachees about what coaching is. There are many definitions of coaching; I like the way Sir John Whitmore defines it. “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching.”

It is also necessary, for success of the coaching program, that it is seen as a tool available to those who wish to use it. It should not be mandated. It should not even be suggested! What we need to do is to make people aware that HR is ready to make a good coach available if one requires it.

Let me explain. When we advise a manager that [s]he can undergo coaching if so desired, the concerned manager does not think that a choice is available. The manager will say ‘yes’ to coaching. Getting in to coaching situation when a manager has not felt the need for it, is one of the reason why coaching does not deliver to the fullest.

Moreover, is it not our common experience that whenever a manager is nominated for any behavioural program he asks ‘Why me?’ The coachee opting for coaching with a suspicion in mind is the worst situation to begin coaching.

We ought to appreciate the need for voluntary choice in coaching.

One way to launch the coaching program keeping these basics in mind is to explain to a group of managers that HR can make good coaches available for coaching in case anyone would like to opt for it. You can perhaps share profiles of coaches who HR proposes to engage. This avoids making specific suggestion to anyone and yet makes them aware that the organisation is making a resource available. It avoids making suggestion about coaching as well as the choice of a particular coach. This procedure surely makes a prospective coachee very comfortable.

Usually a very small number of managers opt for it in the beginning. Some others, who are curious, watch whether coaching is beneficial to them. They enter when they discover that it helps. The number swells over a period of time. The best aspect about it is that it is driven by managers who realise that it helps. They come in with more realistic expectations. This also helps in building a very effective coach-coachee relationship.

This way of introducing coaching essentially creates a situation in which a [prospective] coachee makes a choice of coaching; it does not come as a result of HR’s initiative. It also does not come as a result of a mechanical procedure which says ‘arrange coaching inputs for all those who have been promoted or are likely to be promoted.’ Essentially it recognises that coaching will succeed where the need is felt and where the manager makes a choice voluntarily.

I wish you success in your development efforts.
Thanks,
Vivek

Driving Positive Work Ethos

2011-10-23T10:01:00.000+05:30

The recent Meru strike bringsforth interesting issues – one of the nature of contractual relationship andthe other of providing leadership. The strike has ended and Meru cabs will beplying now but I will not be surprised if it is an uneasy truce.

An interesting fact whichMumbaikars perhaps do not know is that Meru does not ‘employ’ drivers. There isno employer-employee relationship between Meru and Drivers – the drivers areactually independent contractors who have hired a Meru asset – cab – on rent.If we appreciate this nature of relationship we will also realise that theregular route of dispute settlement under The Industrial Disputes Act 1947 isnot available to them.

A driver or DSE as he is calledin Meru parlance is probably unable to conceive of any other mode ofrelationship with an organisation like Meru. So there are demands like ‘weeklyholiday’ which just do not fit into the scheme of things because a Meru drivercan ply his cab as and when he likes.

The driver’s perceptions can beunderstood considering their level of education, but what about their leaders?This is what the news reports said, “Swabhiman Sanghatna, led by industriesminister Narayan Rane's son Nitesh, which is heading the section of thedrivers, is adamant. "The drivers will remain on strike till the companyabsorbs the terminated drivers without any conditions," said KK Tiwari, president,taxi-auto wing of the organisation.” Wouldit be unreasonable to expect the foreign MBA degree holder Nitesh Rane toappreciate the business realities and legal framework?

The radio taxi service isunfortunately not declared as an ‘essential service’ but its importance shouldnot be lost on anybody, much less to the leaders. A responsible leadership muststrive to find solutions within the framework of accepted principles. Employingviolence to garner public and political support is an age old tactic which thepublic is tired of. Issuing threats has become a favourite pastime of self styledleaders. It gets tolerated because the Government of Maharashtra is choosing toignore it, both out of nepotism and timidity. What otherwise explains the factthat miscreants who have damaged dozens of Meru cabs have gone scot free?

Violence is the easiest option tosolve a dispute, and the easiest option is often not the right choice. We needleaders, not just educated, but learned and who can resolve differences withouttransgressing the bounds of law. Encouraging a positive work ethos is the needof the hour; the society will pay a heavy price for ignoring it.

Vivek

The Era of Advantage for Unfair Employers is Finished

2011-10-21T21:57:00.001+05:30

Mr Visty Banaji addressed the Summit and introduced the theme. His address has, as usual, the mark of clarity of his thought, insights, concise but precise in delivery and his inimitable style. Mr Banaji is one of the most respected HR professionals who has left indelible mark on the culture of the organisations he worked for - Tatas, Godrej and Alsthom. He is an avid reader, an author with a distinctive style and a wonderful person to know. His address is given here, with his permission, enjoy reading....

Introducing the Theme of the Summit
(National HRM Summit 2011 Organized by EFI on "Fair Employers Finish First" on 20 - 21 October 2011 at Hotel Taj President)

1. Honourable Minister for Labour & Employment, Government of India, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge, Mr. Damodaran, Ms. Staermose, Mr. Dubey, Mr.Patil, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the theme of this summit to you.

2. "Fair Employers Finish First" is among the more ambitious themes the Employers’ Federation of India has adopted for its National HRM Summit. I hope I have not been asked to introduce it on the principle that "Lousy Speakers Should Finish First". It is only when I look around at the other august personalities on the stage am I reassured that this could not be the motive of my friend, Sharad Patil, in asking this group to speak first.
In seriousness, though, let me share the thinking that went behind this theme:
· I am sure you have all heard the cliché: "Nice guys finish last". It is sometimes extended to organizations and people say: "Nice companies finish last". Perhaps this was partly true in the time of licence-permit raj, when it was genuinely difficult to survive while remaining above-board – though I would like to believe that two of the Groups that I worked for did a remarkably good job of just that in those difficult years for business integrity. Well, the licence-permit raj is now behind us and, even if we accept that the environment in those years prompted organizations to adopt 'short-cuts', the situation is very different now.
· The public at large – and that includes our customers, investors and, most importantly, present and potential employees – expects the institutions they have to work with and within to be not just ‘functional’ but ‘fair’. We have seen the strong support civic society obtained when it raised issues of governance and probity for the political and bureaucratic machinery of the country. Simply because business and industry have not been subjected to such scrutiny and standards so far, does not mean we will remain permanently exempt from meeting the expectations an enlightened Indian public now has from organizations that operate within the public domain. Even in the US the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement is gathering momentum and questions about corporate greed and conduct are being raised in many other developed economies. We would do well to remember that disparities and deprivations are even greater in our country and are sometimes strikingly evident in a single corporation when we include in the reckoning people who work for, but are not on the rolls of, the enterprise.
· In these turbulent times of ever-increasing public consciousness, if we, as employers, do not take it upon ourselves to scrutinize and improve on our record of fairness, we will have no one but ourselves to blame if obtrusive laws and external inspection, interference and oversight bedevil us in greater measure than ever before.
· We felt it fitting that EFI should take the lead insofar as these standards and expectations are about the roles employers should play. That was the origin of the thinking behind the theme for this year’s summit.

3. The question that immediately arose was whether there was a need to take up the theme of employer fairness. Weren’t employers, by and large, fair in any case? A quick examination of how employers have actually behaved (and, of course, there are notable exceptions) did not leave us very optimistic about the general run of employers meeting the higher public expectations of fairness and business ethics:
· The test of fairness comes, not during fair weather, but during difficult times. Here are some of the things otherwise model employers resorted to during the last economic down-turn:
o Mass scale termination of probationers for reasons of business slump rather than individual performance inadequacy.
o Withdrawal or indefinite deferment of firm written offers made on campus to thousands of students.
o Sudden discovery of the magical sound of the 'bell' curve and of vast numbers 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'.
o Termination of large numbers of temporary and contract workers who had been engaged for many years in perennial jobs.
If these practices are less prevalent now, is it because these employers have become more fair or because the economic slowdown has receded?
· It had become fashionable to say that Employee Relations was a capability organizations no longer required; that growing economic development would put an end to union militancy and industrial action. Those of us who feared, that growing disparities between individual workers (often doing the same jobs) would lead to more rather than less unrest, were seen as Cassandras. It is unfortunate that, like Cassandra, we today have to stand by, in mourning, as some of the most respected names in industry fall prey to industrial unrest. While I do not wish to comment on specific cases, we have to cognize the possibility that, where industrial unrest gains mass support, in the minds of the employees there has arisen a perception of unfairness having been practiced by the management, in some way, shape or form.
· Nowhere have the disparities of industrial India and the consequential perceptions of unfairness been more apparent than in regard to contract labour. Events of the last 6-8 months have only confirmed the urgency with which the fairness of dealing with contract workers needs to be addressed.

4. The idea of this summit is not to wag a finger at erring organizations but to demonstrate, through live examples, that being fair, like honesty, is indeed the best policy and that those who adopt it really do rank first. This should not be such a startling discovery for those who have studied industrial development in our country. In India, it is not the robber barons who have survived. Our industrial houses with the greatest longevity are also those which have demonstrated the greatest fairness and concern for employees since their inception. Our industrial history, thus, contradicts the myth that "fair employers finish last". It would be truer, in our case, to say that "fair employers last longest"
For this summit, therefore, most of the organizations that have been chosen to share their experiences, are those that have excelled not only in the fairness of their practices but have delivered remarkable business and financial results concurrently. They are the living proofs of our claim that "Fair Employers Finish First".
For this reason, it is fitting that those employers who have achieved true progress in Employee Relations should be commended at this summit. This is the first time recognition of this nature is being bestowed by the Employers’ Federation of India and we hope that it will be an encouragement and inspiration for more employers to embark on the path of fairness and ER excellence that is not just the theme of the summit but the positioning for EFI going forward.

5. The case studies of organizations that have been successful, not in spite of, but because of being fair employers have been broadly divided into four parts:
· In the first part, we will learn how fair employers deal with employees at the bottom of the pyramid as well as how they develop, consult and value these employees for their individual worth.
· We cannot hope to have sound employee relations without the active cooperation of unions, freely chosen by employees. The second part of the summit, therefore, will give us learnings from fair employers who have partnered with their unions for the prosperity of the enterprise.
· As I have stressed earlier, Contract Workers can be the source of much unfairness and industrial unrest. In part three, therefore, we will share the findings of an EFI / ILO study of best practices in managing contract labour. We will also hear how fair employers are trying to find equitable ways of dealing with this knotty issue as well as the views of union and labour department stakeholders on this burning topic.
· Whether it for reasons of land acquisition, environmental impact or any other, large industrial organizations are more than ever inextricably linked with the lives of the communities in which they are embedded. The fourth part of our summit will present fair employers who have gone far beyond the demands of the law or the clauses contained in their licences or land-acquisition contracts in serving and providing a better way of life to their adopted communities.

6. At the end of the summit, we hope you will be convinced that:
· Not only do "Fair Employers Finish First" but the "Era of Advantage for Unfair Employers is Finished"
and that
· The Employers Federation of India can and must provide leadership to employers to adopt the path of fairness with conviction, passion and speed, which, in turn, will bestow a new sense of purpose to the Federation.
Visty Banaji

Maruti Suzuki Strike: How a Matter of Pride Becomes The Achilles Heel!

2011-10-18T21:53:00.001+05:30

[The strike at Maruti Suzuki hasbrought into attention many issues in Industrial relations. This is the thirdpost in the series that discusses the issues. Here are the links to the first post and the second post.]

The report appearing in theEconomic Times of India [Oct 17, 2011] makes an interesting reading as itaddresses to the central issue: What widened the divide between the workers andthe management?

Here is an excerpt: “The strategic decision to squeeze outmaximum possible efficiency from existing plants didn't trickle down smoothlyto the shop floor. Striking workers complain about abusive behaviour and eveninstances of slapping by supervisors, charges the company denies. Workers saythe conditions at the Manesar plant were too stringent, while the managementcan't seem to comprehend the difficulty as the Gurgaon plant has operated underidentical conditions for more than 25 years now.”

The reference to ‘squeezing our maximum possible efficiency’ comes becauseMaruti Suzuki found that they were in a situation where demand for the cars wasoutrunning the production capacity. So steps were taken to enhance the productionefficiencies. These were resented by workers; but such measures wereoperational at Gurgaon plant so the management could not understand theresistance of workers.

This raises some interestingissues: Firstly, we have to appreciate that workers, like all of us, have a ‘view’on how work should be done. So a change needs to be explained and communicatedwell.

Secondly, the workers of a new plant dislike being compared with workersat the older [or any other] plant. ‘Do this, look they are doing it, why don’tyou do it?’ does not work well. The acceptance of such changes is always aproblem. The workers want to discuss their work with their supervisors, notsomebody else’s work. But usually the managements are in a hurry and do nothave time for elaborate dialogue.

Thirdly, almost all new unitsbegin on an excellent industrial relations note; but somewhere along the roadthe relationships sore. Maruti Suzuki had ushered in a great era of good manufacturingpractices. In seminars, speakers often talked about ‘how it happens in Maruti’splants.’ They brought in a tsunami of ‘Japanese Management style,’ in Indianindustry. There are many people who have seen workers of Maruti making excellentpresentations at a time when many managers were still learning PowerPoint.There were problem-solving techniques, quality circles, workers visiting plantsin Japan and so on. The Maruti way was held in awe by many a people.

It is interesting how these healthyrelationships in a new plant sore over a period and what causes them to go bad.This experience, I believe, is not unique to Maruti – it happens almost everywhere.

One of the popular beliefs isthat the managers get increasingly arrogant and ‘controlling.’ This needs an explanation– when you set up a factory, you recruit new workers and train them. Theinteractions are very high and so is [usually] the sensitivity. The new workershave found a job in a good organisation which is a rarity; companies likeMaruti train them very well so they see ‘value-add.’ Workers at this stagereadily accept the supervision and show willingness to do any task assigned. Thereis a sense of pride at this juncture which overtakes all negatives. This situationrequires very little people management skill. Arrogance and ‘controlling’ graduallygrows and frictions start. It is important to note that the workers havecomplained of ‘slapping’ and ‘abusive’ language. This is not at all an unusualincident. Korean managers of a company were also accused of similarmisbehaviour. Workers get labelled ‘union minded.’ The situation is ripe nowfor a conflict to set equations right.

And when a conflict erupts, boththe parties wish to set all seemingly ‘wrong’ things right.

This is not as if the managersare to be blamed entirely for the situation. The point I am making is that aworker is very receptive initially but turns antagonistic later.

When a new plant is commissioned[like Manesar] the HR policies get tested. Where the workers are recruitedyoung, they have boundless energy that can turn against the employer when notgiven adequate creative channels. Usually this is ignored. Some organisationsin the South India have tried to overcome this problem by recruiting as amatter of policy, workers in all age groups up to 35-40 years. The presence ofworkers in higher age group, according to them, has a sobering effect on theyounger workforce. [There is no evidence that this actually happens, but thenmanagers so often follow their own pet theories!]. Such problems are inherent inthe policies. Supportive actions have to be taken. But inability to see deeper problemsmakes managers attribute motives to the other party which is a recipe fordispute.

The entire situation is akin to therelationship between a father and his son – at young age the sons listen, andlater they assert their freedom to do a lot of things, and demand space. When ason comes of age, his father is supposed to treat him like a friend.

Hidden in this metaphor is perhapsone of the answers to the problem.

Vivek

What The Maruti Suzuki Strike Exposes - 2

2011-10-14T12:06:00.000+05:30

While teaching at a management institute I mapped the imagesof a union leader and an HR manager through an exercise. The class and I were surprisedto discover that they had used all negative [actually, very negative] words todescribe a union leader. One of the students who had some previous workexperience was more surprised than all of us – he candidly disclosed in theclass that he had met a union leader who was a very conscientious person and agood leader, and yet he had found that the negative words were his immediaterecall.

And one more shock came thereafter. I was expecting the MBA-HRstudents to have all good words for HR managers; I was in for a shock! The studentsalso discovered that they had all described an HR manager in negative terms, hardlyany positive!!

Such images in their minds represented how a common man seesthem, and it is undoubtedly disturbing.

In the last twenty five years, many MNCs have set us theirshop in India or have increased their presence. They come with their HRpolicies – one of the policies which are unstated yet very explicitlyunderstood is ‘No union here.’

The aversion to unions is everywhere and Indianentrepreneurs are no exception. But perhaps they accept the reality more easilythan their foreign counterparts. Even if entrepreneurs accept the fact that the right toassociation is a fundamental right in this country, they find ways of keepingthings under control by playing with the employees’ right of association. Withcorrupt union leaders this result can be achieved without much problem. Andwith political leaders [most of them self-styled] who also double as unionleaders, the managements can deftly handle the situation. This variety ofpolitical leaders cum union leaders and manoeuvring managerial personnel areboth available in abundance in the corruption capital of this country.

Maruti Suzuki factories are situated in that region.

What really prevented Maruti Suzuki from dealing with a newunion if it was having an effective membership in the Manesar plant? Unit levelunions are very common in India. While the employees would do well if they havea common union, and indeed having different unit level unions creates moreproblems for both the employees and managements alike, it is really a questionfor them to decide and not for the management. In our society with its strong fissiparoustendencies it may be unavoidable, at least in the short run.

When a union knocks at the door organisations get into ‘Control’mode. Poor HR managers find themselves in a tough situation because theirbosses tend to judge their effectiveness by their ability to keep the union atbay. They adopt some familiar measures:

[a] call employees who have reportedlygone to the union leader and talk to them about how their interests are bestserved by the current management; how the management is responsive to sorting outall their grievances,

[b] initiate ‘town hall’ or ‘open house’ meetings to reachout to employees. Simultaneously measures are taken to keep the union out byreaching the union people through some intermediaries. The worth of reachingout to employees is well placed but recognised a little too late.

What should be the organisation’s stance on unions? How manymake clear statement on it anyway? I have always felt that the most maturestatement on an organisation’s stance on unions comes from Toyota. Here it is: [refThe Toyota Culture by Jeffrey Liker and Michael Hoseus, Tata McGraw Hill]:

1. Managing Toyota Way and establishing a Toyota culture isnot negotiable.

2. The local management should establish a stance towardlabour unions, taking into consideration local culture, laws, labour movementsand so on.

3. If the management of the company does have a union, bothshould recognise that the prosperity of the company is the common objective andboth must use thorough communication in order to resolve any differences ofopinions and build a healthy relationship of mutual trust.

4. The relationship of mutual trust can ensure the long termprosperity of the company and thereby stabilise employee lives by maintainingand improving working conditions.

In the ‘Summary’ [page 386] the authors state “ In a sense,Toyota agrees with the argument of the union advocates that fair and consistentmanagement is essential and managers of work groups cannot be counted on toalways act in a fair and consistent way. There needs to be mechanism for allemployees to be heard. Being heard is the foundation of the Toyota culture ofcontinuous improvement. So, Toyota sets up mechanisms through the HR departmentto allow team members to be heard. We saw that even the HR department can beviewed as biased. The counter measure was to set up a separate “I” team representinga cross section of the plant to investigate employee issues.”

This is beautiful. Toyota recognises that it is essential tobe fair and consistent; and that the journey is not easy – there will belapses. So they have invented processes to overcome those issues. It also essentiallyrecognises the fact that it is unreasonable to expect the organisations to beperfect – but it is essential to have ways to spot and cure deviations immediatelybefore they turn cancerous.

In this journey some organisations will be ahead of others.[Just to set the record right – Toyota has also come under attack – Read here].And some organisations remain at the extreme where they flout laws, turn aNelson’s eye to the reality and use extra-legal means to break unions. We haveto understand that the organisation’s choice of stance on unions is consciouslymade. [When organisations declare values, do they really have any choice?] And it is fully evident to the public in the event of strife.

On their part the unions have richly contributed to theimage of antagonistic adversaries who exist to serve the personal agenda of theirleaders. They do not declare 'values.' There are some exceptions here [See Thermax Story] but those are veryfew.

Maruti Suzuki strike brings out these aspects in focus onceagain. Whether Maruti Suzuki episodes will lead to introspections on both thesides is a question.

Vivek

PS: Long back I read ‘The Reckoning.’ Its author DavidHalberstam writes, “Then one day I was ona book tour and I kept noticing that Chrysler was almost gone, Ford was in trouble,all these great American companies were [gone]. And who was beating them?Japan, which I had last seen when we had, in Winston Churchill's phrase in1945, “grounded to powder.” And the Japanese were taking cars, which was anAmerican signature, and doing better at them. I didn't see it as a businessstory. I saw it as a social cultural story. How could this have happened? So,that question became TheReckoning. ...........But thequestion was, “How did this happen and what does it teach us about Japan? Whatdoes it teach us about ourselves?” It was a very big story. In fact, I thinkthe best reporting I've ever done in my life is in that book. It's the story of a strike at the Nissanplant in the early ‘50s and the company crushing it and installing a union madeof management people. Which gives you a chance to understand how Japan works inmodern society. It was very hard…there's a Japanese intellectual who when herefers to Japan in terms of communication, he says, “It is the black hole ofthe universe.” A very positive value is placed on the extracting of informationand no value at all is placed on the giving of it.”

The strike story of Nissan is very familiar for Indianreaders. It is full of events that also happen at the gates of the Indianfactories. But Japan has moved on from there.

Fair Employers Finish First

2011-10-13T09:37:00.002+05:30

The Employers’Federation of India has organised The HRM Summit 2011 which presents anexcellent opportunity for us to explore and learn more about how the “Fair Employers Finish First”. Alsoa high level panel discussion on “Contract Labour” based on a Research Study byEFI in collaboration with the ILO, can provide some thought provoking ideas onhow best the deal or not to deal with this subject on your own home ground.

The Seminar is imaginatively organised, and all who’s who will beaddressing the gathering. They include Visty Banaji, Ms Tine Staqermose [ILO],Mr Dasanayaka [ILO], Mr Rajeev Dubey, Dr Krishnamurty, Dr. JJ Irani, ArunMaira., Satish Pradhan.

Download the brochure here

http://efionline.in/images/Downloads/hrm_summit_2011.pdf

Where do you stand?

2011-10-11T23:21:00.000+05:30

In the last post I mentioned the issue of contractlabour. I am tempted to say more about it before moving to the next issue.

My friend Arvind Shrouti who advises unions under theauspices of Option Positive, Pune mentioned an interesting model to me.

He said that the ‘employed’ persons, managers included,were divided in four categories. These categories are:

Vanchit: [The Deprived] They are at the bottom of the pyramid. These arepersons who are waiting at the station or near building constructions to get aday’s job. Very often they do not get work and consequently pay for more than 10days. They do not mind not being paid minimum wages – but they want steady workand some income. These persons live in abject poverty.

Shoshit: [The Exploited] These persons are contract workers who get paidminimum wages, although they may do the work similar to that done by thepermanent workers of the industrial organisation where they work. They have nosecurity of job, they get chucked out easily. Their working conditions areoften very poor. They obviously have difficulty in making two ends meet, theyfind it difficult, [perhaps impossible] to educate their children and providetheir families a good life.

Ankit: [The Identified] These employed persons hold permanent jobs but do not sharethe benefits of the exploitation of the Vanchit and Shoshit.

Sammeelit: [The Connivers] These employed persons, and they may includeeven workers in ‘high wage island’ companies, enjoy high salaries as well asbenefits as a result of the deprivation of others.

While this model might sound very harsh, and academics may find theoretical grounds to attack it, one thing is for sure – that there is morethan a touch of reality to it.

Dr Anil Awchat described the plight of the Vanchit in his book MaaNas [nowavailable in English too] and though many would have seen people standing atMulund station in Mumbai or at Shivaji Chowk in Kalyan in search of work, veryfew would have known the horrible conditions in which they work and live.

In many public sector enterprises and in some provate sector enterprisestoo, the permanent workers often rest while contract labourers work when theformer are supposedly working overtime and earning double the rate of wages.The service industry, particularly the hotel industry, exploits contract workmenand thrives on it.

There is some hue and cry about the law which may be passed about domesticworkers. Singapore has implemented it well. The implementation of it may not bedone at all in our country. In India where laws are made but not implemented,one will have to rely on either the employer’s progressive values or on one’swill to wage a battle to earn a need based wage at the bottom of the pyramid!

Vivek

What The Maruti Suzuki Strike Exposes

2011-10-09T10:14:00.000+05:30

So much has been written on Maruti strike. This blog is notan exception too. I was avoiding writing one more post on Maruti - I havealready written two – but the strike has highlighted too many nagging issues inIndustrial Relations, and it is difficult not to write yet again.

In this series of posts [this is the first one, more tofollow] is my list of issues and thoughts:

The widespreademployment [and accompanied exploitation] of contract labour is a symptom aswell as a disease.

You may ask me ‘If it is a symptom then, what the realdisease is.’ The real disease is that the firms are not allowed to resize theiroperations depending on business exigencies. The Indian Government made changesto the Industrial Disputes Act in the seventies when populist measures wereorder of the day.

The amendment is preventing employers from downsizing theirestablishments without permission of the Government which was [then], as a rule,never given, and actually expressly denied. The natural reaction is to engage fewworkers in permanent cadre and a large number of contract labourers so thatthey can be removed without much problem. This is not to say that theengagement or exploitation of contract labour was not prevalent earlier. But itwould be correct to say that even good employers started acting with greatcaution [read paranoia], because there was completely irrational, nay idiotic,implementation of the policy of the Government to control retrenchments andclosures.

Justice Mr. Rama Jois’s judgement in the case of Stump, Schueleand Somappa [this was later over-ruled] makes good reading in which he hasdiscussed the arbitrary rejection of application for closure.

[To quote: “To make the point more clear, I shall refer toparagraph 25 of the judgment in the case of Excel Wear case (supra). Whereinthe Supreme Court posed the following questions:

(i) Is it possible tocompel the employer to manage the undertaking even they do not find it safe andpracticable to manage the affairs ?

(ii) Can they be asked to go on facing tremendousdifficulties of management even at the risk of their person and property ?

(iii) Can they be compelled to go on incurring losses yearafter year ?

The answer is implicit in the questions, an obvious NO. Thefurther discussion in the paragraph would show that if one of the above groundsconstituted the real basis for an application seeking permission for closure,not according of permission would be unreasonable and the fact that closureresults in unemployment of workmen would also be not a valid ground to deny thepermission.” Unquote.]

The fact is that industrial establishments must be allowedto adjust their size according to business exigencies; the need is now morewhen the vicissitudes of economies and business environment is the order of theday post-globalisation and liberalisation unlike in the past.

If you employ 99 persons the restrictions do not apply toyou [the Chapter V-B of the Industrial Disputes Act applies if one hundredworkmen are employed] but if you employ one more, then it does! This iscompletely irrational. Pakistan has found a better answer to this issue andperhaps we may do well to copy them in this matter. In Pakistan, the permission of the Labour Court is requiredonly if the employer is terminating the employment of more than 50% of the workmen.Now the debate can be about the number, but undoubtedly it makes a bettersystem!

I said that contract labour was a symptom as well as adisease. What’s this disease? It is one of exploitation. With so muchunemployment – remember that Maruti was able to recruit workers duringthe recent strike too – unscrupulous employers have been taking advantage andemploying contract labour in the jobs where normally permanent employees shouldbe employed. They save money and escape the legal restriction of applying forretrenchments, closures.

You find this so rampant in the industry that unfortunatelysome HR Managers have stopped thinking of it as a wrong practice. And now wealso have another category called ‘temps.’ There are firms that are thriving onthis malpractice! They employ literally a million in this way. That is what afirm recently announced.

Added to this is the phobia MNCs have about Indian labourlaws [not unjustifiably]. I know of one international hotel chain that hasprescribed to its Indian avatar that they will not employ more than 900permanent staff. But the hotel is doing exceedingly well. Net result – about 600‘permanent’ contract employees, this excludes estimated 300 more ‘temporary’contract employees. If you visit a service industry, you will add to yourvocabulary – there are permanent contract employees, temporary contractemployees, there are temps and so on.

One inspection visit to Gujarat’s [in]famous industries inSurat and Silvassa will tell you that almost every industry is employingcontract labour in the ratio of 1:10. There are reports of engaging childlabour.

How does one resolve this extremely complicated situation?The answer, to my mind, lies in making laws which recognise the realities ofbusiness and allow them to adjust size. That cannot be escaped. Adopting the Pakistanmodel is also not a bad idea. And implementing those laws well.

Unfortunately we have reached a situation in which laws seemto be made for the right thinking, conscientious members of the society and enforcementof law is nobody’s responsibility.

Maruti Suzuki strike has brought forth many ills ofIndustrial Relations in India. More about it in the posts that follow......

But in the meantime, Maruti Suzuki workers are on strikeagain! It is a different kind of ‘Chakka Jaam.’

Vivek

The Open Space Within

2011-10-02T21:30:00.000+05:30

When, a few years ago, my colleagues in the office spoke tome about conducting an ‘Open Space Technology’ event, I looked at them like adodo. [More realistically, they must have thought of me as a dodo!]

I did not know what it was, and before I could find out moreabout it, there was an invitation from Prof. Madhukar Shukla of XLRI toparticipate in the Open Space Technology [OST] Event he was conducting at theInstitute. There are synchronicities that have messages for me, I thought. Ihad to learn about it. My friend and renowned trainer Mirza Yawar Baig helpedme, not just once, but many times.

The Open Space Technology Event at the office opened my eyesto the possibilities of its use in various interventions. While teaching atTISS, I also introduced it to my students. Aditya N Deo of HSBC Bank had bythen conducted dozens of OST Events. I requested him to address the studentsand he obliged. Ganesh Chella of Totus Consulting, Chennai, then invited me toparticipate in one that he led and facilitated. That was over a year ago. Theinteresting part was that it had a theme that focused on Employee Relations, asubject of my interest.

A very simple technique, and remarkably successful – it seemsthat it has never actually failed. OST is like a Khayal in Classical Music. Itbegins with a slow tempo, one participant at a time, but and gradually increasesits speed and rhythm. Both allow so much of personal expression! It allows the experienceof leading as well as dialoguing on an initiative of passion which is enliveningand stimulating to participants. All this is frankly to be experienced, wordscannot describe it well.

I was recently consulted by an NGO and we decided that OSTwould serve their agenda right; and I would facilitate it. It was conducted ata venue which was not air conditioned, did not have five star facilities thatthe participants were accustomed to. But that did not deter the participants ordampen their enthusiasm. Over sixty persons attended; they were well qualified,successful, and from all age groups. Thirty initiatives were launched and bythe end of the day action plans were ready.

There were several lessons I learnt. People want to dosomething constructive but organisations seem to have perfected the art ofblocking them. It is largely through creating mental blocks. It is interestingto see how people crave for a ‘structure’ in everything and how they get goingonce they become comfortable with ‘voluntarism’ that OST promotes. People alsoengage in so little dialogue on issues that they are passionate about that itis to be seen to be believed. [I can say it as an observer but I must confessthat I am in the same boat!]. And when it comes to working on the issues peopleare passionate about, they literally ‘lead’ the discussion; you do not have tolearn leadership when it comes to working on an issue you are passionate about.It is amazing to see how OST gets people going.

As for me, I returned with the awareness of how much I haveto work on myself to be increasingly more productive. That will keep merestlessly searching and experimenting for a few years; and time is runningout!

Vivek

Thane HR Group's program on Breakthrough Management

2011-09-22T13:58:00.002+05:30

THRG brought theworld’s most renowned faculty on this subject of Breakthrough Management, Prof.Shoji Shiba, for the benefit of managers who intended to leave an indeliblemark on the organisations. Professor Shoji Shiba whois an internationally renowned management expert and teacher, He was awardedthe 2002 Deming Prize for Individuals, Japan's highest management award forindividuals.

He held one dayprogram, organised by THRG with the help of CII, for a group of managerslargely coming from manufacturing industry. He was assisted by Mr N. Kalapi ofTechNova Imaging Systems.

The Thane HRGroup’s program at CII’s Centre for Excellence was a great success!

This is what MsDarshana Mandewal, Head-HR of Sunjewels Group ሳዕድ፣

"The program gave a good insight on threetypes of management viz. controlled, incremental and breakthrough. It gave aglobal perspective of countries response to change due to sudden /unanticipated change in society. An excellent example given was of change inmentality post tsunami and earthquake in Japan which was on three aspects saveelectricity, become cost effective and community (family) is important.

The examples of changing market/customer expectations scenario with data was shared and live caseexamples of companies of their strategic moves was discussed with benefits forthe various involved parties . This increased the business perspective and gaveinformation of how to analyze and have a strategic direction for 2/3 years. The10 X change was focused to explain the changes in strategy.

Labour disputes scenario of Japan wasdiscussed with clear solutions like Quality Circles. The methods to motivateshop floor with various non monetary methods like infrastructure, good workingenvironment , Kaizen , alignment to business goals was explained . There was alearning on Snowball strategy, theory X and Y, Prof Shoji Shiba’s model of 2-6-2,and parallel organization . How to move from world of concept to world of FACTwas explained very well with examples. The beauty of the program was that ithad a high focus on discipline."

Thane HR Grouppresented a Maharashtrian ‘pagdi’ to Prof Shoji Shiba.

Vivek

The Sham Confession of a Ninety Year Old Judge

2011-09-19T01:37:00.000+05:30

Vijay Tendulkar, the renownedplaywright and author, described a true story in his article for a Diwalinumber of a reputed Marathi magazine. He was stunned when he discovered that ateacher, critically ill, called his student, a girl several years younger thanhim, and sought her pardon. The teacher’s offense? He had secretly desired her whichwas in breach of his role as her teacher. She was not at all aware of it, butteacher was very repentant and said that unless she pardoned him he would notdie peacefully.

Tendulkar, in his inimitablestyle, explored the world of temptations and penitence in his article.

I remembered the story as I readthe so-called apology of ex-Chief Justice PN Bhagwati. [Link]. There should be nodoubt in anybody’s mind that Mr. Prafullachandra Natwarlal Bhagwati was one ofthe most outstanding and brilliant judges of the Supreme Court. He concurredwith M/s Beg, Chandrachud and Ray in ADM Jabalpur case to declare that TheGovernment could suspend all fundamental rights during Emergency.

Here is an excerpt from FaliNariman’s book ‘Before Memory Fades’ which tells what it meant :

During the hearing of ADM Jabalpurin the Supreme Court, the then attorney General of India was specifically askedby Justice HR Khanna – one of the judges on the bench – whether there would beany remedy if a police officer, because of personal enmity and for reasonswhich had nothing to do with the state, too into detention a law-abidingcitizen and even put an end to his life. The answer of the attorney general wasunequivocal....”It may shock you conscience, it shocks mine, but consistentlywith my submissions no proceedings can be taken in a Court of Law on that scoreduring Emergency.” [Justice HR Khanna was the only judge who delivered a dissentingjudgement, and was punished by Indira Gandhi when he was superseded by a juniorjudge. His portrait hangs in Supreme Court’s Court room 2.]

Ex Chief Justice Mr PN Bhagwati [now approaching 90] has recentlysaid, “I was wrong. The majorityjudgment was not the correct judgment. If it was open to me to come to a freshdecision in that case, I would agree with what Justice Khanna did. I am sorry.I don’t know why I yielded to my colleagues. Initially, I was not in favour ofthe majority view. But ultimately, I don’t know why, I was persuaded to agreewith them. I was a novice at that time, a young judge…I was handling this typeof litigation for the first time. But it was an act of weakness on my part.”

Chandrachud too had declared thatit was a wrong judgement, but several years later. Popular view is that thejudges were lured by the possibility of becoming Chief Justices of SupremeCourt.

There is a vital differencebetween the old teacher in Tendulkar’s story who confesses and redefines ‘offence,’and PN Bhagwati. The teacher was uncomfortable with having wrong emotions anddesires about his lady student. He had a remorse filled heart. And we haveBhagwati who not only fell prey to temptations, but going by his own admission,to influence of his brother judges, and he defends it by saying ‘I was a noviceat that time, a young judge.’

No remorse here, no penitentheart!

This is a case of dishonestapology! It is a case of corrupt mind!! A brilliant mind, but corrupt one.Bhagwati, who is considered as the ‘Father of Public Interest Litigation’ aconcept which has delivered justice to several Indians, and whose judgements inmany cases were trend setters, unfortunately showed petty weaknesses.

Not just then, but even today inhis apology too!

Vivek

Maruti's Tale

2011-09-10T15:01:00.001+05:30

Maruti is experiencing what organisations in West Bengal earlier,and later those based in Maharashtra experienced. I will not be surprised ifthe other industries in Gurgaon and Manesar belt reduce operations or at leasttheir dependency on operations there.

Gujarat is wooing them!

There is a pattern to the growth story of these states.

There was a stage, till 1990s, when the Government wassupposed to play the role of the big brother in Industrial relations. What theydid was to support the labour movement in a thoughtless manner. It became verydifficult to carry on business in West Bengal, Kerala and later in Maharashtra.In WB and Kerala the apathy towards employers was to be seen to be believed.The Government which has wide range of powers could have tamed the parties butmanaging industrial relations with an eye on political agenda is never going toproduce the right result. That was where things went wrong. Political intereststook priority over labour or industry interests.

The industrial belt from Vikhroli to Thane in Mumbai and theindustrial belt on Thane Belapur Road have more offices and malls thanfactories. The manufacturing has moved to other states, particularly toGujarat.

Uttar Pradesh [jokingly referred to as ‘Ulta Pradesh’ bysome, because anything can go wrong there all of a sudden] has a kind oflawlessness which is shocking to anybody coming from other states. The localnetas make running an establishment very difficult. Corruption is at anunimaginable level. This is one state where chief executives of many bigorganisations had to appear in criminal courts in labour matters because caseswere filed for political reasons or because threats of extracting money failed.

The labour inspections in UP and recently in Maharashtrawere blatant exercises in extracting money from organisations. When Diwalifestival is on the anvil these activities gain a great momentum. [Now that AnnaHazare has led an assault on corruption, let us watch what happens this year!]

The third party intervention role of the Government wasalmost given up after 90s when parties were left to fend for themselves. Theemployers who were underdog till then became tigers and carried out downsizingruthlessly. Competition however has driven a sense in the minds of both over aperiod and both the employers and labour understood that it was suicidal tohave strife for a long duration.

Maruti has already moved its Swift production to Gurgaon.It will be safe to produce there as the representative status of the union atGurgaon is challenged by the Manesar union. So it has a reason to supportMaruti by producing extra vehicles. But the reputation for quality is alreadyfalling and customers are moving away. Maruti on its part is fortifying itselfby opening up a facility at Gujarat. Once that is in place, Maruti will cutdown the Manesar union to size. This is a very predictable game!

What is the Government doing in this entire scenario?Surely it has powers, legal and political, to keep the wheels of the industry moving.Maruti has so far sacked 21 workers from the plant which is currently producingonly 200 cars per day from a maximum capacity of around 900. Old stalwarts inIR will remember that Premier Auto produced 40 cars as a protest taking thecompany to the precipice.

Expecting such an action from the Government’s labour departmentmay appear a huge expectation. But Gujarat is able to rein in parties; say soopenly that it guarantees industrial peace, why can’t others?

Vivek

Subjective Rules and Sacred Principles

2011-09-04T11:13:00.002+05:30

Thereis an interesting duel which is going on for decades – it is between theEmployers and the Judiciary. The unscrupulous employers are giving narrowinterpretation to provisions of labour legislation and the judiciary is reactingwith expanding its scope!

Thelatest round of battle comes in interpretation of ‘Basic Wage’ definition underthe Employees’ Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act. To understandit we have to understand how wages are paid to employees. As we are aware, Minimumwages are defined for certain industries and occupations. Many employers payminimum wages and this is quite common.

Letus presume that the defined minimum wages are Rs. 5000 pm consisting of a basicwage of Rs. 4000 and a special allowance of Rs 1000. So the employee would earna PF contribution from his employer @12%, in other words, Rs. 480 pm, thus hisCost to Company would be Rs. 5480 pm.

Themathematics throws up a different result if the employer pays a basic wage ofRs. 1000 and a Dearness allowance of Rs. 1000 and a House Rent allowance of Rs.3000 pm. The ‘Cost to Company’ then works out to Rs. 5240 as the PFcontribution to be made by the employer works out to Rs. 240; it is not payableon House Rent Allowance. That gives a saving of Rs. 240 pm per employee by thetrick of restructuring wages.

TheCourts stepped in and said that the PF contribution is payable on the minimum wages,and plugged one source of unjust enrichment of the unscrupulous employers.

Sofar so good. But the courts, through their judgements, widened the scope of thedefinition to such an extent that it is leading to futile litigation. There isa claim by PF authorities that many allowances paid regularly to employeesshould be included in the definition of basic wages. That will place anexcessive burden on the employers. It may not be justified as there arehundreds of good employers who pay good wages, much higher than minimum wagesto their employees. Excluding contribution to PF on certain allowances isagreed through settlements and seems to be fair.

Sothe widened definition has created problems for employers, and now lawyers areat work advising employers. Now the matter is before the Supreme Court and tillit conclusively settles the issue parties have no choice but to carry on thefight.

Thestory of the definition of ‘workman’ is not too different. In order to deny theprotection of the Industrial Disputes Act, some unscrupulous employers ‘pulledthem out of the coverage of the Act’ by designating them ‘Officers’ or ‘Managers.’And gave them salaries higher than what the definition stipulated for being outof coverage. This allowed them to hire and fire such employees at will. So thecourts ‘lifted the veil’ and said that designations or salaries were of noconsequence; what mattered was the nature of duties. This is how it should be.

But a number of scientists and pilots who draw more salaries than ManagingDirectors of small or medium sized enterprises also got covered. It alsoencouraged litigation because even those who were genuinely performing ‘managerial’tasks filed cases in labour courts when they were asked to leave.

Suchinstances can be given in dozens, almost for any legislation. But we have toappreciate that laws are created to protect people from being harmed by others.Without it a society may ultimately degenerate into despotism--the rule of thestrong and violent over the weak and nonviolent. And these laws have created a set of rules. And the principle is to protect the weak fromthe unscrupulous strong.

FranklinRoosevelt put the things in perspective when he said “Rules are not necessarilysacred, principles are!”

Vivek

Working from Home: Australian Court Grants Accident Compensation

2011-08-17T05:40:00.000+05:30

All those who work from home will welcome the judgementof the Australian Court in the case of Hargreaves. This will surely interestmany employees who work in IT industry who work from home.

The issue in Hargreaves case was whether an accidentwhile working from home can entitle an employee to compensation. On 21 August2006 Ms Hargreaves fell down the stairs at home. She injured her left shoulder.On 9 October 2006 she again fell down the stairs and again injured hershoulder, this time requiring surgery. She later developed depression andanxiety which she claimed was related to the physical injuries and herinability to work. Telstra denied liability for the injuries on the basis thatthe falls did not arise out of, or were not in the course of, her employment.

Ms Hargreaves was instructed by Telstra, her employees,to lock the front door of her home while working. It was her claim that shefell down while going to lock the front door after her son left for school. Shesuffered psychiatric ailment to which the injury contributed.

The Tribunal noted that for an injury to have arisen outof employment, it did not necessarily have to occur at work. Hargreaves and Telstra Corporation Limited[2011] AATA 417 (17 June 2011)

The decision effectively blurs the distinction betweenworkplace and home. It may also give rise to more claims.

I have not heard any similar case decided in India. Iwonder what the decision would have been in our courts.

Vivek

Comprehensive Labour Legislation

2011-08-10T22:30:00.001+05:30

The Union Labour & Employment Minister Shri Mallikarjun Kharge has informed the Rajya Sabha that ILO has adopted C-102 Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 covering various branches of Social Security like medical care, sickness, unemployment, old age etc., C-118 Equality of Treatment Convention, 1962 and C-157 Maintenance of Social Security Rights Convention 1982 providing for social security rights and benefits for migrant workers and C-168 Employment Promotion and Protection against Unemployment Convention 1988 requiring members to establish a system of protection against unemployment and to lay down an Employment Policy. Out of these, India has ratified C-118 Equality of Treatment Convention, 1962 on 19.08.1964. The principal social security laws enacted in India are- The Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948; The Employees’ Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952; The Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923; The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961; and The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972.

The Arjun Sengupta committee report presented in 2006 relates to Social Security for the unorganised sector workers. Government has enacted the “Unorganised Worker’s Social Security Act” in 2008 to safeguard the interests of unorganised workers. The Act provides for constitution of National Social Security Board which shall recommend social security schemes viz life and disability cover, health and maternity benefits, old age protection and other benefits as may be determined by the Government for unorganised workers. Government has set up a National Social Security Fund for unorganised workers. Central Government is implementing various social security schemes for the benefit of unorganised workers like – Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) Jana Shree Bima Yojana, Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, Aam Aadmi Bima Yojna, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). India has also enacted Right to Education, 2009 which provides for compulsory education for 6-14 years.

Presently, discussions are going on in ILO for a comprehensive instrument in the form of non-binding Recommendation on Social Protection Floor for providing basic social protection benefits for all. Government of India is of the view that each country should decide the level of its own Social Protection Floor and there should not be prescription of a Uniform Social Protection Floor for all countries. Social protection should be implemented depending on the national social and economic circumstances in member states.

Replying to a related question the Minister said State governments are also implementing various schemes for providing social security benefits like health insurance and old age pensions to unorganized sector workers.

Tone Down The Protest

2011-08-06T22:40:00.001+05:30

A very interesting judgementhas been delivered by Kwazulu-NatalHigh Court in South Africa.

The La Lucia mall [owned byGrowthpoint] had Dischem as their tenants, in other words Dischem had a shop inLa Lucia mall. The employees of Dischem started picketing in the basement parkingentrance of the mall. That caused nuisance. ‘Shouting, singing, chanting, ululating,blowing whistles and horns and banging various instruments and objects wasamplified by the covered parking garage. The noise disturbed and intimidatedmembers of the public and disrupted normal business operations in the immediatevicinity of the basement parking entrance.’

A specialist recorded that thenoise at the pay station in the parking garage exceeded the ambient level byalmost 30 decibels. This exceeded the legal limit of 85 decibels set by theregulation governing noise-induced hearing loss.

The High Court observed that[quote] ‘tolerance levels are exceededwhen Growthpoint [Owners of the Mall] and its tenants can notconduct their business. The noise emanating from the picketers was acceptably high; it disturbed tenants andthe public. The evidence of theexpert and tenants of Growthpoint show that a persistent, loud noise was intolerable. Growthpoint, its tenants andcustomers were inconvenienced andprejudiced. Businesses not partyto the labour dispute suffered a loss of revenue as the public took its custom elsewhere. The noise of thepicketers also created an unhealthyenvironment and impeded Growthpoint and its tenants from using their properties....

...In the opinion of the Court, SACCAWU and its members can exercisetheir rights reasonably withoutinterfering with Growthpoint, its tenants and the public. Interference with their rights to the extent thattenants cannot conduct businessand in fact lose business is an unacceptable and unjustifiable limitation on their right to their property, to tradeand to a healthy environment.

The limitation on SACCAWU and its members is only to lower their noiselevel. They are not precluded from demonstrating, picketing, carrying placards, singing and chantingsoftly.’ [Unquote]

With hundreds of malls comingup in the city, and mall employees gradually unionising, this judgement willhave to be borne in mind by all concerned.

Read the full text of the judgement here.

Vivek

Professional Development for HR Managers

2011-08-04T17:07:00.000+05:30

Those who know Ganesh Chella, the Founder and CEO of Totus Consulting, will tell you that he has a very creative mind. Trust him to take some bold steps to make meaningful contribution in any field of his choice, whether it is research or consulting. He has now made another very interesting move, setting up Totus HR School. This is a very different concept on which Ganesh is working, so we interviewed him. Read on.....

Q: What do you see asa challenge before the HR community?

A: You will agreethat no other profession has experienced as much evolution, identitytransformation and, of course, self-critique as the HR profession has. Thescale and pace of business growth that we, as HR practitioners, have had tosupport in India has been unprecedented. Meeting the needs and expectations ofbusiness keeping in mind the interest of employees while upholding our ownprofessional standards and retaining our professional pride has never been morechallenging.

Given this huge demand, many of us have had to assumefunctional leadership very early in our careers. Some of us from line functionshave also moved in to manage and lead the function. We however recognise theneed to do more. To face these perennial professional challenges we need accessto some very high quality, holistic and comprehensive continuing professionaldevelopment support to constantly learn and reinvent ourselves. In fact, for aprofession with such high stakes, continuing professional development seems anecessity, an urgent priority and a lifelong journey.

Q: And your responsehas been to set up Totus HR school. Tell us more about it.

A: Totus HR Schoolhas been founded to promote continuing professional development for HRpractitioners so they are able to contribute with competence and pride in theever changing world of work. The focus of Totus HR school is on creating HRleaders with deep generalist capabilities, at par with the best in the world.To this end, our developmental interventions will place a huge emphasis onpersonal change, development of new skills and behaviours and practicalapplication. Our offerings will also be future focused because we want to beprepared and proactive. Through this we would like to earn the right to be theHR practitioner’s learning partner for life.

Q: So what are yourofferings?

A: The IntegratedProfessional Development Program series for HR practitioners will be offeredacross three career levels

1. The Emerging HR Professional: around 3 – 7 years ofexperience

2. The Trusted HR Partner : around 7 – 12 years ofexperience

3. The Strategic HR Leader : around 12 – 20 years of experience

Totus HR School will also offer standalone programs inspecific areas for all HR practitioners.

Business leaders play a huge role in championing andpartnering with HR practitioners as their internal clients. To this end, wewill offer programs in specific areas for business leaders responsible forchampioning the HR function.

Contact details

Totus HR School [P] Ltd. #43, Bazullah Road, T.Nagar,Chennai 600 017. Tel: +91-44-28150690 /91 Fax: +91-44-42024154 info@totushrschool.com www.totushrschool.com

Vivek

The ILO and Manual Scavengers in India

2011-07-18T22:18:00.001+05:30

[Reproduced from ILO Website]

The ILO and Manual Scavengers in India: Paving the long way towards the elimination of discrimination based on social origin

For millions of people, contemporary India has become a land of opportunities, and the largest democracy in the world has experienced a remarkable economic growth during the last decade. Yet, as India accelerates its pace towards development, many are left behind due to long standing caste-based discrimination in employment. ILO Online reports from Rajasthan, India.

Article | July 18, 2011

New Delhi, India (ILO Online) - Born in the colourful state of Rajasthan as a Dalit, the lowest of the castes in the Hindu caste hierarchy, Anita had few employment options other than what her parents had done and what her community expected her to do – manual scavenging.

This occupation consists in the removal of human excreta by hand in public streets, septic tanks or closed gutters and sewage. It is characterized by the dramatically unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, which continue to exacerbate the practice of untouchability and marginalization of Dalits.

In this setting, Anita began to work in different households, physically cleaning their dry latrines. The usual payment for her efforts was a single roti, a piece of Indian flatbread. Even after her marriage she was forced to continue with her job as her husband turned out to be heavily dependant on alcohol and unable to work.

In contemporary India, with its remarkable growth rate and corresponding investment and employment opportunities, some may find it surprising that heinous occupations like manual scavenging still persist.

The recent ILO Global Report on Discrimination* explains this with the continuation of caste-based discrimination in South Asia as a major contributing factor. The chances of a qualified applicant with a Dalit name to be invited for a job interview are only two-thirds that of a high-caste Hindu applicant. In practice, this means that many Dalits must hide their status before being offered employment.

Another explanation highlighted in the Global Report is the persistence of discrimination based on multiple grounds. Studies show that the victims of this complex form of discrimination register the highest levels of unemployment and are concentrated in the most poorly remunerated and precarious forms of employment.

Discrimination on both grounds of sex and social origin continue to trap successive generations of Dalit women like Anita in traditionally caste-based assigned occupations. Manual scavenging is one of those occupations mostly held by women. According to government estimates for 2005, 95 per cent of a total of 700,000 manual scavengers were women.

Undermined physical capacity and the feeling of vulnerability and hopelessness associated with this form of discrimination have triggered a vicious cycle of pauperisation, low educational attainment, and social immobility for manual scavengers and their families.

Faced with this challenge, the Government of India has adopted an impressive medley of legislation and policies aimed at respecting, promoting and realizing the fundamental right of non-discrimination. Additionally, specialized organizations with a mandate on issues of equality have been active in working towards the elimination of discrimination against manual scavengers, with an ambitious deadline set by the end of 2012.

At the workers’ level, the Safai Karmachi Andolan (SKA) trade union has vigorously promoted the eradication of manual scavenging through networking, policy advice, destruction of dry latrines, rehabilitation of “liberated” scavengers, campaigns denouncing violence against Dalit women, and educational advocacy.

While this legal, policy and institutional framework has contributed considerably to the elimination of manual scavenging in many states, the overall picture is one of mixed results. Until there is stricter enforcement of the relevant legislation, and fuller implementation of policies which promote equal opportunities of Dalits, it is likely that stories like Anita’s will persist.

With this in mind, the ILO is working with the Government and social partners in India to address the discrimination of Dalits in five selected states, including Anita’s home state of Rajasthan.

The main objective of the project is to support the government’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of legislation and policies which pertain to the issue of manual scavenging, but also to include the scavenging community itself in that process.

According to Coen Kompier, an ILO specialist in labour standards working for the ILO office in New Delhi, “rehabilitation of manual scavengers depends on building the confidence of that community, but also on breaking definitively the caste stigma manual scavengers suffer from. Through our project activities we are therefore exploring ways to make rehabilitation effective and genuine, giving scavengers a true voice in choosing their profession or occupation. Women like Anita can serve as an example for Dalit communities. ”

Anita has a dream for her children: she wants them to go to school and become doctors "so that they could give free treatment to the women in the scavenging community who suffer from disease”. Meanwhile, she may have taken the first step to make her dream come true. She has left her job as a manual scavenger and, although she had to hide her status as a rehabilitated scavenger from her employer, she found alternative employment as a domestic worker.

“Initiatives like the ILO project on manual scavenging will help to pave the long way towards the elimination of discrimination based on social origin. This form of discrimination is probably one of the most difficult to tackle. Even in open societies, where social mobility is common, a number of phenomena continue to impede complete equality of opportunity for various social categories”, concludes Lisa Wong, Senior Declaration Officer in the ILO’s Programme to Promote the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

* Equality at work: The continuing challenge. Global Report under the follow-up of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, International Labour Office, Geneva, 2011

Responding with Responsibility

2011-07-11T09:20:00.000+05:30

The strike at Maruti’s Manesar plant brought forth manyissues. One of them is recognition of unions.

This issue is particularly a sore point with many MNCs whoare accustomed to a different work culture. The laws in India and USA are notthe same in the Industrial Relations area. Many Indian managers working forMNCs [who operate in India] find it difficult to convince their bosses abroadthat the situation is very different in India. It is a fundamental right ofemployees to organise under the banner of a union.

When the pressure mounts from the HQ, the local managersstart appeasement policies which are very damaging in the long run and do notserve the purpose of keeping the unions away.

One of the tactics practised is to have a works committeewhich works as a substitute to unions. This also does not work in the long run.

A renowned industrial house tried organising workers in four‘houses’ like it is done in schools. This is an interesting concept. Theunderlying belief is that there is a need to organise for the employees and itneeds to be met. So why not provide a structure? Interesting, but is it an effective substitute for a union? It all depends on how sensitively this novel concept is practised.

The real threat that managers feel, with a union at the door step, is of losing ability toinfluence their employees. If the processes are created around reachingemployees then the need for unions may be obviated to some extent, at least in asmall set up. My experience is that many organisations begin the exercise of 'reaching out' to employees after receiving a letter from union.

Perhaps their worry is not baseless; I feel it is rooted in reality to some extent. The alarming number of political leaders whoenter the industrial relations scene for personal gains and create conflict situationsis quite worrisome. Some of the news reports on Maruti episode also coveredthis angle.

Here is a report on the Moneycontrol’s website in the matterof Maruti strike:

Shop No 19 is a dark, dingy cubby-hole nearGaushala market on Mata Road in the heart of Gurgaon, the capital s gleamingsatellite city that is home to the plush offices of Indian and foreignmultinational corporations and luxury gated communities that house theexecutives working in them. A table stacked with papers and files hides twochairs behind it. Three walls of the room are pockmarked by peeling plaster andthe fourth is covered by a huge photo poster of police trying to disperse acrowd with lathis. Beneath the photo is a slogan in Hindi that looselytranslates to Let s come together tomake this bandh successful . It is the Gurgaon headquarters of the All-IndiaTrade Union Congress (AITUC), India s most powerful trade union.

Anil Kumar, the dark, burly general secretaryof AITUC, Gurgaon, is dressed in a frayed white shirt with the first twobuttons off, black trousers and no footwear. He speaks with a strong Haryanviaccent and spends most of his time at Shop No 19 as he doesn’t t really have ajob. Kumar has a criminal case against him. A few years ago, he was accused bythe Haryana police of killing a worker during the Rico Auto labour strike. Hesays he didn’t do it. As things turn out, a 13-day labour strike at MarutiSuzuki s Manesar plant has made Kumar an important man.

Between June 4, when the strike started, andthe night of June 16, when it was officially called off, Kumar and his comradesat AITUC also provided the muscle power and rallied support from workers inother companies. Ask him the reason behind the strike and he answers almosthalf asleep (he says he hasn’t t slept for days), the labour department of Haryana is workingtogether with the manufacturers to stop workers from forming a union.

Just as the industry needs HR managers who have the skills of dealingwith unions and also have the ability to convince the employers to adopt practicesthat respect the rights of parties under the local laws, the unions also needresponsible leaders who have credibility and who focus on workers’ interestsrather than the political parties’. Moreover they too need to respect rightsand obligations.

Take a look at what demand Pratap Sarnaik, local MLA in Thane,Maharashtra, is making on a school run by Singhanias which allowed someconcessions to Raymond’s employees. The employees are no longer in service becausethey have retired under VRS. Sarnaik is deliberately ignoring that certainconcessions come to employees by virtue of their being employed. When theemployment ceases, the concessions which were available as employees also cannot be claimed. Sarnaik intends tosettle the issue by threat of violence. Unfortunately political interests overrideconsiderations of institutions’ rights under laws; and no political party canclaim clean record in that count.

In final analysis, people who can respond responsibly are required on both the sides of the table. Responsibility, Osho says, is the ability to provide appropriate response. [And it just does not apply to management and unions, it applies equally to the Government! Not stepping in to stop nonsense on industrial relations matter is abdication of responsibilities.]

Read the full story of Raymonds here.

Vivek

Walmart's Labour Litigation Expenses

2011-07-09T20:17:00.001+05:30

While surfing I read this, which you will find interesting:

"As a large company, Walmart spends a lot on litigation related to managing labor. In their 2011 Financial Report, Walmart reported 63 wage and hour class action lawsuits that were settled in 2009, which resulted in a pre-tax charge of $382 million. This expense is indicative of the scope of Walmart’s labor management legal expense. There are also highly visible lawsuits, such as the Braun/Hummel v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. class action lawsuit in which the plaintiffs allege that Walmart failed to pay class members for all hours worked and prevented class members from taking their full meal and rest breaks; and the Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., class-action lawsuit in which the complaint alleges that Walmart has engaged in a pattern and practice of discriminating against women in promotions, pay, training and job assignments. These cases have been adequately covered in other media outlets."

I am quoting Blog for Iowa, here is the link.

Vivek

Pay Revision and Performance Pay at Pune

2011-07-08T18:49:00.002+05:30

And here is some information about the recent settlementsaround Pune, which is fast becoming a big manufacturing hub.

1. Volkswagen has agreed to increase wages of their workmen byRs 7,000 pm in the first year. It will be followed by increase of Rs. 1,500 pm eachin the next two years. Thus, an average increase of Rs. 8,500 pm.

2. Thermax has reached a settlement with its employees. Theywill increase the wages by Rs 9730 pm. A performance pay scheme is expected toenhance this amount by another Rs 2,000 pm on an average.

3. Sandvik has signed a settlement which grants an estimatedincrease of Rs 5,000 pm to employees. Out of this amount, 50% will be accountedfor by Performance Pay. The criteria too has been decided in the settlement.

4. HiTech Plast has increased wages of their employees by Rs3,000 pm and offered a Performance Pay which can enhance earnings by a further Rs2,000 pm.

5. Bosch has increased wages by Rs. 4,500 pm in the first yearof settlement. In next two years it will be increased further by Rs. 2,000 pmeach.

6. Tata Motors has reportedly introduced a performance Payscheme linked to quality, volume of production etc. Details will be publishedsoon.

So Performance Pay is no longer to be found exclusively inthe pay packets of managers, almost all sets of employees are now sharing it.The trend in Pune makes it very clear.

This information does not tell us where all this takes the workers' wages to. Well, but considering the vast and ever increasing gap between managers' and workers' pay nobody will be complaining.

Vivek

[Picture courtesy: edweek.org]

Datta Iswalkar - Dinner with Ten

2011-07-02T15:36:00.000+05:30

At THRG we have been experimenting with various formats of interaction to enrich our knowledge and perspectives.

It began with series of ‘talks.’ Then we asked why not work with a theme? So we worked with a theme last year – it was ‘Telescoping in to Future.’

This year’s theme is ‘Uncorking the Mind.’ Obviously to focus on creativity in our work.

So we revisited interaction formats. And now there is a new format called ‘Dinner with Ten.’ Ten of us Core Team members have dinner with a person whom we would like to listen to.

We invited Anand Awadhani, MD of Unique Features to talk to us about their activities. They do outstanding work in social research. We became aware of many facts and issues which would not have caught our attention but for the Dinner with Ten, or more precisely Dinner with Awadhani in the instant case. Result: All donated sets of books worth Rs 4000 to 20000 to various needy schools in Maharashtra.

Yesterday [July 1] we invited Mr Datta Iswalkar to dinner with us. It was an unforgettable evening. Sharad Gangal [Thermax], Dipak Gadekar and Anil Joshi [Voltas], Daisy Garud [ICICI], Anil Kshatriya [AK Placements], Alok Sheopurkar [HDFC AMC], Prashant Karmalkar [ex Accenture, now with Circular Angle], and Anirudha Deshmukh dined with Dattaji.

You will recall the role Datta Iswalkar played in Bandh Girni Kamgar Sanghatana, read about him here [Link]

Vivek

Labour Minister's Assurance in EPFO matter

2011-06-25T14:08:00.000+05:30

Mallikarjun Kharge, Minister of Labour and Employment and Chairman Central Board of Trustees (EPF) Assures Transparency in the Management of EPFO Corpus

The 194th meeting of the Central Board of Trustees, EPF, which was the eleventh regular meeting of the present Board, was convened here today.

The Board deliberated upon a proposal for further extension of the selection process of the new fund managers for a period of two months effective from 01.07.2011. The Board also stipulated that the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation EPFO would finalize the selection of fund managers before the expiry of the extended period. Till such time the State Bank of India would continue as fund manager of EPFO corpus.

The Board also approved a proposal for appointment of custodian of securities of EPFO. This measure was taken to separate the custodial services separate from the Fund managers to bring further transparency in the management of EPFO corpus.

The Board also decided to refer the Report of the Working Group on Comprehensive Amendment to the Employees Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 to the Ministry of Labour & Employment for further examination.

The above decisions were taken under the Chairmanship of Shri Mallikarjun Kharge, the Union Minister of Labour and Employment and Chairman, CBT (EPF). Shri P.C. Chaturvedi Secretary (Labour & Employment) and Vice-Chairman of the CBT, EPF was also present in the meeting.

YSK
(Release ID :72870)

Maruti Suzuki Strike: Can we count on them?

2011-06-12T01:06:00.001+05:30

Here is what we know from the press reports about the Maruti Suzuki workers’ strike at their Manesar Plant. A quick recap will help us understand the situation well.

1. 1 The Manesar factory workers feel that the Gurgaon factory union does not represent them adequately. “The workers said the company currently has one union, Maruti Suzuki Kamgar Union, which is mainly dominated by those working at the Gurgaon facility. The Manesar plant is completely different and issues are also separate. So we are asking for recognition of our new union. But the management has forcibly taken written undertakings from workers that they are happy with the old union,” a source claimed.”

2. 2 The distance between Manesar and Gurgaon is not much, just about 15 Kms. So essentially the workforce is culturally the same, but they have obviously drifted apart in their relationship.

3. 3 Interestingly the Union at Manesar was not even registered, they have applied for it. AITUC which is trying to have a foot hold in Maruti Udyog is supported by INTUC in this battle for recognition.

4. 4 Striking workers are demanding the recognition of a new union — Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) — formed by those working at the Manesar plant, besides retaining contract labourers for the two upcoming new units inside the complex.

5. 5 Eleven workmen have been dismissed, and it is now one of the issues between the Company and the new union.

6. 6 Various unions operating in the area threatened to hold similar protests across other companies. Many issued notices to their companies, urging intervention in the matter or face protests. There are about 55 autoworkers unions in the Gurgaon-Manesar area, most affiliated to the central unions. The companies whose unions served notices include Rico Auto, Omaxe, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India and Satyam Auto. The unions said formation of a separate union at Manesar was legal, something acknowledged by the Haryana government earlier. They demanded that Maruti also take back the eleven sacked employees.

7. 7 The Haryana government, under the provisions of Industrial Disputes Act 1947, referred the dispute to the Labour Court. It has now banned the strike!

8. 8 AITUC secretary has said that they have essentially two demands – reinstatement of 11 workmen and recognition of the union at Manesar.

9. 9 The union elections are coming up. Manesar workers feel that they should not be represented by Maruti Suzuki Kamgar Union which is dominated by Gurgaon workers.

1010 Business Line quotes a worker from Manesar ““We have just one demand, that our workers at Manesar should not be forced to affiliate themselves with the Gurgaon union. That is a management-backed union and does not know of the problems at the Manesar plant.”

1111 No notice of strike was given to the Company by the Union.

What emerges from these facts is that the factions within the workers union are fighting their battle now by forming a separate union. Immediate recognition is sought and a strike is resorted to. Pressure is put on the management to concede the demands. The management must be in the most unenviable situation. The union at Gurgaon will be cautiously watching developments to jump in the fray at an appropriate moment.

The Government has invoked legal provisions to ban the strike but unions are not known to respect it anyway. Moreover they have garnered support of other workers in the other industries.

Quite obviously there are political motives. On a different plane, two establishments desiring to have separate representation is quite a common experience. There is some competition between them. The competition can take interesting turns but essentially it results in ego battles. When I was a student in early seventies, I had visited Tata Motors [then TELCO] office in Pune. A settlement was arrived between workers and the Tata management, [there was only one union then] but there was a dispute between workers on the question of where it should be signed – at Pimpri or Chinchwad.

The MRTU & PULP Act [a Maharashtra State Law] allows separate representational status of unions in different establishments even under the same management, but in practice it raises several issues for managements. Can the Company have two different wage structures for similar, if not identical, work at two factories just 15 Kms apart? That would be inevitable result of two different unions representing workers in two establishments. The situation in Maruti Udyog is akin to a man having two wives and getting caught in the cross fire.

The BIR Act which governed recognition of unions in textile industry provides the other extreme. It was so resented that we witnessed an industry wide strike that wiped off the textile industry in the city. Just as in the case of Maruti the unions are taking advantage of the law [or absence of it] to form separate unions, the situation in Mumbai’s textile industry was no different. It was nearly impossible to dislodge Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh as the representative union for the textile workers. This suited the ruling party, Congress. In fact, scrapping of the BIR Act also became one of the demands then.

So what should be done?

No law can ever cure such malaise. The eminent jurist, Nani Palkhiwala, while delivering a convocation address at XLRI argued that ‘Obedience to the unenforceable’ was the very essence of Industrial Relations. A code of conduct cannot be ‘enforced’, it must be willingly observed. This will surely sound philosophical, but if we are to have better industrial relations, there is no alternative.

Otherwise it will remain a story of industrial disputes and not industrial relations.

At the stage where our country is today, this is expected of both the parties, Managements and Unions. The Maruti Suzuki logo says 'Count on us.' Can we count on the management and workers of Maruti Suzuki to 'obey the unenforceable'?

Vivek

How Not To Make Learning A Boring Experience

2011-06-09T22:49:00.000+05:30

I knew that my attention span was a problem. I always had difficulty when a speaker spoke without involving the audience unless of course he was a very gifted speaker. But then such gifted speakers are a rare breed.

Later on I realised that I was not alone; others also had difficulty in concentrating when they were passive listeners. People usually find it difficult to sit at one place for over 90 minutes and also concentrate on the subject.

These thoughts came to my mind as I read the latest post on BPS Research Digest. [I concluded that I was not much at fault but the way training was delivered! I always suspected that to be the case!!]

The research there might lead to more interactive learning in the universities, and perhaps at the secondary school level. The post says ‘In a recent experience the researchers have found that A more interactive, discussion- and quiz-based style of university teaching brings dramatic benefits to science learning, according to a new study. The interactive approach takes its inspiration from psychologist Anders Ericsson's theory of "deliberate practice", a highly motivated and thorough form of learning. [Link]

We have read about the Knowles Andragogy. Malcolm Knowles was taught to think ‘systematically’ by his mother, a learning that got him many accolades. Here is an incident that led to the development of Knowles Andragogy.

One experience that deeply influenced his practice of adult education was provided by a retired New England corporation executive. In response to several potential participants who wanted to know more about the stars, Knowles had contacted a leading astronomer at Harvard who recommended his graduate assistant to teach the class. A dozen registrants appeared, but the lecture format did not work well. Interest waned. Numbers dwindled from class to class until Knowles had to cancel the program, although he knew the attenders were still interested in learning about the stars.

He began looking for someone who knew astronomy without being "locked into an academic teaching stance." Upon contacting an association of amateur astronomers in the Boston area, one of its members, a retired executive, agreed to teach the class.

The first of these night classes started with a trek to the roof of the YMCA building and a question. Participants were asked to look at the sky and to tell the instructor what they saw that aroused their curiosity. The amateur astronomer jotted down a series of items that were of interest to the group. On returning to the classroom, he used this "curriculum" in a relaxed, straightforward way, avoiding the didacticism that had initially alienated class members from a subject in which they had a deep interest. At the end of the session, he invited them to his home for the next class where they could view the stars from the comfort of his private observatory. By the second meeting the group membership had mushroomed from a dozen into eighteen.

Knowles had found the model of an effective teacher for his institution and for his own developing image of what an adult educator and adult education ought to be. Such experiences with the YMCA taught him that instructors had to care about learners' interests rather than what they believed ought to interest learners.[Link]

Vivek

Striking Off The Labour Agenda

2011-06-08T20:22:00.000+05:30

General Motors was the first in recent times to suffer loss on account of labour strife. Then came the news of some rumblings at Ford Motors. Hyundai is always on the hit list of labour unions, some say very justifiably so. And yes, Air India had its share of woes. Maruti Suzuki has joined this distinguished list. The strike at Manesar by a union reportedly not even registered under the Trade Unions Act is continuing when the news last came in.

What is striking about all these ‘strikes’ is that the press tracks the developments daily. Just as the negotiations details are informed to the readers, they also cover the daily production loss. In the case of GM and Air India these losses were reported very religiously day by day. That is quite a departure from what the Press used to do just a few years ago.

The reason is easy to understand. International competition, and even domestic too in some industries is so severe that organisations can hardly afford to allow strikes to prolong into months. There was a time when workers in Mumbai consciously chose to drive autos because they never wanted to be vulnerable at the hands of labour leaders and managements which allowed the strikes and lock-outs to continue for a very long time. Reputed organisations were moving to Gujarat which offered ‘industrial peace.’ Those days are over; we now are witnessing short period agitations.

What is getting missed out in this development is that multiplicity of unions is creating havoc. Contract labour is an area that is left completely unattended. Timid Government is not willing or perhaps unable to act on the basic malaise that affects Industrial Relations.

Or perhaps they have struck it off their agenda!

Vivek

Killing of an Institution: Maharashtra Institute of Labour Studies

2011-05-27T23:05:00.001+05:30

There is an unconfirmed report that Maharashtra Institute of Labour Studies, the alma mater of many distinguished HR professionals, is going to be closed down. It has led to a flurry of SMSs and emails.

The institute is a victim of total neglect by the Government authorities which has not allowed it to function at its best. For the last 40 years the institute has consistently failed to attract good faculty. Actually it has not attracted any faculty at all! Notwithstanding that there are several high profile alumni in the profession.

There is a very adverse reaction to this unconfirmed news as MILS [erstwhile Bombay Labour Institute and now LNMLMILS] is an age old institution perhaps of the same vintage as TISS which is trying to reinvent itself. The alumni is reportedly coming together to oppose the closure.

Vivek

Recruiting For Looks

2011-05-26T23:11:00.001+05:30

I met a young man recently who mentioned that his girl friend had quit her job. I know her; she is a young, well educated, smart and good looking person. The reason for her quitting the job was that she felt that she was recruited for her good looks and not for her talent. It seems that her boss often suggested the dress she should be wearing when they [as consultants] met prospective clients. She hated such a treatment and quit the job.

Ask any HR manager who has the experience of recruiting secretaries for the top managers and he will tell you that only good looks count.

The selection criteria for Air Hostesses make another such story. The advertisements often mention ‘clear skin’ which is a euphemism for fair skin. Kingfisher advertises that the requirement, among other things, is ‘Flawless skin with no visible tattoos, birthmarks, blemishes.’ The advertisement on Indianairlinesblog.com says ‘The potential air-hostesses – called flying models by Kingfisher – are expected to exude charm, vibrance [sic] and professionalism....’

I once travelled Qantas and found some flight pursers resembling the stocky Australian cricketer David Boon. They did not look bad, and they were efficient too. Why can’t the criterion be ‘being presentable?'

Wikipedia mentions the rules and regulations for the ‘Singapore Girl’ of Singapore Airlines, here are some: [Picture courtesy Wikipedia] [Quote]

The airline requires stewardesses and stewards to colour their hair black or dark brown. The airline does not allow for stewardesses or stewards to use highlights. Acceptable shades of hair colours are black or dark brown. Stewardesses with long hair are to coil their hair into buns or French Twists. Stewards are to sport short hair above their collar lines and sideburns no longer than the ear lobes. Fringes (bangs) of Stewards do not touch eyebrows.
No fanciful, dangling earrings allowed. Only studs or pearls. No chains and necklaces allowed. Only simple bracelets and rings can be worn. Only small and simple watches can be worn.
Toenails must be of the bright red colour prescribed by the company. If her toenails are not painted, stockings must be worn to substitute for the non red toenails.
Eyebrows must be shaped, and cannot be the fake drawn-on or tattooed types. Eye shadow must be of the colour prescribed by the company - either blue or brown, depending on skin tone.
Lipstick colour must be among the few shades of bright red prescribed by the company. Pink or plum colours are not allowed.
Nail polish must be of the bright red colour prescribed by the company. Nails should not be chipped.

The Singapore Girl marketing concept has been criticized as being sexist - apart from the inaccuracy of the term "Girl", the concept has been accused of being a stereotype of Asian women as being desirable and subservient to white males.[unquote] [Emphasis supplied]

I have often felt that [notwithstanding the story in the opening paragraph] women managers are often more insensitive than men in some of these issues. I was speechless when I met a young Management Trainee recently. I could not recognise her. The reason was that the young lady had done a ‘make over.’ Her boss, a middle aged lady had strongly ‘advised’ her that the management trainee was in a corporate job and must look like a corporate manager! So a make-over was necessary and the young lady complied. Not just men, but women also often treat other women like Barbie dolls!

Somebody has said that high achievers among women [and he quoted Indira Gandhi] are perceived as good looking. Women should not be recruited for their beauty, just as women should show courage to stop people using them for their looks alone.

Vivek

A Unique Training Program

2011-05-26T13:25:00.000+05:30

The EMPLOYERS FEDERATION OF INDIA and NHRD Network[Mumbai Chapter),the premier association of HR professionals in India, have come together with the Management Development Centre of We School[In the Top Twenty Business Schools of India] to present a very unique learning opportunity.

It has been of increasing concern that the discipline of Employee Relations (ER) is not being perceived as relevant/attractive as career option by students in Business Schools. Simultaneously, the faculty/trainers of ER, who are important links in the career guidance process of students, need to refresh their knowledge on ER practices, statutory applications and contemporary teaching‐learning experiences. This programme, to be held at Welingkar Institute on June 23 to 25th, seeks to bridge some of these gaps by investments in the teachers/trainers of Employee Relations.

The programme is directed by Mr Marcel R Parker [Chairman of IKYA Human Capital Solutions and a HR practitioner of long standing who is associated with the EFI, NHRD and We School].

Interested B Schools wishing to nominate their ER faculty should connect with Mr CS Seshadri of We School MDP Centre @ css.seshadri@welingkar.org and remit the fees @Rs 3000 per participant in favour of “Prin.L N Welingkar Institute of Management and Research” latest by June 10th 2011.

As the numbers of seats are limited, B Schools are requested to limit their nominations to TWO per institution.

Sales Promotion Employees Act: Mr. Sharad Patil's Interview

2011-04-27T22:41:00.000+05:30

The Sales Promotion Employees Act was extended to some industries recently. The Employers’ Federation of India has repeatedly made representations to the Government against such a move. We are publishing, with the consent of EFI, their representation.

We are also publishing an interview of Mr Sharad Patil, Secretary-General of EFI which is very informative. Mr. Sharad Patil needs no introduction, he is an accomplished HR professional and a person regarded very highly for his professional and personal integrity. We gratefully acknowledge the consent granted to publish both, EFI letter and his interview.

Q 1. The Sales Promotion Employees Act (SPE) has been made applicable to the following ten industries by the Government of India. What is your reaction to this decision?

A - EFI reaction to this decision is contained in the copy of our representation referred to above.

Q.2. What was the experience of the impact of the SPE Act on the Pharmaceuticals Industry?

A - Pharmaceutical industry experience is bad, to say the least. A few mandates effectively implemented by the Federation of Medical & Sales Representatives Association (FMSRA) include enforcing working hours, field meeting / conference timings as in office or factory and not as per requirement of business. Area Managers normally having to seek union’s written permission 7 days in advance for working with a medical representative marginalizing organizational functioning and adversely impacting business. Attracting and retaining high potential employees gets more difficult, as there are other better options. Today’s youth seeks greater freedom to decide for themselves. There may be some justifications for unions to espouse causes of sales people but strangulating business also creates a possible stereotype amongst emplolyees and impacts freedom to function.

Pharmaceutical industry has made several high level representations to the Government but so far to no avail. EFI has not only just stood by the Pharma Industry but continues to exeret its influence in contributing to possibly improve the current scenario. It perhaps is early to say how this will be possible. I am an eternal optimist and strongly believe in the goodness of human beings.

Q.3. Why are the employers opposing extension of coverage under the SPE Act?

A - Employers in notified industries have not yet experienced the implications and are blissfully silent on the issue. I hope these industries proactively deal with the situation. EFI will be happy to help

Q.4. Please tell us the efforts made by EFI to represent the employers’ case in this matter.

EFI has represented this matter at various tripartite fora but find that the Governments both Central and the States have more sympathies with Sales Promotion Employees. Their Associations have worked hard at it and taken advantage of lack of appreciation of issues by the beaurocracy across the country.

Q.5. What are the challenges before the Industry and to what extent the Government is addressing them effectively?

A - Nature of work performed by Sales Promotion employees particularly in the field is very different than that of in a factory or office. The law makers and the enforcers have inadequate understanding and appreciation of nature of work done by the field sales people. Other than Pharmaceutical Industry, other industries and their associations have more or less remained silent about this impending legislative change.

- Dealing with multifarious unions of multi-location employees and Government officials across the country.

- Government plans to deal with them with their existing machinery.

The challenges are

(a) “Appropriate Government” being State Government in case of disputes having to deal with State Government across the country

(b) Lawless behavior of sales promotion employees union makes functioning difficult for businesses particularly in case of field sales – not as much work in a office or a show room. Government support is lacking in cases of law and order situations.

(c) Sourcing good employees : Bright, young educated people shun the sales promotion employees job as they do not wish to be part of unionized workforce. They prefer to work with freedom in a non-unionized work place.

(d) Lowering productivity of sales promotion employees will hurt SME’s more than others.

==========================

The Employers Federation of India

March 22, 2011

Shri Prabhat Chandra Chaturvedi, IAS,
Secretary to Government of India
Ministry of Labour & Employment
Government of India
Shram Shakti Bhavan, Rafi Marg,
New Delhi – 110 001

Dear Shri Prabhat Chaturvediji,

Sales Promotion Employees Act - Extension to 10 other Industries
Ministry of Labour & Employment, Notification, New Delhi,
31 January 2011

We have following submissions to make with regard to the above Notification.

1.    Regrettably the Notification is not in keeping with the spirit of tripartism. Minutes of the meeting held on 12 November 2010 mention of “Broad consensus reached at the meeting”, when in fact there was no consensus. Demands of the trade unions were conceded despite total strong and unequivocal opposition by employers representatives based on facts.

2.    EFI and other employers’ representatives even requested as a last resort, to discuss the matter with concerned industries and other representatives before extending coverage of SPE Act which has been denied, without even giving reasons for the same.

3.    From time to time, the Pharmaceutical Industry and on their behalf the Employers’ Federation of India have brought to the notice of the Ministry of Labour and Employment atrocities and unlawful activities perpetrated by the FMSRAI on Pharmaceutical industry. We earnestly request your goodself to listen to the problems of the Pharmaceutical Industry and find solution preventing FMSRAI and their associates from indulging in atrocities and unlawful activities which are not in the best interests of the industry and its employees.

: 2 :

4.    Ministry of Labour and Employment in issuing this Notification has also not taken into account request by the Ministry of MSME for “keeping MSME Sector out of the purview of the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act 1976.

5.    The Notification also does not take into account AYUSH’s request that “the Department instead like to consult the Associations which are around 14 in number on matters concerning the Sales Promotion Employees”.

6.    We refer to our submissions contained in our letter of 29 December 2010 on the above subject state that the Employers’ representatives were/are totally opposed to extension of the Sales Promotion Employees Act to 10 other industries for the reasons enumerated at the meeting as well as in our letter dated 29 December 2010.

We have two requests to make :-

(i)            Consider rescinding the Notification and implement only after taking into account views of the concerned industries, and

(ii)          Initiate appropriate actions on unions engaging in atrocities and unlawful activities which is not in overall interests of employers and employees.

We would be willing to provide information requested in this behalf.

Thanking you,

SHARAD S.PATIL                                                                                                        Secretary General

c.c. Mr. Ravi Mathur
       Additional Secretary – Government of India
     Ministry of Labour & Employment, New Delhi

Deflated Tyres of Dunlop

2011-04-06T23:28:00.000+05:30

Dunlop is really looking like a deflated tyre now.

They declared a ‘lay-off’ allegedly without seeking mandatory permission under the Industrial Disputes Act. That was a fatal flaw and it was compounded by another one – the State of West Bengal is going to polls. Dunlop must have calculated that closing down operations in the factory at such transient times may pass.

And they have developed cold feet now. Ruias say that they were sitting in Bangkok debating fate of this plant with managers when the local managers decided to close down the plant. So Ruias rescinded their decision. That’s the official version.

This story sounds so familiar.

It is time for industrialists to invent better excuses for doing a somersault. We saw that the original script of this drama was written by Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways when he told the press that he did not know that over 1000 probationers or trainees were going to be sacked. Having said that, he reversed the decision of his local managers. Dunlop has followed Jet Airways. In Jet Airways case, Raj Thackeray grabbed the credit for reinstatement of employees. We can wait and watch who the Dunlop closure and reopening will help.

Dunlop has had more than its share of labour trouble. The plant is located in West Bengal where Communist party is in power. Who will believe Ruias? Did anyone believe Naresh Goyal?

Pawan Ruia, Chairman of Dunlop has sought 'co-operation' of workers! Whatever he may say, it appears that the eventual closure seems to be inevitable. These are all tell-tale signs.

The fact is that these instances show that there are big employers who follow primitive practices of managing employees. This is unfortunately happening when so much attention is being paid to building good work ethic, employee relations and employee satisfaction.

Attitudes, unlike tyres, are difficult to change. Not just workers’ attitudes but employers’ too.

Vivek

Sales Promotion Employees Act Covers More Industries

2011-03-31T17:33:00.000+05:30

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GAZETTE OF INDIA, EXTRAORDINARY,

PART II, SECTION 3(1), DATED 31ST JANUARY 2011

MINISTRY OF LABOUR & EMPLOYMENT

( Coordination Section)

NOTIFICATION

New Delhi, dated 31 January 2011

S.C. 217 (E):- In exercise of the powers conferred by Section 3 of the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1976 (11 of 1976), the Central Government, having regard to the nature of the industry, the number of employees employed in such industry to do any work relating to promotion of sales or business or both, the conditions of service of such employees and such other factors which in its opinion relevant, hereby declare the following industries to be a notified for the purposes of the said Act, with effect from the date of publication of this notification in the Official Gazette, namely:-

1. Cosmetics, soaps, household cleaners and disinfectants

2. Readymade garments

3. Soft drink manufacturing industries

4. Biscuits and confectioneries

5. Ayurvedic, Unani and Homeopathic Medicines

6. Automobiles including accessories and spare parts

7. Surgical equipments, artificial prosthesis and diagnostics

8. Electronics, computers including accessories and spares

9. Electrical appliances

10. Paints and varnishes

(F.No.Z-200251301201 0-Coord.)

K.M.Gupta, Economic Advisor

Thane HR Group

2011-03-30T12:40:00.000+05:30

Join Thane HR Group on Facebook. Here is the Link

Dr. Rajen Mehrotra on Industrial Relations

2011-03-25T22:30:00.000+05:30

[Dr. Rajen Mehrotra born in 1945 is an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer with a Masters and Ph.D. Degree in Management from the University of Mumbai. He has excelled in his career in academics [NITIE], in industry [Mukand, Novartis] and in ILO. His insightful views on various subjects are candid and studied. He is a highly respected professional who is respected for his knowledge, integrity and his contribution to the HRM.]

HResonance sought his views on two questions [as a part of our celebrations of blogging 100 posts,] and here are his responses:

There is suddenly a realisation in the Industry that competenices to manage Industrial Relations [or Employee Relations] are in short supply. What is your view and why has this happened?

The 1991 economic reforms in India led to most companies relooking at their product portfolio by restructuring their product, process and people to ensure that the business remains competitive. The decade from 1991 to 2001 saw large number of manufacturing companies introducing Voluntary Retirement Schemes and a total shift in the way manufacturing activities are performed. During the same period, there was a high growth in the service sector. In the last 20 years (i.e. 1991 to 2011), professionals that have entered in HR have not had the opportunity to acquire the requisite skill of handling Industrial Relations (IR) or Employee Relations (ER) because majority of them have entered the service sector and/or deal with executives and not workmen, hence competency in this area of IR or ER is in short supply. While the student who pass out from academic institute are taught IR or ER, but the apprenticeship of learning only take place when one goes through the experience of handling this activity which in most cases is when you have to deal with employees who are defined as workmen under the Industrial Dispute Act or when you have to deal with union leaders who represent the workmen. Very few HR professionals are going through this apprenticeship.

Presently one is seeing a growth in the manufacturing sector and coupled with it there is a shortage of HR professionals who have these competencies. I am a firm believer that this is a passing phase and the youngsters when placed in manufacturing sector will learn it just the way we learnt when we were young.

There is a fear that violence in Industrial Relations is raising its head. What is your view?

My view is there may be a few incidence of violence but it is not the type of militancy that we saw in the country in the 70s & 80s. Whenever violence takes place, there are two sides of the coin and the same needs to be viewed not only from the management perspective but also from the workmen and union leaders’ perspective. I am a firm believer that if one builds relationship and has continuous communication, is fair and just, violence does not take place. Sporadic instances in the country can not be looked as a trend.

Thanks, Dr. Mehrotra,

Vivek

Growing Vertebrae: Mr. Shashikant speaks at THRG

2011-03-14T13:03:00.003+05:30

[This is a summary of the speech of Mr H R Shashikant, Group HR Head, Aditya Birla Group at the meeting of Thane HR Group on March 12, 2011. This summary is prepared by Ms Sonali Sarma, Head L&D, ACC Cement on my request, and she was helped by Kavi, Head L&D, Asian Paints; my thanks to both of them. This is the 99th post on this blog!]

Mr. Shashikant Group Head HR of the Aditya Birla Group, addressed the Thane HR fraternity on the evening of Saturday the 12th of March. Using the outside to inside focus he gave the HR professionals a glimpse into the future of the profession, of the skills it would require and most of all made each person in the group introspect on what “sort of a HR professional one was and what would be required to remain a good HR professional in the future” .Every sensitive & thinking participant left with a question

"Do I have the courage of conviction to act and do as I see right & best for my organization, for my profession and most importantly for myself?”

He predicted that India would continue to grow at a rate of around 6% GDP & China at about 8%, this growth would be both in the manufacturing and services sectors. The US would grow at a steady pace of 3% and the European union at about 2.1 %. However the world employment will grow at meager 0.8%, yet around 40% of that employment would be fueled by India and China. That being so, the cutting edge requirement in market would not be product or cost but service differentiation. The reason is clear; the former two would not bring in much difference as much as “human touch” would. If the Human touch is to be the single differentiating factor for industries to be competitive, Shashi says, “You as the HR professional would have your job at least for the next ten years”. Yet the job would be different, the employer expectations would be different and the context would have changed.

Global companies would require HR professionals who would understand the local mindset and local companies would want HR professionals who would operate with the Global mindset. Workforce retention would remain and rather rise to be an issue to reckon with. Employees would choose to be in a large or small company, global or local company, depending on what stage of life & experience they would be at. The Employee relation professional or the yesteryears which India has collectively lost will be back in demand. The OD professional with depth of knowledge in understanding individual, group and organization behavior would be required. Both these persons would be required to do a stellar role in the future. Professionals with high collaboration skills, problem solving skills would be sought after.

Organizations will require good grievance redressal systems. Safety at Work will become very important. Safety not only in terms of having an accident free workplace, but having a secure and safe work place. Does the organization make women feel safe? Is it supportive of the differently abled people? Has it taken care of these seemingly small but eminently present micro inequities?

If these be the challenges of tomorrow, Shashi propounded that it is obvious that the HR professional of the morrow would require to drive employee trust. He would need to understand people and be one amongst them and not the one sitting away in a virtual office somewhere. The OD professional would need to design and develop organizational initiatives which would enable the leadership to steer the organization through tumultuous times, not once but many times over. The Compensation and Benefit professional would remain as a specialist. The learning and development professional will be outsourced to shared services and work from consulting organizations.

If the HR professional needs to champion the cause of the employees and also balance it out with needs of the business then it is imperative that the person knows a bit of business, bit of production & process, a bit of Sales and marketing and has a lot of functional depth and expertise in at least two pillars/two areas of his own function. If the HR professional is to act as an internal consultant to his own production and sales staff, he needs to be able to give more to the line manager than what he knows already. Needs to mirror to them what actions they are taking, what they could do better or differently. In other words as quoted by Ram Charan in an interview with Shashikant, “the HR professional needs to know the basic guts of the business”. All managers need predictability. The deliverables have to be specific, on time, always without fail. Is the HR professional ready to guarantee that predictability in a constantly changing business environment? Ultimately the hands that reduce and the feet that sell are the Heroes & Heroines, all others are character actors.

All this lead to one very central and important question, that Shashi asked the audience,” Do we as HR professionals have the “Courage of Conviction” to stand up, vouch for a different and better way of doing things, are we ready to put our necks on the chopping block for that?”. This was the central theme of Shashi’s talk. He quoted many examples from industry, some from his experiences which portrayed how each and every time he personally had to stand up for what he believed in, he needed to bring in multiple data points. The ability to look for this data, present it and relate it, draw correlations to the problem at hand, is one of the strong skills which would be required of an HR professional worth his backbone! After all opinion is discounted, but data counts!

If the HR professional could do this, stand up for the values of his profession, prove his mettle with data then he would also become central to the organization rather than remain a “midwife”.

Shashi said that conviction comes from the deep knowledge of one’s own function and courage comes from one’s own value systems and from the point of time in life or the compelling circumstances that a person is at that time. Both these together help the HR professional either to stand firm and make the right choice or merely flow and drift with the current. Growing vertebrae, developing a backbone is a function of this courage of conviction.

Vivek

The Dance of Inclusion And Exclusion

2011-03-03T10:29:00.000+05:30

[Address delivered on Feb 26, 2011 at the International Institute of Management Excellence, Nerul, Navi Mumbai]

I would like to thank Dr Sengupta, HEF and this Institute for giving me an opportunity to present my thoughts. The subject is ‘Managing Conflicts in Organisations – Role of HR.’

1. I guess there is nobody in this audience who is not affected, favourably or otherwise, by a conflict. They would have experienced conflicts and would have gained insights. For that reason my task is easy because you would easily relate to what I am going to speak about; and for the same reason of your having insights my task is also difficult because you will have very firm views on the subject.

2. Let me state the central theme of my talk. It is that ‘Conflicts within the organisation cannot be eliminated. The way to manage conflicts is to focus on relationships, and to focus on how each person or group is influenced by the relationship and how each person or group is influencing the relationship.’ The role of HR is to create suitable interventions and processes on this premise. I will develop this central thought.

3. Let us first reflect on our experience of working within the organisation. We see three types of conflict situations more frequently.

The first and the most visible conflict which is also the most written about conflict is that between management and union. It takes the form of agitations in various ways; the most common are strikes and lockouts. The conflict between management and union is the most deadly because it results in financial loss to both the parties. Sometimes it leads to loss of jobs as we have seen in the case of textile strike. About two lakh jobs were lost then. The metaphor to describe this conflict is ‘a battle.’

4. The second very common conflict starts when a company acquires another. When it comes to mergers and acquisitions deals in India, the total number was 287 from the month of January to May in 2007. It has involved monetary transaction of over US $47 billion. Out of these 287 merger and acquisition deals, there have been 102 cross country deals with a total valuation of over US $28 billion. That tells us the magnitude. A merger and acquisition is like a marriage. It changes the relationships between people in those organisations and across those organisations. The people in the acquired organisation feel a sense of betrayal. The people in acquiring organisation often feel a sense of victory, a sense of conquest. These feelings at the beginning of relationship ensure that the conflict begins at the first step. A manager of an acquired organisation once gave me a very apt metaphor. He pointed out that the vanquished king often gave away his daughter, a princess, in marriage to the victorious king. He mentioned that the people in the acquired organisation have the same feeling that the princess would have had in being the part of the new organisation. A deep sense of betrayal and an uncertain future!

5. The third common conflict is the interface conflict. Like a snake and mongoose that are genetically programmed to be at war with each other, there are some interface conflicts like those between Production and Maintenance departments, or between Marketing and R&D. Perhaps the metaphor of snake and mongoose overstates the case, but there surely is something very natural about such conflicts. These conflicts are inherent in the structure of the organisation. If the organisation is structured as comprising Strategic Business Units then we can see organisations within organisation. These SBUs fight for resources which could be finance, or human resource. The leadership in such a situation has the same problem of sibling rivalry that has hassled every parent.

Unlike strike which has a clear beginning and end, and unlike M&A where the recast relationships get accepted over a period of time, the interface issues trouble the leadership within the organisation almost every day. The cost of such conflicts is hidden. It does not take great intelligence to realise that the magnitude is high. These interface conflicts are like haemophilia where wounds bleed incessantly.

6. The fourth and perhaps the most dangerous form of conflict is that within the investor family members. A large number of organisations in India are controlled by investor families. The members of the family have their ambitions and aspirations. Their personal and professional lives are inextricably intertwined. As the successive generation of the investor family goes to work, the problem becomes increasingly complicated. The competition between two or more members of the family impacts the present and future of the organisation. Transition of power and division of territories led to unprecedented blood bath at the time of partition. And the battle of succession led to Mahabharat. These dramas are re-enacted if the family conflicts are not managed well.

7. Let me advert to the central theme of this presentation. I said that ‘The way to manage conflicts is to focus on relationships, and to focus on how each person or group is influenced by the relationship and how each person or group is influencing the relationship.’ I would now like to take one example in each type of conflict and explain how those were managed.

8. One of the most well documented case of Union and management conflict is Toyota’s joint venture with General Motors at NUMMI. The NUMMI plant was notorious for very bad industrial relations. The employees were organised in a union by United Auto Workers which was a union known to oppose changes in production standards. Toyota on the other hand was committed to continual improvement. Toyota kept the entire work force together during the days of low business period. They trained the workforce and eventually won the trust of the United Auto Workers. The manager who led this was Kiyoshi Furuta. He was subsequently moved to another assignment. But when a dispute arose at NUMMI on a certain issue, the union asked for his intervention and even assured that they will accept his judgement as final.

9. Quite clearly the game was to build trust by ensuring fairness in managing people. Toyota believed in listening to employees directly to ensure fairness and consistency of approach which are the two cornerstones of trust. They focused on building ideal relationship rather than concerning themselves excessively with the past. This indeed is the modern approach to conflicts.

10. This was a case where a latent conflict was diffused through effective leadership. But sometimes a strike or a lock out becomes inevitable. Since the management is saddled with the responsibility of influencing parties that affect its business, they have to ask themselves whether they take pride in ‘crushing’ a union or in creating a dialogue on what went wrong and how it could have been managed differently. A strike or a lockout invariably has its roots in failure to influence perceptions of the employees. I believe that the HR’s role should be to lead a dialogue among the managers and with workmen to understand what could have averted the immense loss that industrial strife causes. This is not an easy job. When battle lines are drawn, the attitudes harden. Reason is done away with and emotions take over. A dispassionate analysis of an emotionally charged experience becomes very difficult. At the same time, such situations need it more than any other. If we do not see the reality as seen by others we can never build good relations.

A strike or a lockout also creates a divide between employees. The ‘loyal’ employees and the ‘striking’ employees nurse such ill will against others that it takes years to normalise. This brings out another dimension of exclusion. A three party battle between the management and the two groups of workmen is the most unenviable situation for rebuilding relationships for an HR Manager.

11. Coming to the conflicts in mergers and acquisitions cases, two way communication and setting the basis for building relationship makes a big positive difference. Ratan Tata used novel ways to reach out to Korean employees when Tata Motors acquired the Korean company. He is reported to have made very effective communication when Tata Steel acquired Corus. The personnel in acquired companies are apprehensive on two counts: [a] the workplace relationship changes. Sometimes a matrix structure is imposed when the managers have to report to others in another country. The local manager in charge of operations sometimes gets reduced to a reporter of sales and profits; he loses his authority and power significantly. [b] The other factor is that the employees in the acquired company think that some of them would lose jobs. Changes to organisation structure and rationalisation of manpower may be essential in some cases, but the real issue is whether it is carried out with a human touch.

12. The name of the game is inclusion even in all conflicts. It is about creating long term relationship. And to bring the focus back on relationship the dialogue is essential. Toyota demonstrated it exceptionally well.

13. When it comes to interface conflicts, a lot of research and technique comes handy. The pioneering work was done by Blake and Mouton. There are reports of further improvements in approaches to address the interface conflicts. Their methodology of solving interface conflicts is very simple: Create a model of optimal relationship, Create a model of actual relationship and Plan for change from actual to optimal. This simple methodology brings out in the open views of conflict held by people. The cynical views, the fears, the long held beliefs by the parties are then out in the open. People also see how they actually contributed to the conflict. Once they resolve to change the reality, a big step is taken towards resolution. When they plan for change together, the resolve only gets stronger.

14. What is the role of HR in managing conflicts? I would like to ask who is HR? Is it the HR department? Or is it the Chief Executive because he is the real HR head? I would say that the managers in the leadership positions together have a big role to play in managing conflicts. At a certain level the managers cannot assume sectoral roles, they cannot say that they are just Sales Director or Technical Director. They have to wear the hat of corporate leaders who are role models for others. By doing so, they promote inclusiveness. Such leaders will have to step in to manage conflicts, in other words they will have to focus on the things they need or desire as an organisation, and not things needed or wanted by individuals.

The HR Department’s role in my opinion is to arm them with the necessary skills of facilitation.

15. Another important issue is how do we interpret the words ‘Achievement’, ‘Co-operation’ or ‘Teamwork’? I would like to take this opportunity to read out a passage from an article by a noted researcher, Alfie Kohn, in the field of education. To me personally it brings some fresh perspective. I quote:

“The predominant experience with cooperation in our society consists of having a group of people work together in order to defeat another group of people. The group may be a basketball team, a company, or, in its most dangerous incarnation, an entire country. While some activities featuring a blend of intra-group cooperation and intergroup competition, such as sports, are widely acclaimed precisely on the basis of promoting teamwork, the most salient lesson they actually teach is that the ultimate reason to cooperate is to defeat a common enemy. Such a message is mixed at best and exceedingly damaging at worst.

Considerable evidence suggests that (1) nothing about the nature of group functioning presupposes the presence of a common enemy, (2) intergroup competition does not enhance, and may actually diminish, the achievement of a given group, and (3) intergroup competition also is unnecessary for promoting in-group affiliation and other social benefits of cooperation. A comprehensive review of the classroom research supports the finding that "cooperation seems to promote better relationships when intergroup competition is absent."

16. The enemy must not be within the organisation. An HR manager once described a strike situation to me. I asked him what he would label the drama of human emotions in it. His answer was ‘The Dance of Inclusion and Exclusion.’ I agree.

Vivek

Ostriches Do Not Bury Their Head In Sand, Government Does!.

2011-02-27T20:49:00.000+05:30

[Following is reproduced from Business Standard report titled 'Government pats its back for peaceful 2010. Contrary to popular belief Ostriches do not bury their head in sand; now we know that Governments do!]

The government has praised itself for maintaining industrial peace, citing reduced number of strikes and lockouts, but was silent on sporadic labour violence and contract-based appointments of non-unionised workforce.

The Economic Survey 2010-11 said, “Due to the constant endeavour of industrial relations machineries of both the Centre and states, the industrial relations climate has generally remained peaceful and cordial. The number of incidents of strikes and lockouts has exhibited a declining trend over the past few years. Strikes and lockouts have declined from 349 in 2009 to 99 in 2010. Correspondingly, the total number of mandays lost has also declined from 9169,037 in 2009 to 1699,826 in 2010.”

According to the All India Trade Union Congress National Secretary D L Sachdeva, there is no machinery for monitoring or enforcing basic entitlements like minimum wages, which make labour law violations routine. Workers are not able to form unions, as most of them are on contract. So, there were no strikes and that was not a reflection of a cordial atmosphere, he said.

The Untold Thomson Press Story

2011-02-22T22:40:00.000+05:30

Two things caught my attention when I met Rajan Raje, the union leader, on the first occasion. He was invited to speak at a seminar which I was also attending. His philosophical mooring was unmistakable and so also his passion about his work. I also discovered that he stayed not too far from my residence. I wrote to him asking if he would be willing to grant me an interview.

Raje was more than willing, he called back to tell me that I should rather spend a good time with him. For me it was a great opportunity, we fixed our meeting.

I waited for him opposite our building; he was about ten minutes late. That was quite excusable given his busy schedule. I had seen union leaders come very late. A silver coloured WagonR pulled up in front – this was a surprise I was expecting him to come in a better vehicle, perhaps an Innova or a similar vehicle. Raje was sitting on the rear seat and he urged me to sit in the front which was more comfortable given that there were three persons on the rear seat. He was polite and insisted that I occupy the front seat and be comfortable. ‘Thomson kade ghe re’ [Take us to Thomson Press] he instructed his driver.

We moved towards Thane Belapur Road. Raje was speaking passionately and he seemed unstoppable. “Vikrant Karnik was beaten up mercilessly. He was given up as dead. He later got up somehow and went to doctor. It was good that he went to Civil Hospital. Two doctors started stitching up his wounds and later two more joined. They stitched up his wounds like a ‘godhadi’ is stitched.” He said. [Vikram Karnik was a social activist who had taken on a local Shiv Sena leader who is suspected to be behind the assualt.] Our conversation was interrupted by a few telephone calls which were in connection with the assault on Karnik. Some people were asking him to take the lead role in the agitation.

For a Mumbaikar who are known to sprinkle at least two English words in their sentences when they speak, Raje was exceptionally good in speaking his mother tongue, Marathi. No surprise as he is a scholar who has consistently done exceptionally well in academics. His academic bent of mind shows repeatedly as Raje quotes liberally from Bhagavadgita and other scriptures. I wondered whether it will work in his favour, but I was later proven wrong. The workers listened to him with full attention.

We were now on the Thane Belapur road. This road was known to be the hub of blue chip companies in seventies and eighties. Nocil, Polyolefins, Pfizer, Union Carbide, Poysha, ICI were some of the companies which had set up their manufacturing facilities there, later many of them fled to Gujarat. Those companies are now replaced by giants like Reliance, and there is quite a presence at this location of the print media establishments. Thomson Press, Hindustan Times, Lokmat, Times of India have their units on the Thane Belapur Road.

We crossed the Hindustan Times facility. “They have given a Rs 5,000 pm rise when they heard of unrest in Thomson Press and heard that many of their workers had come to me with a request to lead their union” he said. “The benefits of liberalisation have not at all percolated down to lowest strata of the society. It is swallowed by the affluent. My workers are where they were and time is running out. They are paid low wages. So they have no choice but to work 12 hours a day if they want to make both ends meet. The entire minimum wage calculation is a farce. It should be increased three times straight away.”

We reached the tent opposite Thomson Press main gate. The strike had entered ninth month. Workers eagerly surrounded our car. He got down from the car. The air was filled with expectations. As we approached the tent many workers bowed down and touched his feet. May touched mine too – I felt embarrassed and asked them not to do it. I remembered how ladies, probably widows of deceased workers, who were to receive payment from Workmen’s Compensation Commissioner would stand in front of him with great expectations and folded hands. People place so much hope on people in authority in our society I realised.

The tent was a make shift arrangement but over one hundred workers assembled under its roof. There was a wooden platform inside. We climbed up the platform. One worker put three plastic chairs for us. I took my seat. I had not expected this moment; I was not afraid of it either. He made a brief speech introducing me and asked me to speak. This was getting very interesting. As HR Head of a large company I had faced many strikes and lockouts. I believed I had a good understanding of the psyche of workers; but meeting them at the negotiation table is one thing and in their tent is another; this situation was different. I saw curiosity in workers eyes. I spoke briefly about conflicts and ended my talk by wishing them good luck in settling the dispute to their benefit.

Raje got up. He asked all to put their mobiles on silent mode. But two workers sitting in the front row switched on mobiles and video-recorded entire speech. Raje ignored them. [Towards the end of his speech he mentioned that there would be some spies of the management in the crowd, but he was not afraid of them.] In a fiery speech lashing out at the Government and political leaders, he lamented the inaction of the middle class. Raje pointed out that there was no middle class person who attended the protest for the assault on Vikrant Karnik. Raje also mixed cleverly capitalism’s Indian mascots instead of using the word capitalist. He blamed Gujaratis and Marwaris for taking a short term view of the business to personal gains. His diatribes were aimed at political leaders at Thane in particular who were willing to take up the case of Thomson’s workers only if it suited their political positions. He explained how contract labour ‘system’ was working against their interest.

Before he ended his speech he cautioned Thomson Press workers that their struggle was reaching the final and decisive stage. He gave them two options and said that the decision was theirs as they had to finally decide their own future. He asked them to close eyes so that they did not allow themselves to be influenced by others, and then explained the two options twice or may be thrice. The workers voted in favour of one option almost unanimously. [For obvious reasons, I am not giving details of the option.]

Raje sat down. There was a round of applause. I sensed tension, but also felt that the workers were expecting these options and they were not caught by surprise. Some workers quickly filled up plates for all. Both Raje and I ate along with the workers of Thomson Press.

I spoke to one of them who stood close to me. “This struggle is very long drawn, you must have suffered,” I said to initiate conversation. “We used to work twelve hours every day. Yes they paid us overtime, but it was paid only on basic wage and they kept it very low. The allowances were high” he said. Another joined the conversation, “They employ contract labour. They must be employing ten contract workers for every permanent worker. They don’t pay any attention to our grievances. It does not matter now whether the Press runs or closes down, but things must change.”

We got back in the car. Workers surrounded it, they waived at Raje. He said that Aroon Purie [Chairman of Thomson Press] had blocked all press coverage of this eight and half month old strike.

I came home and googled to see if that was true. Search of ‘Thomson Press Strike’ drew blank. No news of the strike at all.

I narrated the experience to a friend. “There is a rumour that Thomson Press has sold the land to Reliance” he told me. A Reliance establishment is not situated too far away from Thomson Press.

I could see the shape of things to come; is this is a typical story of businesses today? I hope not, but I know deep inside that I am wrong!

Vivek

Competencies of HR Managers - Looking into the Mirror

2011-02-20T00:33:00.002+05:30

At Thane HR Group, Prashant conducted a survey. The results are very interesting. In all, 104 HR professionals participated in the survey. The following were the conclusions:

The survey asked respondents to rank their competencies in the order of strength. The strongest competency was to be ranked 1 and the weakest 11.

Here is the result:

Analytical Ability 5.47/11

Business Case Development Skills 8.74/11

Communication Skills 4.43/11

Decision Making Skills 5.05/11

Innovativeness 6.34/11

Interpersonal Skills 4.68/11

Financial Skills 8.94/11

Leadership Skills 5.28/11

Management Skills 5.93/11

Problem Solving Skills 5.70/11

Team Building Skills 5.66/11

They ranked themselves low on the following competencies in the order of weakness - Financial Skills, Business Case Development Skills, and Innovativeness.

And the HR Managers ranked themselves high on Communication Skills, Interpersonal skills and Decision Making.

It looks like they are saying ‘I am doing my job sans much innovation; I don’t understand the business metric and do not know how to justify an initiative. But I can relate to people well and am decisive!’

Very interesting, indeed!

What do you think about this result? Does it match with your perception of a typical HR manager?

Vivek

The Nokia CEO Fans The Flames On His Burning Platofrm

2011-02-10T23:01:00.001+05:30

The Nokia Chief Stephen Elop’s letter is very interesting. Disappointing to be more precise. Now we learn that it was not a letter but it was the post put on the Nokia’s internal blog by the CEO.

The 'letter' describes in great detail a frightening pucture of business scenario. The letter is not inspiring confidence among the employees at all. A leader must show the way and inspire confidence that he can bail the organisation out of trouble. Here is a CEO writing how the ‘platform is burning.’ He is not only standing on a burning platform as he says, but is actually fanning the flames.

There is another lesson to be learnt. It is difficult to keep anything from the press. Blogs on Intranet are getting circulated across the globe. While we have outstanding communication facilities, we are also creating avenues for public debate on internal matters of the organisation.

Here is the letter. You will notice that precisely the last four sentences only are devoted to reassurance. But let me begin with an ‘Update’ available on Engadget.com which I am quoting verbatim:

We've now heard from multiple trusted sources that this memo is indeed real, and was posted to an internal Nokia employee system. That makes it one of the most exciting and interesting CEO memos we've ever seen -- and we're absolutely dying to see how Elop plans to shake things up.

Overall, the communique laments Nokia's lateral movement while Apple and Google have started eating its lunch on the mid- and high end and Shenzhen-based off brands have started to cut into its traditional dominance in emerging markets, leaving Espoo with virtually zero market leadership. It's a stark revelation that seems befitting of a man brought in from the outside -- he's neither Finnish, nor raised in the Nokia system -- and he promises to start revealing the way forward this Friday at the company's Capital Markets Day event where grandiose plans have been unveiled in the past.

Whether the memo is legitimate or not, the frequency and intensity of big-time rumors floating around Nokia ahead of Capital Markets Day (and MWC next week) have been pretty wild: we've heard they'll be announcing a partnership with Microsoft possibly revolving around Windows Phone 7, that a boatload of executives would be shown the door, and that Elop would start looking to Nokia's new Silicon Valley campus as its center of gravity, with execs and senior management expected to start spending more time outside Finland.

The Letter

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we eitherbuild, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen

What Matters in Industrial Relations?

2011-01-15T12:37:00.001+05:30

There is a saying that ‘the trouble with future is that it arrives before we are ready for it.’ It is a pleasant surprise therefore to find that the topic ‘Towards an efficient Industrial Relations System’ purports to discuss what needs to be done to shape the future. [* This was a speech delivered at IMI, Delhi at their HR Meet on Nov 27, 2010]

Let us ask ourselves ‘What will be the scenario if we are to have an efficient Industrial Relations system?’ Perhaps ‘efficient’ is not the right word; I would suggest ‘effective Industrial relations.’ The answer is obvious: we will see a very positive workplace.

There are two organisations which are coming closer to achieving effective industrial relations. One of them is State bank of India. McKinsey’s Quarterly published an interview of Mr. OP Bhatt, Chairman. Mr Bhatt brought about quite a transformation within the old bank. Permit me to read out a question and its answer from this interview:
The Quarterly: You also had to bring the message to the trade unions?

Om Prakash Bhatt: These are important stake-holders, and I brought senior representatives from the unions and officers’ associations together in a meeting similar to the management conclaves. I spent four days with 30 leaders from across the country. Some of my best advisers at the bank warned that the leaders weren’t trustworthy and could be disruptive, but by being different and asking them to a conclave—like monks in a cave—I built up huge curiosity. They wanted to know what I was doing. I told them I’d sit with them, but only if they came as friends of the bank. ....

....The results were fantastic. They had the good of the bank as much at heart as anybody else, and they came to realize the chairman cared about people as much as they did. Just as important, they had not understood how badly the bank had slipped but now saw they could do many things to reverse this shift. Pain and motivation came together.

And now the second instance. The management of Thermax is known for its employee friendly policies. And they seem to have influenced thinking of workmen too. The union has willingly participated in cost saving measures, saved crores of rupees. The union management meeting happens every Monday to take stock of situation and respond to production and people issues. Very quietly they have brought about a transformation of the organisation together. And here it another big decision on the part of the Union: They have decided that anybody who smokes or drinks cannot contest union elections! Can you believe it? This is true. At a recent event, the production manager and union secretary of Thermax made presentation of how they have transformed their work place which I had the opportunity to witness.

The achievement of these people will not be understood unless we contrast it with instances where the IR system has failed miserably. Here are two instances that come to my mind.
I am reading out from the cover story on Tirupur’s Garment industry very aptly titled ‘Driven to despair’ published in Frontline, Sept 25 issue:
TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of workers, both local and migrants from other parts of the State and from other States.
Of late, however, Tirupur has been in the news for the wrong reasons, particularly in the wake of reports relating to the rising number of cases of suicide and attempts to commit suicide. According to the police, 879 cases of suicide have been reported during the past 20 months – 491 cases last year and 388 (including 149 women) until September 11 this year. In July and August this year, 75 persons, including 28 women, committed suicide. According to informed sources, over 20 suicide attempts are made every day in the district, which was formed in February last year.

The State Crime Records Bureau data show that the rate of suicide cases in Tirupur has remained higher than the State average during the past three years....
.... Said M. Vijayabaskar, Assistant Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies: “Cost-cutting measures assumed great importance in the competitive global market, particularly in the post-MFA era.” [The multi-fibre agreement imposed quotas on exports by developing countries to developed countries. It was in force from 1974 to 2004 end.]
As manufacturers could not do much about cutting the cost of power or transportation or controlling foreign exchange fluctuations, they tinkered with the wages of workers......

There is a similar story of Foxconn which, if you wish, you may read accessing Wikipedia.

There are enough stories of collaboration in Industrial relations but unfortunately those rarely make it to the press. Excellent work done by Infosys in building employee relations does not receive the publicity it ought to get, but the sexual harassment suit against it gets headlines. I would like to reassure this audience that some excellent work is being done in the corporate world, notable among such organisations are Colgate, Marico and, with a sense of pride, I will add Asian Paints.

The problem of building effective industrial relations begins at the stage of professional training itself. Students and young managers believe that the nature of industrial relations is adversarial. It may be true to an extent but it prevents them from acknowledging that there is a great scope for collaboration. So they act in the belief that every demand, every issue raised by a union is counter-productive. That brings out defensive reactions.

Besides the failure to appreciate the scope of collaboration, such defensiveness comes out of two reasons in my opinion. Firstly, we are not accustomed to allow another to have a say in an issue that affects both. Admittedly this is not easy. Perhaps this does not come naturally to us. Just look around and see the discomfort if not verbal duels couples have during the first two years of marriage. It takes quite an adjustment to respectfully allow another person in your space. In work life this matter gets further complicated by the turnover of managers. This defensive stance often leads to arrogant behaviour, offence is the best form of defence, which is well captured in popular saying ‘There are two opinions on this subject – my opinion and the wrong opinion.’

The second reason for defensiveness is that organisations are often reactive and not proactive when it comes to industrial relations. We saw a very proactive stance of OP Bhatt as well as Thermax. Being proactive can mean changing roles of employees to reduce cost, improve processes and productivity etc. These are not easy changes to introduce; they call for both, the skill and the will. It is well settled that such proactive stance comes out of leader’s agenda; in other words, a weak leader will find his organisation in difficult industrial relations situation.

I was recently addressing a gathering of HR managers. They asked me ‘Should we or should we not have a union at our workplace?’ I replied that the question was phrased wrongly. We can’t ask ourselves whether the workers should be allowed to unionise. They can do it, quite literally, as of their right. The concern a manager has is how he can retain influence over the employees. Phrased this way, we can see some solutions in spite of unionisation of workers.

If you have had experience of parenting, you will readily agree that the only way to retain good influence over your child is to allow them enough freedom. This might sound paradoxical but it is true of any relationship. Without allowing space, dignity and respect you cannot build good relations with anybody in this world. Any other method is counter-productive in the long run. But even this is not adequate. If we want to influence others we will have to be open to influence by others. It is never a one-way traffic. Remember that Mr Bhatt treated union leaders with respect and dignity. He practised openness when he shared information about the bank’s problems and his future action. He was willing to trust them even when his colleagues warned him that the union leaders were not trustworthy. In State Bank Mr. Bhatt built trust, in Tirupur they destroyed it. Remember what Monday meetings achieve in Thermax - it is building trust and sensitivity.

Research has established that conversations within the organisations create the organisational culture. Change the language and change the culture. We, as managers, have to consciously adopt the appropriate language to create effective industrial relations.

I think there are three situations in the organisations life when the character of industrial relations becomes visible to all. These three situations are: One, when you set up a new establishment; Two, when you have to transform an organisation as in the case of State Bank, and Three, when you have to close down the establishment.

There are scores of examples of how people have messed up transformation which make horror stories. There are thousands of examples of voluntary retirements turning into compulsory retirements. There are several examples where people have closed down units by violent means just because they wanted to sell the property to a builder. What becomes clear to all is not just the character of relationship between employers and employees but also the values practised by the leadership of the organisation.

In final analysis, how you decide to treat your people, or call it your people policy, is what determines the industrial relations. Conflicts and disagreements will come in our way but there is a certain way in which we must handle them. There is a very apt couplet which tells us how we should handle conflicts.

Dushmani karni hai to jamke karo, par yeh gunjayish rahe/
Ke phir se dost ho jao to sharmindgi na ho//.

I think this talk will not be complete unless we talk about labour laws. It is heartening to note that Dr Manmohan Singh has made some observations about labour laws. There is a ray of hope. But the experience with other political leaders is not very encouraging. Labour laws need immediate amendments, they are completely outdated. On one side the industry wants change in Contract Labour Act, on the other hand Adecco has announced that they are now employing one lakh temps! But this is a situation which is not in the hands of employers or union leaders, and with due respect to all there is not much hope.

But I must acknowledge the will shown by Gujarat Government consistently for last several years. I am not here to praise Mr. Modi. Not only his government but his predecessors have also shown that they will intervene immediately if there is industrial strife in Gujarat. They act quickly and decisively to get parties to work together. The latest dispute at General Motors and the immediate State intervention tells the point clearly. Other State Governments have remained passive onlookers. I wish others learn a lesson from Gujarat.

To sum up, I would say that leadership, dialogue and communication play a great role in developing effective industrial relations. As we have seen, there is no substitute to seizing initiative in building effective industrial relations.

Vivek

On Suresh Ogale

2011-01-09T11:46:00.002+05:30

I was in a queue for securing admission for my son in the engineering college. The VJTI authorities were managing the event very efficiently. There was a feeling of comfort because it was a transparent process, and yet a feeling of anxiety to secure admission in a good college. Standing behind me was a man with receding hairline and vanishing ‘crown’, a twinkle in his eyes, a very pleasant smile and relaxed demeanour. He too had come there for securing admission for his son. I started talking to him [or was it vice versa?]. It became clear in a minute that he had studied the complex process of admissions to engineering college in great details, collected a lot of information on the colleges and had formed a definite opinion.
That’s Suresh Ogale for you!

Positive approach, smile, inquisitiveness [you can see it in his eyes] and an ability to sail through tense situations without ‘wearing it on sleeve.’ I did not meet him again till in 2008. It was a pleasant surprise that he was residing at Thane, not too far away from my home. We did some work together; two Development Centres [DC] among them. Suresh trained in England to conduct DCs. What marks his DCs is meticulous planning, and outstanding execution. But sometimes things do not work as planned. Usually these are attributable to external factors. You will then see Suresh take a pause, nodding his head up and down without a speaking a word. You will see him thinking and planning his actions to overcome the problem. Then he will rub his hands and will discuss the solution. No raised voice. No accusations. No expletives. Later in the evening you will see him retire to his room, then laugh heartily and say ‘Ayala, problemach hota ki, pan jamla!’ [Oh, that was quite a problem, but I managed the situation.]

A lot of this ‘management’ is attributable to his very strong ‘process orientation.’ His collection of books also centres on theories and models. Suresh is not the one who puts theories and practice in two separate water tight compartments; he has a great talent for practical application of theories. His presentations would include one model, but never to ‘impress’ the audience or intellectualise the issue. It is always to anchor their thoughts to the model. In case you discuss Jeffrey Pfeffer’s work with him, keep aside an hour for a very rich conversation. After spending over thirty years in the HR profession you still hear him say, ‘Hey shiknya sarakhe aahe’ [We must learn this from him/ her.] whenever somebody makes a good point. Learning has never stopped for him.

Suresh completes 60 years today. He will launch his ‘second career’ sooner or later. For a person who plays badminton every morning, who has child like curiosity about anything new, who has great interest and knowledge of share market, who has a voracious appetite for reading and who intends to devote time for contributing to social cause, it will be rewarding career.

We wish you a happy and long life, Suresh! We are proud to be your friends!!

Vivek
[The photographs show Suresh at work with his colleagues, speaking at Thane HR Conference, and with HR professionals]

Industrial Relations - Thermax Union Way

2011-01-07T14:55:00.001+05:30

Transformation stories are available a plenty. In every HR conference speakers make impactful presentations of how bad situation was in their organisations and how they have made it a great place to work. The Indian manufacturing scene has indeed changed substantially, which is perhaps the result of the pressure to remain competitive in the market. In almost all such factories workers now talk of ‘Kaizen’ and ‘5S’ and many other concepts developed by the Japanese industry.

These are essentially similar stories, but they differ in two ways. Firstly, they differ in the way changes were brought about, meaning some practice participation, involving all, listening to the employees, training them while others practice essentially a directive approach, ‘I tell – you must do’ approach. The manufacturing sector has had more than their share of autocratic managers who are in charge of such ‘change management’ programs.

Secondly, they differ in the way the way unions played their role in transformation. Presented to the world outside are the ‘how we did it’ stories where the role of unions is typically underplayed.

How will a trade union look at the transformation of the work place? We have heard the management stories a hundred times, but have we ever heard it from a union?

Madan Kulkarni, Production Manager and Keshav Gholave, President of Thermax Kamgar Sanghatna made a joint presentation at one of the conferences where I was also invited. All in the audience were struck by the passionate manner in which the Union President was explaining the changes brought about at Thermax. Very clearly the transformation had touched the lives of employees but it was also obvious that the story had a very proactive response of the employees’ union.

I had the opportunity recently to meet the entire union committee of Thermax at their Chinchwad Plant. I sought a meeting with them. The entire committee met me and was explaining to me their journey. A new union committee was elected in 2003. They started bringing about changes in many ways. It has been about eight years and the difference is visible. Such a change was unlikely to sustain without an initial ‘win.’ So I asked them what it was. After much thought they mentioned that the union committee could effectively address the biggest grievance of the workers, ‘gradation’ or job evaluation. The approach of the union and a very positive stance of some managers helped both the parties to address this issue.

Around the same time there was another issue brewing – it was of implementation of MOST [Maynard Operation Sequence Technique]. The union’s stance was that they were not opposed to it. They were rather committed to improvement of productivity, but they were unhappy about the way it was sought to be implemented. Both the parties weathered the storm and emerged stronger.

The union today has several firsts to its credit. It is, they believe, first union to obtain certification under ISO 9000 – 2008. A visit to union office makes this completely clear. Meetings are video recorded! You will see a very neat and tidy arrangement of their records. They have a SOP for their work!

Thermax union meets once in three months at a nearby temple when they provide an account of their work to their members and use this meeting for effective communication. In fact, they call it a ‘communication meeting’ [whoever told us that such were things to be done only by managers?].

The Thermax Union also conducts ‘Workman Satisfaction Survey!’ I feel this may really be the first scored by the union. They circulated a seven question survey questionnaire about the union’s role. The requirement of ISO was to conduct a sample survey but the union quickly realised the need to involve all workmen. All 598 workers were invited to respond. Conclusion: 95% satisfied and 5% dissatisfied workers. This high number of satisfied workers seems to be the result of their excellent rapport with their members and communication.

The union has established a medical trust. The approach is that they should be self reliant to the extent possible. It has also persuaded management of Thermax to extend financial support to at least three students, workers’ children, studying in USA and Germany.

Thermax Union has participated in several major cost reduction studies and projects. It was interesting to note that they always ask for ‘facts first’ before talking of solutions. They talk the language of RFT, TPM, Kaizen [on an average each workman has done 30 Kaizen projects] etc. They claim that they have saved over 18 crores in inventory and have improved productivity several times. And they talk about it with ‘facts and figures.’

This positivity has been heightened by some of their own [and unusual] decisions. They hold union elections once in three years. There is a clear understanding that the committee members must be those ‘who do not smoke, do not drink and do not remain absent without pay for even one day!’ Quite a high standard of behaviour!! Pandurang Ghogre, Gen Secretary told me that some workers got together to build a small temple near their residence. They invite big names to deliver talk [such used to be the culture in Maharashtra earlier but sadly it is dying] for the community.

While workmen at Thermax deserve credit, there is a shy man behind this change at Thermax Union, who also avoids publicity. Arvind Shrouti of Option Positive guides them well and as the name of his organisation suggests, helps them respond positively. And their new HR Head, Sharad Gangal who has an enviable record of building positive employee relations, could not have asked for a better situation to start his innings.

With Pune fast emerging as manufacturing hub, Thermax Union is certainly showing the way to many of the industrial workmen.

Vivek

Five Books I Enjoyed Reading

2010-12-27T20:35:00.001+05:30

Five blogs which I liked

2010-12-25T09:43:00.000+05:30

Five ways Pixar makes right decisions

http://blogs.hbr.org/davenport/2010/07/how_to_make_good_decisions_les.htmlfix

How to fix misunderstandings at work and in life

http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2010/12/communicate-with-humanity.html

New Study: When NBA Players Touch Teammates More, They and Their Teams Play Better

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/12/new-study-when-nba-players-touch-teammates-more-they-and-their-teams-play-better.html

Do political scandals really distract us from important issues?

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/12/do-political-scandals-really-distract.html

The down side of always telling children to work harder

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/12/14/the-downside-of-always-telling-kids-to-work-harder.html

The Year 2010 at THRG

2010-12-16T14:41:00.000+05:30

Thane HR Group [THRG] is an informal group – there is no membership fee and no office bearers. But a core committee [anybody can join it, you too can join, just write to Anil K] met early in the year to decide the theme for the year so that the programs remain in line with our purpose. The theme was "Telescoping in to Future: Managing HR creatively."

Keeping in line with this theme Thane HR Group has organised many events in the year 2010. All the programmes got huge response from the members and we are thankful to them for their continuous support. THRG being an informal forum it does not generate any revenue by way of membership. Few of the programmes of 2010 were sponsored by companies like Paper Products, 3P Consultants, Thane Janata Sahakari Bank, TBZ, and Jupiter Hospital.

The core Committee of Thane HR Group [Alok Sheopurkar, Sharad Gangal, Anil Kshatriya, Anil Joshi, Dipak Gadekar, Prashant Karmalkar, Suresh Ogale, Prashant Sawant, Ms Daisy Garud and Vivek Patwardhan] was constantly working on new formats and discussing ideas to make the programmes meaningful and interesting. You would have noticed the different format when Mr. Ghaisas spoke about his life and work and was interviewed by Alok Sheopurkar.

The Annual Event programme was based on one such idea. We said we will give first-hand experience of running a business to HR professionals so that nobody can make allegation that they do not understand business. We organised a Business Simulation Game which provided experiential inputs.

During the year Mr Sridhar Ganesh, Group HR Director of Murugappa Group, Mr. Dileep Ranjekar, CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, Mr. Deepak Ghaisas, currently Chairman of Gencoval Strategic Services Pvt Ltd. and erstwhile CEO of I-flex Solutions, Dr Devadutt Pattnaik, Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group, Mr Sanjay Jha, CE of CricketNext.com, Dr JM Sampath, MD of Arpitha Associates addressed the audience at Thane HR Group.

More exciting programmes this year, announcements will be made on Thane HR Group on LinkedIn.

Join us.