Really Walmart ? Plumbing ??

 
Walmart closed down five stores in the US. What's new ? This happens all the time - stores are closed and stores are opened. So what ? What is strange is the reason it was done and the manner in which it was done.

Walmart announced to its employees two hours before store closing time on Monday last week that the stores were closing from the next day.  The reason stated was plumbing problems !! That is the most unusual reason you might have heard for stores to close.

Walmart has a history of treating its workers, shall we say, a little less generously than most other businesses. But , even by their standards, this closure is curious. One of the stores that was closed was at the forefront of a strike a couple of years ago.  The whiff, that this was retaliation against the workers is strong. But the other four stores weren't the leaders of the strike - so why these five ? Where the four simply lumped together to deflect the real intention to get at those b%^&*s who dared go on strike ?

Telling people two hours before shift ends that they don't have to come tomorrow does not appear to be a humanly good thing to do. But there is no place for human feelings  in the business world it seems, at least in Walmart. To be fair Walmart is saying that all employees would be paid two months paid leave when they can apply for jobs in other Walmart stores and that if they didn't succeed in two months, the permanent employees would be paid some severance pay.

The ostensible logic for the short notice to employees is that apparently if you give them a longer notice, they would all steal the store blind ! A more "acceptable" reason is  that they don't have to legally do any better.  Is this what employee relations in Walmart have come to ?

The stated reason for closure is urgent and pressing plumbing problems that have to be fixed. Really ??? Nobody the city or amongst the employees seem to have heard of the "ongoing and pervasive" sewer problems before. No permissions have been sought from city councils for any repairs. Its difficult to believe that the emergency closure of stores is really because the loo is leaking.

Even the most charitable view of the issue has to concede that Walmart could have handled the whole thing better. But this is probably a symptom of the real problem - Walmart management does not rank handling employees with care and concern very highly amongst its business priorities. That's a sad commentary on the business world. If one of the largest corporations and employers in the world, treats its employees as impersonally as a pallet of stock, then it is no wonder that they are hated as viciously as they are. The very word corporation has become a four letter word. And by their actions,  corporations are doing their very best to justify that tag.

What a stink !

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The job interview is a joke

It is fairly clear that I would not be able to get a job with Rockwell (a web hosting company) or the Kerry Group (food ingredients company).

This is because I would have to answer, in the selection interview,  "How would you react if you were shot in the head with a Nerf gun?" (Rockwell) or "Is a Jaffa Cake, a cake or biscuit ?" (Kerry). Since I do not know what a Nerf Gun or Jaffa Cake is, it can be safely assumed that I would flunk the interview.

The Glassdoor Blog chronicles each year the weirdest questions that companies have been known to ask in interviews. It of course makes extremely interesting reading and I would strongly recommend it instead of that useless report you are writing at this minute ! How would you answer to ""How many square feet of pizza is eaten in the US each year?" (Goldman Sachs !), or  "Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words?" (Living Social), or, "If you were a pizza deliveryman how would you benefit from scissors?" (Apple)

Apparently these seemingly weird questions are designed to assess "creativity" and "lateral thinking". Bullshit. Anybody who says he  can fathom creativity from an answer to a weird question in a pressure cooker artificial setting like an interview is just fibbing.

Long time readers of this blog would know that this blogger rather enjoys needling HR types. It has just been noticed that this breed has been spared a long time from good natured ribbing. So this post is to "restore the balance"!

I am of the opinion that the unified theory in astrophysics will be solved before we can fathom what goes on inside the recruitment department of a company.  As anybody who has ever sent a CV to a company knows, even black holes cannot match the disintegrating capability of a HR department. CV's vanish without a trace - has anybody ever got an acknowledgement of a CV ever ? And then by some miracle unexplained, you will get a call at 11.14 in the night requiring you to be present for an interview at 6.24 in the morning the very next day in a location 83 miles away from your home. By heroic efforts you land at the spot at 6.15 only to find that the office is locked and won't open till 9.30 AM. You hang around not wanting to miss the opportunity. At 10.00 the office is opened and you are ushered into a windowless room and told to cool your heels. Hours come and go by and you realise you have been forgotten. You timidly approach the security guard again and remind him that you have been sitting bolt upright for the last four hours without even going to the loo. He takes pity on you and promises to inform the HR department. 3 hours later a lady of gargantuan proportions barges in and orders you to proceed for an interview . You land in another room and wait for another half an hour. A constipated owl enters, mobile to the ear, and proceeds to finish a call for the next 15 minutes. Sundry suits land up. The interview is supposed to begin. The interviewers realise that they have no idea what they are interviewing for. Of course, they haven't seen your CV. They don't even know your name. They take your copy of the CV from you and start skimming. And they ask you to begin narrating your background in your own words because they are illiterate and can't read your CV.

I challenge any HR type to prove that this is not an accurate reflection of the truth.

And then, if you are asked "Can you say: "Peter Pepper Picked a Pickled Pepper" and cross-sell a washing machine at the same time?" (Mastercard), I declare that it is acceptable grounds for defence against a charge of murder !!

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Give the unemployed a break

One of the great degrading experiences in life is to be without a job, apply hopefully for one, and not even get a response. The sense of emptiness, the feeling of no hope, is a low point in life. If you are in a position of being able to hire, at least send a rejection note politely worded and pointing out why they didn't fit your requirements. Call as many as possible for an interview (just the mere fact of being called is a climb out of the pit of despair) . Treat them fairly even if you are not going to hire them. Please.

When there is a clear discrimination against you, it becomes even worse, and really hard to bear. All through the past, gender discrimination was a big issue. It's now still there, but has at least reduced, so much so that its not the biggest discriminating factor I believe. Two other categories suffer worse discrimination

- The "old". If you are above 45, you have no hope of getting a new job if you have lost your current one

- Those with a gap in their CV - either because they lost a job and couldn't get another one for some time or , for women, for taking a career break for children.

The former will be the subject matter of a future post, but this time I want to highlight the plight of those who have been unemployed for some time. A month or two is OK. When it crosses six months, then you virtually have lost all chance of  getting another job. This is especially acute in Europe and the US - research after research has shown that those unemployed for 6 months or more don't even get called for interviews even if overqualified for the job.

Obama has struck a deal with US companies who are agreeing to review their hiring practices to eliminate this discrimination. This is a good move in a country where post the financial crisis, many people lost their jobs and have had great difficulty in finding another one.

My argument has long been that companies should actively seek out such people rather than discriminate against them. Other things being equal, people to whom life has dealt a blow, are invariably better workers than those who have had a smooth time. When you have faced the bitter experience of unemployment, you will value the job much more. You work diligently and try your best to keep it rather than go on strike. You have a rounded attitude to life - you are likely to treat colleagues and business partners with more regard and respect. You are likely to take a more long term view. All extremely desirable qualities in employees. My experience in my working life has invariably been this - people who have struggled to get jobs, or who faced personal tragedies or who suffered on some account or the other were, almost without exception, better performers pound for pound. So much so that I started to positively discriminate in favour of them !!

So here is a plea. Treat those applying for a job with greater sensitivity and care. Even if there are 1000 applications for every job. And do not discriminate against the unemployed. Its a small cost to do this and it's the human thing to do. Especially if you mouth inanities as "people are my greatest asset" and crap like that. HR types - are you listening .

Its also a smart thing to do, for you never know when you would be on the other side of this equation.

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Reorganisations - the last refuge of the incompetent

There is one ritual that happens in all companies periodically without fail - an organisation restructuring. Old structures and divisions are thrown out of the window and new structures are announced. HR types take great pleasure in redrawing organisation charts, rewriting job descriptions and the like. Communication types have an orgasm designing communication packs and writing words like "restructuring to stimulate growth", "bringing the organisation closer to consumers" and such other waffle. CEOs like to stand up to the press and announce the change , to make up for lack of anything else to say about their companies. MIcrosoft did just that today, the trigger for this post. Steve Ballmer's version of the blah blah is "We are ready to take Microsoft in bold new directions". Balderdash. I have never seen a more futile activity than an organisation rejig. And yet companies do it all the time.

The pattern is all too predictable. If the current organisation is based on product lines, it will be made regional to "get closer to the consumers". If it is regional, it will be made based on product lines to globalise and take advantage of scale. People will be moved around in boxes on organisation charts. The new guys have to go on a round the world trip to familiarise themselves with their new responsibilities. Lots of presentations and power point charts. Every four years or so the charade is repeated.  None of this matters one iota to consumers and shareholders. The only gainers are probably the management consultants who make lots of money.

What a thorough waste of time and effort. Structures are important in organisations, but they matter less than you think. The primal instinct of marking territories and defending against invaders, is what structures are. Structures are boundaries where defences are erected , by petty minded egoistic manages who need to feel important. Much effort is actually expended in organisations in crossing structural boundaries. Seasoned operators build alliances and have informal channels through which they get things done.Formal structures matter little to the determined go getter.

The root of the problem is man's territorial instinct. Man likes to draw boundaries and defend everybody inside the boundary from everybody outside. Alpha males who inhabit the business world suffer from an acute affliction of this instinct. Chief Executives and Boards struggle to overcome this and get the entire organisation to operate seamlessly. Fat chance of that happening. In this quest, organisational restructuring is the placebo. The placebo is particularly touted by the HR function, as a magic cure, which gullible CEOs swallow all to easily.

If Microsoft's leaders think they can solve their fundamental problems and compete better with the likes of Google, by an organisational revamp, well, perhaps its time to write their obituary.

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I want to be a garbage collector

The story that two garbage cleaners in New York were fined and forced to retire after being caught accepting a tip of $ 5 caught my eye.  Not for the reason you might think. This story would provoke hoots of laughter in my country where nothing happens in the public service without a gratuity.  Even in NY, this must be an incredulous story - every man and a dog demands tips shamelessly for just existing in the same space as you. But the real reason this story has prompted this post was buried somewhere in the middle.

 

The two garbage men apparently netted $100,000 each, including overtime. Granted that they had put in long years of service. Granted that they probably earned lots of overtime. But still a wage of $ 100,000 for a garbage collector shows everything that is wrong about the United States. No wonder they lose jobs by the droves to India and China. No wonder unemployment is a stubborn problem.

 

But this post is not to highlight the completely unrealistic pricing for labour in the US, as compared to the world. This post is instead about a global problem - automatic salary increases every year.

 

If you spend enough years on any job, even that of a garbage collector, you will reach levels of $ 100,000. If you start at $ 20,000 a year and get a 5% rise every year , you'll land up with a $100,000 salary in 33 years. That is presumably what happened to these two guys. Imagine the situation in India where anything less than a 10% raise a year leads to a strike. If you start at an annual salary of Rs 5 lakhs, an entry level salary for a qualified graduate,  and keep demanding 10% salary rises, by the time you retire after 35 years, your salary even staying in the same job, will be Rs 1.4 crores.

 

Now you see why there is age discrimination in employment and the older you are, the quicker you are fired. Now you see why there are large scale job losses.

 

Salary levels have to follow some form of a normal distribution over the years, if you stay on the same job.  You start low and as you gain more experience and you become more efficient, your salary should increase. It should probably reach a peak when you are say 40, and then begin a slow decline so that you can remain competitive with the younger folks who are trying to displace you. I know this sounds heretic, but I would rather take cuts in my salary than lose my job altogether. The trick is to price yourself, just a shade below the market rate (not go for the highest salary possible). If that involves annual salary decreases, then so be it.

 

Of course, you can, and should, upskill and move on to a higher value job. But if you stay in the same job, automatic salary increases every year is a one way ticket to losing the job.

 

So, how about negotiating a salary reduction, instead of a raise. At first read this might seem like an insane idea. But think about it .....

 

Its an altogether different matter as to why somebody who was earning $100,000 a year, asked and took a $5 gratuity !

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The futility of Minimum Wages

In virtually every country in the world, the government fixes minimum wages that must be paid to workers. In India it is a state subject and each state fixes minimum wages. Seems a very sensible move. After all the poor unskilled worker has no bargaining power [unlike coders :) ] and the power equation between employer and employee is heavily tilted in favour of the employer. A decent civilised society must ensure that workers are not exploited with wages that condemn them to subhuman existence. Seems a straightforward case, right ? It turns out to be not so right, after all.

The biggest problem with the Minimum Wage is that in reality it has become the ceiling and not the floor. Whole industries have abandoned having any remuneration policies at all and simply have adopted the Minimum Wage as their policy. In fact the largest number of legally employed people in the country are probably on Minimum Wage. Construction labour, Security guards, cleaners, and virtually every form of unskilled labour is on Minimum Wage. With all good intentions, governments have ended up fixing the Maximum Wage rather than the Minimum Wage.

The consequence of this is that if the level is higher than what the market can bear, there is every attempt to evade the law. It also ensures curtailment of employment - employers restrict hiring if its too expensive. If the wage level is fixed too low, then the employee can't make both ends meet and job hops all the time in the vain attempt to earn a bit more. Attrition levels in states with low minimum wages touch 50% per month. Getting the level right is the key - but then you can bet that the last agency that can get it right is the government.

Ramamritham has a field day with Minimum Wage law. The state of Tamil Nadu has 65 different categories where it has fixed Minimum Wages. In his infinite wisdom, Ramamritham has fixed that a worker working in the footwear making industry must be paid Rs 121.91 per day while the worker employed in coconut peeling industry must be paid Rs 121.24 per day. There are annual revisions. Very productive employment for hundreds of Ramamrithams (alas at much higher than Minimum Wages).

Let supply and demand fix wage levels. Only legislate that employee benefits such as PF and ESI must be provided. Leave the job market to fix sensible remuneration levels. I am willing to bet that the wage levels would actually rise in many states in India.

I am reminded of a quotation attributed to a famous business leader. You should be a capitalist in the mind and a socialist at heart. The sure road to disaster is if that equation is reversed.

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What's your CQ ? Are you Glocal ?

Everybody, who’s anybody, is a management guru. Yours truly included. No wonder airport book shops are filled to the rafters with all sorts of business books. I’ve often wondered who reads all of them. Most of them are boring ego trips, or say the mind blowingly obvious in obscure jargon.

This mini tirade has been triggered by a book review I read. The review introduces two pieces of jargon I had never heard of. Cultural - intelligence quotient , CQ for short (after all any self respecting jargon has to have an abbreviation) . And “glocal” presumably short for “globalised local”.

This is all about how in this globalised world, you need to understand local cultures, know how to much to bow, know where to point your feet, and such stuff.

I have been around a bit; so can’t resist appointing myself as a guru and expounding on this “culture thing”. Methinks, this is grossly over emphasised. Yes local culture is important but its nowhere near as important as its made out to be.

Human beings the world over are the same. They have roughly the same needs and roughly the same expectations in a corporate setting. In most nations, people have become used to dealing with foreigners. And when they deal with a foreigner, they don’t expect her to be a local and adopt exactly the same practices ; they are usually fine if she’s different. Unless you give offence deliberately, you are usually OK.

Take China. Much was made of the “culture” here of drinking. When you take government officials out to dinner, you are supposed to drink yourself to death. Nonsense. I am a teetotaler and I just say politely that I don’t drink and nobody has taken offence to that. Similarly the ritual of exchanging visiting cards – two hands, small bow and all that stuff. Again, nobody has yet taken offence if I have forgotten my card or given it with one hand – they are usually more interested whether we deal professionally and fairly. A lot of these so called practices and symbols are all quite unimportant and it really doesn’t matter if you don’t follow them. Much is written about the Asian need for “saving face” and how a “yes is often a no”. Please tell me if there’s a single culture that thrives on losing face or on public humiliation. Rubbish. People world over have the same needs –nobody likes being told off in public and a direct message delivered with sincerity and kindness is well received everywhere.

What is important is genuine sincerity and respect for the country you live in and its people. Giving the card with both hands and then rubbishing China’s internet policy will give offence. Making the absolute correct bow with the Japanese and then making fun of their camera clicking habits won’t win you friends. Being curious about the country, trying to learn its language, traveling a bit around, being respectful of its strengths, not mentioning its perceived weaknesses, never comparing your own country with it are all sensible things to do anywhere. Being respectful to people and being sincere and kind to colleagues will get you far everywhere. Even if you do culturally the wrong thing, if people perceive that you are sincere and respectful, they usually take no offence.

Its all just common sense, really.

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Much ado about nothing

People get very worked up about their job titles. It seems to be a matter of life and death whether you are an Assistant General Vice President or a Deputy Senior Group Executive. On this gloomy Sunday, a typically dreary , foggy, day in Guangzhou, I decided to do a learned treatise on job titles .

Some people lay great store on the words in their job titles. Vice President is a very commonly coveted title. In some banks I know, you join as a fresher with the title Vice President! But then how do you differentiate yourself from the hordes of vice presidents around ? (Its an interesting aside that in politics the least desirable post is that of the Vice President, but in business, it seems to be a coveted title). So you become a Senior Vice President or a Group Vice President or preferably a Group Executive Senior Vice President.

Another fixation is “General”. You want to be a “General Manager”. As opposed to a “specific manager”, I presume. You can have the choice of Deputy, Chief, Senior, etc etc to embellish your being a General Manager. And then you get stupid acronyms such as SDCGM.

Lower down the totem pole, the salivation is over the simple “manager”. People are willing to kill to become a "manager". You have the choice of Executive, Associate, Consultant, etc etc as stepping stones with the usual variants of senior, vice, etc etc. You can also be an Executive Associate Consultant, if you wish.

Some companies try to impose global job titles without regard to how they may be perceived locally, often to much amusement. Many years ago, I was a lowly flunky and I was taking my boss's boss to a very senior official in a bank. Our worthy was designated as “Treasurer”. I was pulled up in no uncertain terms by the bank honcho for bringing a cashier with me for such an important meeting !! More recently we have “Engagement Managers” around. One visa official was so intrigued by this title that he spent the entire visa interview with this person enquiring who she was engaged to !

You know you have gone too far in embellishing job titles when your secretary is “Head of Verbal Communications” , the window cleaner is “Vision Clearance Engineer”, the ticket inspector is “Revenue Protection Officer”, the maid is the “Crockery Cleansing Operative”, and the teacher is “Knowledge Navigator”. No kidding; these are real job titles – I didn’t make them up.

In the new world, some companies have taken to unusual titles. I have met a “Valued Member” of XYZ Inc whose boss was “Most Valued Member”. Without a doubt, in 5 years there will be a Executive Senior General Most Valued Member ! A very famous leader himself adopted the rather unusual title, Gardener. In fashion is becoming a mentor. One nanny country even has a Minister Mentor.

In reality the correct and true designation must be Employee No 12345. That’s exactly how companies treat their employees – as a number. Despite all the pious and hypocritical blah blah of how people are the most valuable resource of a company, the reality is that you are a faceless number. That’s the sad truth of the industrialised world.

Yours truly
Lao Ming Zhi
Employee No 50001.

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To be an expat

Man is a territorial animal. His natural preference is to live with the group that he belongs to. But for two reasons, people choose to live away from their natural communities. The first, and the biggest, reason is economic. The second is political.

I would guess that 90% of migrants are economic – they move to earn more money; to have a better life. Even where people ascribe other reasons, the real underlying cause is economic. The Economist , my favourite magazine, put it beautifully. A journalist was covering the regular anti America rallies in Iran. Death to America, Death to America, the chants were going on. A protester paused in mid chant to ask the journalist – “can you get me a green card” !

Earlier in the week, I had posted about the The Economist’s brilliant article on “being foreign”, here. This post is my personal view on being an expat.

The sheer experience of being an expat is enormously enriching, both professionally and personally. Professionally, it is an experience, without which, you cannot grow beyond a point in today’s globalised world. It’s a virtual prerequisite for a successful career. Working with, and leading, teams of mixed cultures is a key skill to be acquired; you cannot grow above middle management without this skill.

But equally important is the impact personally, if you choose to gain the experience. And this is where people adopt widely varying positions. A new culture is by definition strange and resistance to something strange is in our DNA. Many expats therefore form their own ghettos – the Chinatowns, the Southalls, the Little Indias, the white Expat Clubs, and the like.

I have learnt enormously from the countries I have lived in, and travelled to, by being more social with the local community than with the expats. You learn about the good, and not so good, things about the culture. Without being judgmental, you can assimilate the experience the better. If you treat local practices with disdain and remain smugly superior, you are an ass. If you treat local practices as second only to God and deride your own culture, you are an ass too. Something in between, and you become a much richer person.

Invariably, when I have been an expat, I have come to appreciate my own country and culture better. At first, I found this strange, but later on I have accepted this as one of the wonderful benefits of expatriation. I see India and Indian culture better now. I appreciate its strengths better and I have learnt to bypass its weaknesses better.

One of the biggest decisions of an expat is the timing of the return home. For me personally, the ideal tenure is 3 years, at the end of which I would want to come back to India. And go back again, if possible to a different country, after a longish stretch back home.

People who stay beyond a certain period of time can never go back home. For home has changed to something they cannot relate to, or be comfortable in. And one which their children cannot relate to at all. If they have opened their experience to the local culture, they can be happy where they are. But if they have ghettoized themselves, then that is the real tragedy. They are nowhere and theirs is essentially a lost generation. Their descendants take a long time to find their identity. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in South Africa, where “ghettoisation” was forced because of apartheid.

For me, being an expat has been an experience that has been worth its weight in gold. Living in China now, has been an eye opener. I have experienced one of the great cultures of the world in a way I could never otherwise have. I have built some great friendships. I have understood, at least a little, the good, and not so good, of China. Sure, lots of things were tough, especially as I still can’t speak the language. But, without a doubt, I am a wiser man, for the experience. Older, but wiser, I would like to think !

Oh, the joys, and pains, of being an expat !!

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Being an expat

What’s it like being a foreigner ? An expat living outside his or her home country ? I am an expat myself- an Indian living in China. Many readers of this blog are expats themselves. Most of us are expats because our jobs, or the jobs of our spouses, took us away from our native land.

The Economist has a beautiful article on “being foreign”. A superb and stimulating article I strongly recommend. My favourite “newspaper” is The Economist – the magazine calls itself a newspaper, in a quaint British tradition. OK, OK, I am nerdy; anybody who publicly admits to The Economist being his favourite magazine has to be the most “uncool” character in the world.

The article is so good that I offer it for your reading pleasure with no comment. What is your take ?

I’ll post my own view of being an expat later this week.

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In defence of HR

Concluding a sequence of posts on HR with a defence of the people who run that function ! I’ve been unduly harsh in some of my earlier posts – to be fair, there’s much to be said about what they do well too.

HR is the most difficult function in a company, in many ways. In, say finance, 1+1=2 – you can’t argue about that. When it comes to dealing with people, as we all know, 1+1 is never 2. How do you deal with something that’s essentially unpredictable ?

Its very sexy to say we should have freedom , no rules, and openness. But the dividing line between freedom and anarchy is a thin one. Take travel expenses. Put a hand on your heart and say that you have never ever mixed personal stuff with official work and claimed it. Never ? We do this even when the Nanny is watching. Imagine if there’s no Nanny. The world isn’t full of Mahatma Gandhis whose iron self discipline can obviate the requirements of rules. For lesser mortals like us, the rule book is inevitable.

Why the complexity ? Its only because organizations are complex places to run. When an organization is small, its easy. But when it grows to say 10,000 employees in far corners of the world , how else to run it on even keel but for the dreaded “employee bible”. I like Netflix’s idea that growth in size and complexity are not necessarily cause and effect. It’s a seductive idea, but in my experience one I haven’t seen in practice.

So , all you HR folks, you have a difficult job. A thankless job, for you are often likely to be criticized and seldom praised. But you can do a few things to help yourselves.

One of the cardinal sins that you often commit, is that you manage by process, instead of people. Everything becomes a form. As the organisation becomes larger and larger, HR folks tend to go deeper and deeper into their cocoon. They wall themselves up, under the guise of confidentiality. They become slaves to the computer – peering into it and answering emails, sending forms, collecting them, analyzing the data, etc etc. Rajalakshmi and Wang Xiao have become Employee no 9432 and 8769.

So let me , in my usual arrogant way, preach something. Junk your computer. Get out from that walled room. Go walk around. Talk to people. Remember HR starts with a H – the human being. Rajalakshmi is not 9432; she’s a lovely girl. Give a shoulder for her to cry on. Listen to the angst floating around. Help a guy who’s going through a difficult period. Break some rule to help out somebody in distress – she’ll value you for life. Bend things a little if that’s the right thing to do. Try and hint to a tyrannical boss that he can change, at least in a small way. Offer to help the line manager deal with chronic absenteeism. Show empathy. But , above all, get out of that chair.

Oh boy. Don ‘t we love HR !

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The culture thing

Its really tough to figure out what “culture” is. In a company. Just like any group of people - a community, a village, a country, or a race, - has a “culture”, so does a company. But its often very different from what the leaders of a company want us to believe.

Culture is a way of behaviour that characterises many of the people in a company. It develops as a consequence of a series of events in the company’s history, from the behaviour of its leaders, from the nature of people it recruits, and from what sorts of behaviours are actually rewarded and encouraged.

Companies tend to list a series of “values” that define their "culture". These are often motherhoods – mom and apple pie that that are quickly ignored. Companies usually list too many values – some seven or eight of them , which are all utopian in nature. These are impossible to achieve. One or two of them will predominate, which may not at all be one of the seven “official” ones. Companies’ official statements of culture are what the leadership would like the culture to be. But what it actually is, will be determined , not by the statement, but by history and actions.

Companies often want to be “innovative”. They then insist that every $10 expenditure to be authorized fourteen levels up in headquarters. Fat chance of a culture of innovation coming up. Tyrannical companies often have “caring” as a stated value. They then promote and actively encourage the testosterone filled macho monster. And cultures need not be only on positive traits – many times they are “negative”. Greed often characterises many organizations – my bonus is the key and to hell with everything else. If that’s the prevailing virtue, no amount of shouting from the rooftops on team working is going to help.

What can be done to promote a certain culture ? Take one or two values that the leadership truly and personally believe in and drive it relentlessly. Non conformance to those values is not tolerated, even if you have performed brilliantly on other fronts (this is where companies often stumble – reward a high performer who consistently flouts your stated top value). And stick with it for a long period of time. But you can only try. Culture is an amorphous thing. It will develop in ways that are unforeseeable.

Why is this important to us ? Its important because increasingly, our way of behaviour as individuals will be determined by the companies we are affiliated to. In the past, it was determined by race, nationality or religion. Increasingly, as we spend most of our waking lives in the workplace, and as the world becomes flatter, it will be determined by the organisations we work in. You may have been born a very humble, self effacing individual. After 10 years in Goldman Sachs, you just cannot be that way !

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The rem conundrum

Every year, the second leg of the soap opera (see previous post for the first leg), is the drama over the increase in remuneration for the employees.

If there is one person, everybody in the company loves to hate, it’s the guy or gal titled “Remuneration Manager”. Many years ago we had a worthy in the company I worked in. It was widely known that he had AIDS (now that was the time when AIDS first surfaced – OK OK I know it was a long time ago). The “news” caught on like wildfire. It became so widely known that the originator of the rumour had to issue a clarification that he meant Annual Increment Deficiency Syndrome !

Some very involved research study is done and the recommendation is made that the average increase should be 3.97%. This goes through at least 27 layers of approval. If it’s a foreign company, it goes right upto the HQ , wherever it is in cuckoo land. Imagine some firang/waiguoren, who can’t point out your country on a map, deciding the rem of Miss Rajalakshmi / Wang Xiao slaving away at the corner.

After 3 months of such approvals process, with fantastic value addition all the way through, the rem increase is reduced to 3.79%. Then some “adjustments” are made to this number for people who are 1 rated, people who joined middle of the year, people who are being promoted, people who were promoted last year, people whose names begin with the letter A ……

Even more intriguing is the process of calculating bonus/variable pay/ incentive (whatever name has been coined for this abomination). I am yet to see an organisation where the formula for calculating bonus is less than 3 pages long and requires a PhD in mathematics to understand. And yet this doesn’t daunt Rajalakshmi or Wang Xiao. She will do intricate research on the equation and point out two ways by which you can get a higher bonus without doing extra work – only for both of them to be plugged at the end of the year by the Rajalakshmi/Wang Xiao equivalent in HR. I am absolutely willing to bet that in any organisation the number of man hours spent on bonuses is more than the number of man hours spent meeting customers.

Why complicate lives all this much. Pay the Rem manager to stay at home. And then adopt Netflix’s approach (see a few posts below)

- All pay is fixed ; no bonus
- Every year your rem is revised to what I have to pay you if you are being freshly hired.

On second thoughts, this may not be a good idea. What would we all moan about then ?

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The soap opera called annual appraisal

Once a year (at least), in every company, a special event takes place. Its something everybody dreads, but know it has to be gone through. Its called the annual appraisal (OK you can choose more politically correct terms; maybe “performance management exercise”).

Ingredients to this event are many. Firstly an incomprehensible and long form to be filled. The form has been “simplified” this year – shudder to think how it was last year. The boss puts it off for as long as he can. He has 25 subordinates and he recoils with horror at the thought of filling 25 forms. Each employee thinks he was the star performer of the year and deserves the highest rating and the largest raise. OMG. But the focus of this post in on HR. So lets assume it gets done somehow.

This is the moment the HR function is waiting for all year. For a few weeks, they are the most important lot in the company. They are burning the midnight oil and feeling happily overworked.

Now to the fun and games. HR loves to “normalise” ratings. They are captivated by a bell curve – a lovely normal distribution is the holy grail. So they “challenge” each line manager and try to downgrade a few ratings so that it can be fit into a nice curve. A smart line manager knows that this will happen – so he’s already massaged his ratings so that he can afford to give a few away to HR and still come out trumps. The smart HR manager knows that the line manager is playing this game; so he’s shifting his normal distribution so that at the end he’ll come out with the shape of the curve he wants.

Pause and step back a moment. Is this what you want ? A perfect normal distribution ? An average and mediocre company. A company chiefly composed of plodders. Wow !

Many years ago, there was a man (bless his soul) who ran his huge place like a tyrant. He was incredibly hard, but good at heart. He hated appraisal forms and refused to fill them. His system of performance management was simple. If he thought you did a good job, he would look you in the eye and say (tu teek hai – you are OK). People would die for that one moment.

As bright young MBAs with fanciful ideas, we sniggered and thought the old man was a fossil. Now I am not so sure.

Interval time. Onwards we march to the second act of the opera. The raises. In walks the remuneration head. That’s for tomorrow.

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The "bible" that we love to hate

Every organisation has a “Bible” – the HR Policy book. Its called by a variety of names – HR manual, Policy manual, Employee handbook, Red book, Blue book, Green book, whatever …It’s a bit like the Constitution of a country. You have to abide by it, or else a trial will be held and you will be punished.

It is also the document that creates a lot of angst amongst employees. For, unlike a constitution, it usually only says what you cannot do. And its pretty inflexible and is aimed at the lowest common denominator. The book grows with time to become a monster because new rules get added all the time and nothing is ever deleted. New rules come because loopholes may be discovered (somebody might have exploited them) and they need to be plugged. A bureaucrat’s mindset is nurtured whereby “job satisfaction” , even bliss, is gained by discovering or anticipating loopholes and plugging them.

The section that creates the most heartache is usually the travel policy. Elaborate rules are framed that derive their ancestry from an era when travel was a perquisite, likely to be misused. Travel is now usually a curse to be avoided, but the rules are framed as if every employee will cheat on travel. Elaborate allowances are designed which need a PhD for comprehension. Why not simply create a single daily lumpsum and forget about the rest – NO ; detailed rules on what parking fees can be claimed, and what cannot, will be enshrined in the Bible. And there is the accountant to spot a 1 cent mistake in your expense statement with undisguised glee.

Silly rules abound. If you take leave that straddles a weekend, will the holidays also be counted as leave or will they not ? Bonuses will be paid only if you have not resigned on the date of the bonus payment which is usually 6 months after the year end – never mind that you have slogged your butt off last year and earned every penny of it. Some extreme organizations even stipulate when loo breaks can be taken.

I am not , for one moment, suggesting that you do not need any rules. Of course, you need them. But the governing principles should be – keep it simple, rule only on cardinal issues, make it employee friendly rather than a stick to beat them with, and above all the excellent principle that Netflix has followed – people rise to the level of responsibility you give them.

Tear up your “bible”. Formulate a simple 5 page document. Establish what employees CAN do first – work in a safe environment, get access to training, right to be treated equally with others, etc etc. Then lay out cardinal don’ts – endangering safety, violence, sexual harassment, etc. And then STOP. Give a lot of leeway to employees – you’ll be pleasantly surprised that they behave more responsibly than when the “bible” was seven inches thick. And give leeway to line managers and HR to decide and advice an employee what is right and what isn’t. After all, if you trust them to make million dollar decisions, they surely can take the right 10 dollar decisions.

I now sit back and wait for the HR folks to quarter me !!

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Getting in to a company is tough

First impressions matter, right ? Your first impression of the company is usually when you come for the recruitment interview. What sort of an experience of the place do you get ?

It goes something on the following lines. You arrive a little early, not wanting to be late. You get stopped by security who has no idea of your coming. You produce your interview letter. He checks on the phone. He then lets you in to a reception area. You sit down with twenty others who have all come for the same reason. Awkwardly you squeeze between two others for the only millimeter of seating space available. You wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Finally one hour after the scheduled start time, a guy walks up and hands you a form to fill. You deposit that and wait. And wait. You may then be called for a silly test. You finish that. And wait and wait. Its now 3 hours since you came. You would like a nice cup of tea. Fat chance. You keep waiting. Then suddenly you are called for the interview. You rush in disheveled to face four formidable men. They have just opened your CV and are reading it. One of them asks your name just to check that he is reading the right CV. Oops wrong person. Shuffling of papers. Your CV is dug out. Questions are fired. Halfway through, the fifth interviewer walks in , for he is late in coming. Your answers are only half listened to as they are still reading your CV. 15 mts later its over. You’ve spoken for 5 mts. The guys asking the question have spoken for 10. Out you go.

For the next 3 months, there’s deathly silence. You have no clue as to whether you are accepted, rejected or killed. Then out of the blue comes the call – you’ve been taken. Can you join in 3 days. You protest saying that you have a month’s notice period with your current employer. The caller says – break it and join in 3 days for you are urgently required. You can’t ask why the company slept for 3 months if it was so urgent.

OK – this is an exaggerated account. But something in this might sound familiar. Many companies fall over themselves to create the most negative first impression possible. Just can’t fathom the reason. Maybe HR folks like to do esoteric HR stuff and hate doing the boring hard work that goes behind creating a wow experience.

Here’s my checklist to determine if your recruitment process is broken.

- If the candidate waits for more than 5 mts
- If the candidate isn’t offered some refreshments
- If during the entire process, nobody smiles at her and nobody thanks her for coming.
- If you don’t tell her when to expect a feedback
- And if you don’t get back to her as promised, even if she’s not taken.

If any of the above happens, fix the recruitment process. That’s the first job of HR – to create a wow experience for your employee even before she walks in. For if you’ve created a “Oh s%^&” experience, you’re going to spend the next 3 years trying to overcome that.

And the word “caring” appears on most companies’ culture statement. Oh God !

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Take a vacation for however long you want !

If a company told you that you can take a vacation whenever you want, and for however long you want (paid of course), what would you say ? Unbelievable ? There can’t be a company like that ? Think again. There is a company like that. And a pretty successful company, so far. Welcome to Netflix.

Their logic is simple. People act responsibly when given the freedom. After all nobody tells you that you have to work for more than 8 hours; or on weekends. And yet you do. Netflix says if its not monitoring exactly how many hours you work in a day or how many days a week, why should it “monitor” how many days vacation you take. Interesting point of view, eh?

Netflix’s presentation called “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” found its way into the internet. Click here for a fascinating read. It’s a 128 slide long presentation – but don’t be intimidated by the size. These are simple slides and a quick read. Every company would do well to read it.

Here are some interesting aspects of their culture that makes you think

- Increase employee freedom as you grow. As companies get bigger, they add complexity and a plethora of rules and procedures get formulated. Netflix says that as they grow, they consciously try to give more freedom, and not chain people.

- Their policy on travel and entertainment – “Act in Netflix’s best interests”. That’s it. No 100 page policy document detailing entitlements. No checking of expense statements.

- Every year each employee's pay is reset to the market (whatever it takes if he were to be hired afresh). No % increases.

- Almost all salary is fixed. No bonus pool. Pay is not dependant on company’s performance.

A very interesting point of view. I am so struck by reading this, that I intend to post on company culture and HR policies all week.

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