Survival tips in turbulent situation?

Bag and retain your job.  

Companies in India have kept on hold their recruitment for time being. The situation is expected to be worst than year 2008. Is India heading towards recession? Experts say, yes! At some extent! Increasing interest rates, declining GDP and inflation are fueling the slowdown in India. The situation may remain same for at least next one year.  In such situation, job opportunities will be only for experience professionals. Freshers have to struggle to enter in the corporate world and the best will bag the job. Even professionals will also have to struggle hard to keep their jobs.

The problem, in our country is that management graduates develop their unrealistic expectations from themselves. They don’t have much but they expect the best. During turbulent situation, one needs to take the real stock of their strengths and weaknesses.

If you are management, engineering, simple graduate or working professional, read my simple tips for survival.

1) Don’t be choosy about Industries and compensation:   

Why the industries pay you more, if their current talent is underpaid or they have more options to get experienced one? Is your college the best in the competition? If yes, what contribution you are going to make immediately. Industry will invest you for 2-3 years on you on their cost, and still they carry the risk of loosing you to the competition. Definitely they don’t want to train you for the competition.  Accept the company which comes first to you. If you are deserved, then you will definitely get something. One of the friends was so much choosy about the job, that he rejected offers from different companies. He used to give the excuses like. “The company is not good, compensation is not good, they will send me on the site, they may transfer me to another location and so on.” After one year, new students entered into the market and my friend was forced to take petty jobs in his career.

2) Learn more and more:

Steve Jobs perfectly said, “Stay hungry, stay stupid.” Be hungry to earn more. Just imagine yourself after 10 years. What do you like to know for? 10 years experience – Every year different experience or same experience repeated 10 years? Learn new skills, hone your existing skills, and develop your competencies. Who is kicked out first from the company during turbulent market? The person who has inferior skills is thrown out first. Once we get a degree, we stop to learn and that is bad. Try to learn every aspect of the business.

3) Keep patience:  

Most of the new guys have the tendency to change the job every year. They mention reasons like career growth, compensation and so on. Who will promote you within one year? Have you think what value you added in the company? Please stop this. Your solidity counts. Spend reasonable good time in one company.

4) Be expert and be general:           

Be expert in your profession, but also try to be general in practice.  You can be only expert marketing person; you need to be good sales guy. Who bags top positions? People who know everything of the business including different functions. They may not be expert, in all functions, but they knows aspects of all functions.

5) Be Intrapreneur:

The person who creates and brings into use profitable new products, processes, services, and ways of doing business is the intrapreneur. He is the person who behaves with entrepreneurial spirit within a large organization. They are driver by vision. They have risk taking abilities.

6) Be a self learner & starter:

I have seen people who wait somebody to start. They expect somebody will come and change their life. In this world, you have to build your own foundation. Nobody will come to teach you. Be a self learner and self starter.

Compensation Philosophy

“When you put the resignation, your company will match your CTC. If they can match it when you put down papers, why they don’t do it properly? Why they wait for the resignation? Do they underestimate the talent value?” One of the friends was asking me this during hot discussion on compensation.  In ideal world of the HR professional, they would love to have the compensation policy in place, but the question is how to do that.

“There are certain cases where employees leave the organization and come back with higher salary. Isn’t it an injustice to existing employees?” another friend asked me. “You should go to your top HR person or CEO to ask this.” I replied back.

My personal opinion is that for handling the compensation, you should have the competencies. Compensation management is one of the critical parts of the HR function. Any company and HR professional can’t avoid the importance of relevant compensation philosophy for the organization. If you do not have the proper compensation philosophy, you may have the trouble in retaining your critical talent. Paying maximum salary is not the solution, but paying right salary is.  {According to one survey (WorldatWork’s Compensation Programs & Practices research report (9/2010)) - 9 out of 10 organizations report having a compensation philosophy. 61% have a written philosophy. 29% have an unwritten philosophy. 42% reported that all or most of employees do not understand the compensation philosophy says that only 24% organizations have the compensation philosophy in place in their organization.}

When you are clear on your compensation philosophy then you are clear what to do with your talent on compensation perspective. But it is always managed as a crisis management. Compensation is not the top most important factor in retaining employee, but this does not mean you should avoid it. Positioning your talent vis-à-vis a market data will help you arrest your attrition. Employees have a common tendency to update their market positioning, and they try to check their positing in the market. Various job portals are easily available and if somebody in the team gets the double salary in the market, why don’t me, is the logic for searching the job outside. Here he assumes that he would get higher salary, good title, he may ignore the other good dimensions of the company. When he joins new company, he realizes that he got two things, but missed four other important factors. And then he goes for new job search. Most of the time, it is a just temptation of an employee.

However the fact is you can not underpay your employees for long time. You can position your employees in different percentile as per the potential and performance. Paying higher salary, off course, will spoil your culture. Your average employee should be positioned rightly. Your top talent can be at par with the market.      

Talent is always vulnerable to the flight risk in India. They are more aware and qualified to understand their potential. Reports show that hiring scenario in 2011-2012 is still promising. In such scenario, your top talent is always at risk. First dimension is compensation philosophy. I believe that organizations will be on the right track. Talent will also not black mail the organization.     

Once you have a compensation philosophy in place, your HR practices should support the employee engagement. Organizational culture, transparency, benefits and best practices will still be important in employee engagement, but at least pay the RIGHT salary. 

Find out these employees in your organization….

SMS/Phone employee:



Understand employees &
make your own strategy to manage them.



“I have spent 20 years in this company and everybody respects me. One employee called me after purchasing new cell phone. He told that he is calling me first. In another incident one employee gave me news of his son’s birth first. See how they respect me.”

 

Incidentally I also knew these two employees. They always used this strategy while communicating something to their superiors. Not necessary you are first to communicate, but they will tell so.

There are such stupid superiors where they wrongly misconstrue the behaviours of juniors.   

This is same like the new ad campaign of Airtel where I made the correction “Yek SMS subordinate jaruri hota hain!”  

Hazeri (attending) Employee:

When you are in the office, certain set of employees will ensure to come to you to say just hallo. They will not do it with their peers, but only with seniors in the organization. They will ensure to peep in your workplace, cabin once in a day and find opportunities to inform you the updates, mostly about other employees in the organization. They will ensure to filter the information conveniently. Communication of fabricated information is common.   

Ear and Eye Employee:

Top bosses are fully relied on these employees. These employees are much closed to the power centers. They maintain the good personal relationship with all employees. They also have their own colleagues in different functions and surprisingly they know everything what’s happening in the organization. The problem is that they communicate everything to top people and not the concern line managers. They may also fabricate the information for their own benefits.   

Darbari (Court) Employee

I always wonder how these employees are entertained by their superiors. Almost most of the time, they are in the cabin of superiors. Perhaps superiors also needed these employees to muscle their ego.  

Union Employee:

Have you seen employees who always speak about their rights, benefits, holidays and always negative? They find fault in everything. They are actually troublemakers. They are either aggressive or passive. You will always find them in cafeteria or near water cooler.    

Buddy Employee:

These employees are very comfortable to talk with. They are warm and welcoming. They are cool and silent. They take personal interest in other person. They make new employees conformable in the organization. Less assertive and good friends. But less effective when they are required to take firm stand on certain issues. However they are good opinion makers.   

Coach Employee:

Smart and matured people in the organizations. They like to coach others. They are informal coach to the people without any authority. They don’t hide their knowledge. They are like teachers. They are important in the organizations.  These employees are also good opinion makers.

Social Employee:

They are good friends. They will always help you. If they get a call that somebody is admitted in a hospital, they will ensure their support. They will come at our home to help you if you need them and they will never speak about this.

You will find different personalities in organizations. I labeled them based on their visible behavior in the organization. I don’t know how they are talented or performing employees. But some are definitely smart enough to manage their superiors. However it is upto the superior how they get managed by these employees.

However human is human and they will be human beings. You can’t do much to change them. Definitely last three set of employees are required in the organization and Management can actually use their skills. You can use these employees or their skill in different circumstances. Smart leaders do the same.

Manage your boss…

All employees in this country believe that they don’t need any boss. They also believe that companies are wasting money by hiring highly paid bosses. You will hardly find any employee who is satisfied with his boss. In employee engagement surveys, most of the times superior are rated based on the personal biases. If boss’s boss entertains employee by bypassing the boss, then it goes very difficult to manage employees.   

We have lot of expectations from bosses. We expect that boss should be the leader, motivator, coach, mentor etc etc. But we fail to understand the perspective of bosses. Employees tend to take convenient stand about the situation. We always forget that boss is successful because of work of subordinate. At the other hand boss makes you successful by assigning tasks and honing your skills and competencies. Bosses are not God and neither we.  They don’t know everything and neither we; however collaborative relationship helps both.   

If you want to climb the corporate ladder, your boss will take you there. For this you should learn to manage your boss. Try following strategies to manage him better.  

Understand him: Understand the boss as a person. How he is. What is his personality type? How he reacts and what he likes and dislikes. If you understand the boss better, you are creating more opportunities to be more effective. After all he is not your enemy. He is there to support you.  

Understand his expectations: Get clarity on goals and KRAs, but also the style of working. If your boss is perfect, then defiantly he will not expect mistakes in data.  If your boss is organized, then he will expect the same from you.  Make his expectations clear.

Give regular feedback: Give and take the feedback properly.  I have seen employees who do not bother to communicate the bosses about their task. After all your boss is accountable in the company. If you don’t give him the feedback, he will get it from somewhere else.

Don’t hide your mistakes: One my employee use to keep her mistakes under the carpet. Sometimes she uses to manipulate the situation by not communicating the issues. I never like that. Never hide mistakes. You are human being and human being makes mistakes, Exhibit your courage to admit mistakes. However don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Don’t lie: Honesty is the best policy. Being truthful is one of the ways to be successful in life. Never lie with your boss. He will come to know anyway if you are lying.   

Improve your communication: You must be expecting from your boss that he should communicate everything to you. This is applicable to you also. Communication is the area which always has the room for improvement.  Improve your communication with your boss. Don’t scare to go to him if you have any issues.

Don’t complain: I have seen employees who always complain. You will have lot of challenges in professional life. Challenges make person perfect. Never complain about person, situation, and resources.

Don’t give any excuse: Employees give many excuses if the work is not done. You are responsible for what you are doing. Result counts and not your excuses.

Don’t gossip about your boss: Gossiping about your boss and making fun of him is very unprofessional. Somehow gossips are never secret and bosses come to know what you say about him.

Be effective and result oriented: You are hired for your work. You are expected to show the results. If you are not result oriented, you will not survive in the organization.

Go extra mile: He assigns the task because he thinks you have the caliber to do that task. Hence ask more from boss. Go to him and ask if you can support him if he is busy. Ask delegation. Take more responsibilities.

Be creative and think out of the box: If you are traditional and just following the SoPs, you are not adding any value. You are just a clerk. Be creative in day to day work. Go with ideas and influence your boss.    

You can not avoid bosses in your life. If you can not avoid them, then it is better to collaborate with them. Try to learn from your bosses. Your boss is also human being. He may have egos, emotions and he will also behave as others behave. However he also recognizes the fact that he needs you. He will definitely coach and mentor you. It is upto you how you take his coaching and mentoring.