An Employee’s Confusion

Hugh Macleod is running a manifesto-fest. Anna Farmery’s manifesto on An Employee’s Confusion caught my eye. Thought provoking stuff here! My favourites below, but do go & read this. And once done, head over to Anna Farmery’s blog for more.

3. If we are entrepreneurial, why do we make decisions by consensus?

5. If the future is important, why do we spend time in meetings looking at the past?

7. If we aim for a USP why, are encouraged to produce sameness?

2 for Today

This is Corporate Heresy at it’s best!

The first one is a dilbert, which frankly came as a shock. You mean we aren’t allowed to make up numbers?! How would we accountants (I speak loosely of course) justify our salaries? 😉

The second one comes from Ian Green’s wonderful blog Green Gathering, which I discovered via Hugh Macleod.

So What Exactly Do You Do?

One of the first questions we ask people we meet (right after “howdydo?” & “wass-ur-name?”) is “So what do you do?” This has some hilarious variants to be sure. I’ve been asked (in India & UK):

“Do you work?” (No, I dress in a suit for my morning bus rides to nowhere!)

“Are you employed?” (No, living on the dole is so much fun, isn’t it?)

“Which company, beta?” (I could be self-employed, you know!)

“Where do you work?” (Anywhere but the kitchen!)

But one way or the other what you are being asked is your profession. And sooner or later, you are supposed to give a serious, non-trivial reply (not an easy task for me at all!)

“I’m a Management Accountant”

(it’s always a He, the “She”s typically come up with different ones along the lines of “are you married”? 😉

“Interesting!”…(pause)…”So, you are in Accounts”

“Ummm…no” (Why does this always happen to me?!)

“Then…”

“I handle financial planning, things like budgeting, pricing & financial analysis”

“Woowww” …(pause)…(small smile)… “So tell me which shares should I buy?”

“Ummm…sorry, but I don’t usually deal too much with shares”

“But you said you were an analyst”

“Uhhh… (God, how did I get into this again?) I look at these things inside the company, not from outside”

“Ohhh” (disappointed sigh)…”So, what exactly do you do?”

“(Ok you asked for it!) You know a company is like an aeroplane. You know you want to get from Mumbai to New York via London. However, the external conditions change. The temperature outside rises or drops. If you go high, you can fly faster because of less air resistance, but your visibility could be poorer. If you take a longer route, you could ride the currents, but you would consume more fuel. Moreover, at every step you need to look at the instruments, and make course corrections. You need information to weigh your decisions with, to make sure you are making the most optimal choices. So that you actually get to London when you say you will…”

(…He starts looking here & there, but now I’ve got him! I’m avenging the multitudes of MBAs who’ve been asked these questions…the analogy is a poor one, and fairly inaccurate, but I’m still being nice, trying not to confuse him too much!)

“…so you need to have good instruments which will give you the right data. But also, which will display the consequences of your decisions before & after you take them. I am the instrument dashboard for the company…”

(…fairly grandiose, and not totally accurate, I’m afraid…but he’s not gonna know…especially when his focus is on getting away…)

“So, let’s look at your business…you have an objective, whether it’s serving the society, making money, desktop on every desk, world’s information on everyone’s fingertips, etc…you need to plan out your next few steps. So you make a 3/5-year plan. Then you detail out what you’ll be doing through the next year. That’s your budget. And then you measure yourself on your decided metrics quarterly, monthly, weekly…that’s where I come in…”

(…he’s probably going to go home & beat his wife, kick the dog, and blow up the neighbourhood….but hey, you know what! I am on a roll baby, and the larger issues of the world are of no consequence!)

“A lot of people say that Budgets are obsolete. The external world changes so fast that you can’t predict where you are going to be next month, forget a year! I think it’s a valid criticism to some extent. However, the reality is you still need an idea of where you want to get to. If you don’t know where you are going, no road will get you there (apologies to the ghost of Lewis Carroll)…and dynamic budgets supported by rolling forecasts might just be the key. It is also important to focus on non-financial metrics. However, most organisations just tack these on top of the financial metrics they are looking at, making life difficult for themselves. Human brains can focus on 5 things at a time at most, and organisations need to make sure that firstly there is a connection between the larger organisational goals, and individual goals, and secondly, each individual focuses on not more than 4-5 objectives at a time.”

“uhhh..i really got to go”

“Arrey, this is interesting! (No you don’t! You can’t get away that easily) Most organisations get their metrics systems upside down. In very few of them is Performance deployed downwards to ensure tight linkages, and eliminate the Strategy Gap. It’s a fascinating subject. I like it that you are so interested in it (!!!) Most businesspeople aren’t bothered. I’ll probably mail you a few papers, and register your email id on a few egroups, etc (time for you to change your email id!)”

“Uhhh…I really don’t get time to read, and anyway this is too technical”

“Oh, the technical part is no issue…it’s really simple after the first couple of years(!) And most papers are only about 25 pages”

“Ok” (sad smile…probably cursing his fate)… “so are you an MBA? IIM?”

“Yes”

“I was thinking of getting my son to do an MBA. Which IIM is the best…”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

(Inspired by Peter Donnelly’s speech at TED, and KHAL’s blogpost)

Recruiting Ethics?

THE STORY SO FAR

Nirav Mehta’s company, Magnet, loses two programmers to L10NBridge, both of whom leave without serving any notice period. His HR calls Lionbridge HR to protest about this, only to be told that it’s Magnet’s problem to retain their employees, and to be given a lecture on the harsh realities of life after threatening that Lionbridge would poach the rest of their QA team as well.

Neeraj writes that firstly, he expected the employees to not sell their soul for money. And that secondly, Lionbridge shouldn’t be encouraging unethical behaviour, by forcing employees to break their contracts.

REACTIONS

Lots of comments on the post…ranging from the usual “employees are not human resources” to “sue the ex-employees” to “you must be at fault for not being able to retain your people”.

Responding to the above post, Vulturo writes from the perspective of a recruiting manager, and makes some good points:

…when it comes to a company wanting its new hires to join at a short notice, the issue is purely between the new hires and the company. The existing employer of the new hires is nowhere in the picture. If the company is open to allow its hires to join work without submitting proper relieving documents, it is a risk which it chooses to take as a part of its business strategy. If another company made your employees quit their jobs and leave at a short notice, it didn’t exactly do anything “unethical” to you. It is your employees who were willing to quit. The other company did not enter into business to look after your company’s welfare. It entered into business to make profits

Deepak points to the ethical dilemma that any thinking employee would face w.r.t. serving out the notice period. On one hand, it’s the right thing to do. On the other hand, there are always a few rogue employers who will make life miserable during this period, delay the relieving letter, not pay the dues or create arbitrary hurdles. (And if you think your employer isn’t one of those, wait till you try to quit!). He also makes one good point w.r.t. the recruiting employer:

…should the new company be wary of have-not-properly-exited hires? They should, but even they are aware of the “asshole employers” concept. Also, HR targets are to get the best people as soon as possible, and that links directly to rewards.

MY TAKE

I can appreciate both aspects. I think employees should serve out the notice period that they signed up to, and the contracts should be legally enforced. I also think employers should be held to account when they let go of an employee to pay the dues within a certain time, and issue the necessary paperwork.

I do agree with both Deepak & Vulturo when they say that it is not the recruiting company’s problem, or even their job, to enforce your notice period. They might be in a steep ramp up mode, and/or might be facing the same situation (of someone leaving without serving notice period). However, it is also true that most recruiters believe in recruiting people at the last possible minute. And when they recruit they want the person to join “yesterday”, but when the guy leaves, they want to enforce notice periods. You can’t have it both ways!

I have also heard some very senior managers say that the notice period can’t/shouldn’t be bought out by the employee because they need the time to manage a smooth transition. However, there are two points that bear mentioning in this regard. Firstly, the notice periods tend to be ridiculously arbitrary, ranging from 1-3 months for fairly junior positions. (refer cartoon in yesterday’s post). Secondly, most of the time required for notice, is typically wasted. I have myself served out a 3-month notice period, where the handover was done in all of 1 week, at the very end.

Deepak makes another interesting point about open discussions regarding employees’ intention to leave. I do not think it’s that easy. The employee-employer relationship is fraught with distrust. Companies typically ignore all issues & concerns their people have. Companies belive in taking without giving. And to some extent this colours the perspective of all employees, even in companies that do not behave in this way.

There was a time employers & employees had a long-term relationship. There used to be a social contract. Work wasn’t just a place you went to earn your bread. It was a also a place you met friends, developed your interests. Your employer took care of you, and promised to do it typically for the rest of your life. The employee in return committed to giving his all, for the rest of his life. When companies chose to forgo this path (late 80’s in USA; mid-90’s in India), they did not foresee their actions coming back to haunt them. They did not think the balance of power would shift to the employees. Well, guess what! It did. Life is not a one-way street. What you give comes back!

And now even the enlightened, friendly, ethical employers pay the price. And to a large extent it is every company’s fault, and problem.

I’d actually advice Nirav to forget the errant employees. Suing them won’t make the problem go away. It’ll further vitiate the atmosphere for those who remain. Talk about the issue within the company. Say you don’t like it! Ask your employees for suggestions on how you can change things, as well as what needs to be done in such situations. Ask also how you can build a place they will be proud of calling their company, a place they would love to come to every morning. I know it sounds both cliched & heartless, but try it. You might be surprised!

How we treat our people

Kathy Sierra demonstrates the psychology of Business when it comes to employees…

As she says in her post:

If we want customer evangelists, we better start with employee evangelists. Having killer technology and a great team at the top is not enough if the employees–people–who have the greatest impact on whether the customer kicks ass aren’t valued as highly as those who have the greatest impact onacquiringa customer. It’s not about an “Employee of the Quarter” Office-Space/Dilbertish reward system… it’s about saying to employees, “We need you. You are the people who can make our customers succeed or fail with our products.”

Maybe the companies should stop hosting all those nonsensical parties/events, and pay more attention to the day-to-day affair of treating their employees well.