THE PULSE by Sivakumar Gopal

An hierarchy is derived from an organization’s strategy for reaching its consumers or customers. It may manufacture a product or trade in a product or provide a service but each activity defines its operational layers that determine the fastest way to make a decision and implement it. Larger organizations tend to build overlapping layers in hierarchy over the years but it is imperative to revisit the structure at intervals and make it as lean as possible to serve the customers. Such a set-up will have a clear line of responsibility of a manager and his/her accountability for a defined outcome that is expected. Also it is easier to find out at what point of a decision making chain, a strategy or its execution has failed to help take a corrective action. We have seen companies cutting down on service lines and man power to bring in the agility to deliver a product or service because the excess flab has retarded the growth and profitability.

Does Hierarchy in an organisation impede the growth of an individual?

Most of you would say Yes and rightly so. The more the layers in the decision making chain, the higher will be lack of motivation and fire to excel. Many successful organisations have been able to handle it better by breaking the decision making chain into smaller ones and making new leaders responsible to manage P&L of sub-units and cost centres. They have understood that the frustration of an employee that he or she is not being heard or recognised could kill innovation and blunt the talent.

Similar to an agile way of developing and delivering a solution to a customer, a decentralised hierarchy and a leaner team makes it agile and responsive to a new situation or environment or a market demand. Smaller units bring in a sense of entrepreneurship to achieve the common purpose of the larger unit or the organisation. Incremental values added by these units help to appreciate the contributions from managers and their teams.

#agile #hierarchy
#entrepreneurship

#employeemotivation

A nation, an organisation and a community prosper to reach newer heights because of its people, leaders and the eco-system they create around them. The more they care for their people the better is the capability they are able to build in them. They cannot sustain their existence and growth through unethical means and by suppressing its people and their potential.

Let us support leaders who have this ethos!

Digital Health Passport

The future is going to witness a new document that an individual will virtually carry or be expected to produce is Digital Health Passport.

COVID has pushed nations to be more demanding from citizens or travellers, information about their Health, Pre-existing diseases, Lab Reports, insurance cover, Vaccine history etc. Similar to what you already have, a digital locker on cloud to secure your driving license details, Licence plate certificate nos.,Insurance papers etc, this Digital health passport is an additional docket that you will be required to show on demand to Airlines, Hotels, Concert Halls and Cinemas or ER services during an emergency. Many advanced nations have a record of what medical tests have been performed on their citizens but usage by other agencies are not prevalent today.

We expect these data to be as secure as possible and are available with only Govt departments, yet we do not know how they can be extracted with sophisticated software tools. You may be surprised to receive marketing mailers reminding your next date for Doctor’s appointment, reminder about health insurance premium or about a new policy or the validity of vaccine dose taken and a parking or speeding ticket.

DHP will invoke a new era of citizens’ surveillance and may be linked to an already available Citizen Registry – like SSN or Aadhar ( India).

Work From Home

Everywhere we hear people mentioning ” New Normal” and that includes businesses that are being conducted in a cozy comfort of homes, irrespective of your own business or your organization’s. A lot has been written about how work has shifted to your drawing rooms and in many cases to the only room in your homes but the happy aspect of this WFH model is that your boss is not snooping over your shoulders. Look at the positive side – your wardrobe is not growing bigger, your vehicle is gathering dust, your fuel bills are astonishingly lower, your early morning hurry has turned into extended sleep hours, your spouse spends more time on yoga or exercise, you spend more time with the kids, your parents wonder what on earth your were doing at office that you are not doing at home. The flexibility in work hours is a boon for working couples and they now partake their household chores to an advantage. Businesses are claiming higher productivity as everyone now works between 10-14 hours a day and jobs are getting finished ahead of time and customers are happy if your work is based on your output at desk and not at an assembly line or with the machines. Energy bills are low, maintenance costs of work place have come down and idling hours have gone away. Employees work 1.4 days more in a month and the average commute time of an average 2 hours in a day to office has just vanished.

Has WFH come to stay as a permanent way of our daily life? Is it really good for individuals and organizations in the long run? What will happen to those lovely offices, buildings etc? People are already complaining that it robs us off personal life and the hard barricade that existed before between office and personal lives is now gone. It has created a sort of psychological toll on people who have increasingly become irritating for each other at home. Employees don’t get paid for logging extended hours and your mind is always pre-occupied with work related actions. In the long run, this may create health issues and as we know insurance companies and labour departments are re-writing their verbose on work place insurance coverage applicability. The huge office buildings look like monuments and people who are dependent on their maintenance have gone jobless. The roads are deserted and people’s livelihood on the road sides have taken a heavy beating. Taxi drivers, Auto wallahs have no jobs to run their families.

In my view, WFH is certainly not a good long term solution for everyone however good it may be for the bottom line of businesses. The sooner we go back to office, the better for all. Don’t we long to indulge in office gossips about your colleagues or boss and bring in the social courtesies that are pleasant to exchange and are refreshing to our moods?

I plan to discuss a series of trends that look promising in 2021 and beyond under this topic…

On-Line Education:

The plethora of on-line educational sites, aggressively endorsed by celebrity actors of Bollywood ( though difficult to fathom why they need to do it) on TV channels makes one wonders whether they are targeted at school going children or arm chair elders who spend more time in front of TV. In any case this is what everyone is lapping up either to become a young SW coder or pick up some new skills and get some brownie points in their year end appraisal chart. While on -line education per se is a new way of getting you up to date, what is difficult to swallow is the fact that there is nothing in offer for youngsters to learn something new apart from their academic curriculum. But for the likes of Kinder Garden going children to school & college going students, it may be a convenient way of learning, some subjects of study are even tailored to their needs, what is sadly missing is the fun element of interacting with their friends and teachers to get to know stuff beyond their subjects of study.

While it is understood that on-line coaching is different than on-line education, the former being primarily aimed at improving the scores in competitive exams, the latter is more like a substitute to a class room study, organised by educational institutions as an additional way for academically weaker students to become better at school exams.

There is no denying of the fact that the business opportunity for both types of education is tremendous and start ups are apparently enlisting more people and hence this business opportunity holds a lot of promise from a commercial venture point of view. You will see more money being pumped in here both by start-up companies and educational institutes / Universities and there is absolutely no regulation on the quality of education that is being taught. Parents or people opting for on-line education must be their own judges of the contents, the methodology of delivery and the capability of coaches/teachers.

#onlineeducation

#start-ups

#2021trends

HR is one of the most evolved functions today and in successful organisations HR has been a driving force across all streams of organization’s functions.

The expanding roles in HR function post Covid era are being discussed but don’t you feel what you already have is sufficient. New roles like Diversity Officer may be pertinent for a multi lingual, multi national work force but cannot understand roles like Ethics Officer, Workplace architect, Well-being Officer, Officer for Human Bias etc. They sound extravagant to say the least as the core HR & IR function is expected to take into cognisance the facets of these sub-functions.

It is beneficial to have a Psychiatrist or Psychologist to cover the individual’s well being , conflicts between co-workers, the gender relationships, the adjustment needs of working with multiple ethnic groups, the impact of organisational hierarchy and changes in physical work environments ( WFH) besides the mental equilibrium of work force during a crisis. The constantly changing skill needs in the work place put enormous pressure on employees and they are forced to balance their time to deliver their work and at the same time push them to enhance their competency / skill levels. Their mental equilibrium both on and off the office is being challenged when family is also involved and this is where a Talk Therapy becomes helpful. The inputs for talk therapy come out of appraisal feedback that has parameters to evaluate the soft skills, Competency levels or the attitudes of an employee. Hence an appraisal methodology has to be comprehensive to include the assessment parameters for such a talk therapy.

Some large organisations do employ a Professional Counsellor but the need is a wider adaptation of this role to help develop individuals and sustain excellence in work place. I always believe that a Manager is the best person to be a counsellor rather than an outsider and it is essential that he/she needs to be coached by a professional as well to be able to absorb the learnings and mentor or counsel his/her team members. The manager knows the organization’s DNA, he or she knows the best method of counseling that suits the team.

2020
We need to put an Iron clad sheet to its face, bid good bye and not look back. It has taken the lives of many, a few of them were our near and dear ones. But it has refined and redefined our thinking in multiple ways:

* We care more for our family, our job, our friends and our well being.
* Materialistic progress is important but not at the cost of happiness of our loved ones.
* The purpose of life is to live it like there is no tomorrow and to spread positivity all around us.

Welcome to a year of renewed hope and fulfilment of our good intentions and desires.

SEASON’S GREETINGS &
HAPPY NEW YEAR!