Shattered Dreams
Mohan was very enthusiastic as he
was joining allsold.com, a leading e-commerce organization as a head HR for the
organization. E-commerce was growing big time in the country and among all
e-retailers who have mushroomed in last 4-6 years, allsold.com held a special
place. The company held almost 20% of the total market share by number of
online shopping transactions and was very popular among young consumers owing
to the speed and quality of service it provided.
About allsold.com
It was surely a matter of pride
to be associated with such big name in Indian retail. Everyone today was well
familiar with the name of allsold.com, thanks to their customer focus,
discounted pricing and some aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns. Allsold.com
was a young, dynamic and vibrant company with average age of the employees being
around 27 years. Most of the senior management people were also below 30 years
and had been with the company for more than 3 years. They all had a good
pedigree and for most of them, it was the first job. They have built the business from scratch and have brought it to the current level. The founders also were around
30 years age bracket and had short stint in corporate before they made their entrepreneurial
plunge.
The organization had around
thirty percent of the population who have spent more than a year and a half in
the system and almost one third of them have already got the long term tenure
award as they had completed three years in the organization. Obviously for an
organization just four and a half years old, this was an achievement. There has
been no visible people issue in the past. It was like a small close knit
family. In last one year, the population of the organization had gone up three
times to around two and a half thousand employees as the business grew many
folds. However, the rapid growth in number of employees never made anyone feel
that there is any segmentation among employee groups based on tenure. Everyone remained
busy in their own little world and kept working towards their assigned
individual objectives.
As it would be for most young
organizations, the place had a free work culture. Free snacks and cold drinks,
a carom and foosball table in pantry, no work timings or dress code and bean
bags around work stations were just some of the enablers organization had in
place. People coming in shorts and t-shirt and enjoying a game of carom between
the works was a common site. Office in central posh locality of the city where
lot of youth hangout places were around just added further charm to the entire
work environment that organization had created.
Manager- team interaction was
very friendly at allsold.com. Since the team comprised of similar people in
terms of pedigree and age-group, they gelled well- more like friends than
manager-subordinate. In some cases it was extension of college senior-junior relationship. Most of the discussions were informal and over a tea-smoke
break. Hence some of the formal serious business meetings were also very ‘cool’
in the way they were conducted, though the debated topic were often found to be a
burning problem.
About Mohan
If organization was a popular
name to be associated with then Mohan too was regarded as one of the most
reputed HR professional of his experience level in the industry. He has worked
with big IT and ITES organizations in his earlier stints. He was known for some
employee friendly policies he had introduced while working with one of the IT
majors. The basket of benefits he introduced helped his previous employer in
retaining people as the IT company was facing stiff competition from it’s
competitors. He is still basking in the glory of the job he did almost 7-8 years ago. Mohan also carried a reputation to be a great and aggressive task
master and had delivered on numerous occasions for his organization. With experience
of 15 years and a relevant masters’ degree from Cambridge, allsold.com could
not have got a better person for the top HR job.
About the industry
The e-retail industry being
young, technology focused and in innovative space, is becoming a popular
choice among the young job seekers if they had to select between Indian
companies. The e-commerce industry needs people to work in technology, retail,
customer-support and supply chain. The new form of organization had flavour of
several industries in one. Era of old world IT services companies was now over
and the e-retail was all set to rule the roost as preferred employer. The rapid
growth and uncertainty ahead became key points of attraction for the young
brigade as their KRAs are not pre-scripted. Since the entire industry itself is
going through a metamorphosis, all e-retailers need to have their employees on
edge of their seats. Despite being in existence for more than six years, we can say that the industry is still in infant state as far as India is concerned. Hence, the actions need to be dynamic and real time. One has to
adapt quickly to the change in strategy and focus areas of the company and this has become their selling point as an employer. Apart
from a pretty volatile work environment, the new generation of job seekers
surely have their preference towards a ‘cool company’ where they are free to
dress their way and be independent of time schedule, unlike some IT services
where clocking of minimum hours and a severe dress code were followed in
stringent way.
When Mohan joined the
organization and found most of the stories heard about the organization is
true. He found that there is no dearth of growth stories of individuals. Lot of
people in business functions have grown very fast as the company grew
exponentially in last two years. He was glad that he joined an organization
which is already having a great culture and environment. From HR stand point,
the only area he felt that required to be uplifted was having standard HR
processes in place. Hence to begin with, he decided to focus on strengthening
of key HR processes. He wanted the processes to be the DNA of the organizations. He
very well knew the importance of having a process driven system in larger
organizations. Allsold.com was growing to become a mid-size organization and it
was important for them to adopt processes even in their HR activities, be it
induction, performance management and appraisal, any development program or
support in terms of travel, phone reimbursement or broadband connections. He
knew that it is important to drive standard policies around these areas. He
also wanted to give a formal structure to manager-subordinate interaction in order to have a serious and formal career discussion. His initial thrust and focus drew a lot of resistance
from senior business managers and criticism for him stating that he is over
aggressive, killing the DNA of the young company and is a non-friendly HR head.
However, he was unfazed by the attack and kept progressing diligently highlighting
one process gap after another. Sometimes he even got the feedback from founders to become
less process oriented as HR processes are new for the organization. Hence he
should bring them in slowly and shall not burden managers with HR paraphernalia. Mohan was becoming unpopular among the business leaders and a few even called him a cultural misfit for the organization. On the other hand, Mohan was toying with some other ideas altogether. He wanted the organization to be established
as a brand. He wanted them to be regarded as one of the best employers. This
could be done when an organization participate in such surveys and is rated well. Any such survey
has several parameters like people-processes, friendly environment and growth
stories.
As an experienced HR person, he knew the parameters on which such evaluations are done. He has been part of teams who were in the top quadrant as best employer during his previous stints. Friendly manager-team interaction, friendly work environment, growth stories were already there and now with some focus on processes, Mohan was sure that he will make a big bang announcement soon. With base already set up, Mohan decided to go for the final kill and go aggressive with his process drives. Mohan invited people from one of the HR institutions who perform such surveys globally to visit the office of allsold.com. The vibrant office impressed them too and some minor feedbacks were shared. Buoyant by their encouragement, Mohan registered with one of the leading business magazine too for such survey. Both the surveys were around three months apart with the business magazine having the survey later and Mohan believed that it will be consolidation of the point he wants to make.
As an experienced HR person, he knew the parameters on which such evaluations are done. He has been part of teams who were in the top quadrant as best employer during his previous stints. Friendly manager-team interaction, friendly work environment, growth stories were already there and now with some focus on processes, Mohan was sure that he will make a big bang announcement soon. With base already set up, Mohan decided to go for the final kill and go aggressive with his process drives. Mohan invited people from one of the HR institutions who perform such surveys globally to visit the office of allsold.com. The vibrant office impressed them too and some minor feedbacks were shared. Buoyant by their encouragement, Mohan registered with one of the leading business magazine too for such survey. Both the surveys were around three months apart with the business magazine having the survey later and Mohan believed that it will be consolidation of the point he wants to make.
The entry into top employer of the
country club will catapult Mohan’s name in the industry and establish his
authority in the organization, something he has been trying to do during last
six months- since he joined. He knew that young blood organizations have the
history to spoil the party for big companies when it comes to being the best
employers. There were numerous examples in last five years when a young,
innovative and a company with less than fifteen hundred employees has done well
in such surveys. Barring some MNCs who were recognized globally for their
people support, Mohan was confident of beating most of the competition.
The day came nearer. Sample
population was chosen to pilot the survey tool and avoid any technical glitches.
The parameters and some of the highlights about the organization were talked
about through company-wide mailers from founders’ email id and posters. This
was first of its kind initiative for the organization. In all possible way,
Mohan and his team were trying to generate the pride in the employee while they
are associated with allsold.Com. Last fifteen days before the survey witnessed
the bombardment of mails. They kept sharing the growth in customer base, top
line, bottom line, employee base, category wise growth to showcase all that has
been achieved. Survey was opened for four days and within first day itself,
around 70% of the employees took the pretty lengthy survey of around 75 odd
questions. They finally ended the campaign with around 95% employee participation. Mohan
was feeling proud and was keeping his fingers crossed. The results would take around
three months and in the meanwhile the second survey would be done too. He
thought for a moment that he would not get some time to improve the areas of
concern highlighted by the survey but soon he was out of it as he was confident
that there will not be many such areas. All he wanted to ensure that some of
the points are reinforced. He wanted most
people to participate and that too under the ‘halo’ and ‘recency’ effect of the
mailers.
The second survey also happened
with the same fanfare. Now, there was a
lot of buzz on the floor as the result of the earlier survey was about to come.
The surveying institution shared the survey result with Mohan a day before they
were to put the list of top 100 employers and the extended list on their
website. While opening the email, Mohan felt that he is opening his report card
shared by his class teacher.
Mohan was shocked to see that
they do not feature in top 100 at all- nowhere in the top quadrant. Most of the
scores were between 60th to 70th percentiles. Even the
absolute scores were not encouraging. Some of the major concerns highlighted by
employees were communication in the organization, fairness by managers as well
as management, people development, training and support from manager for
development. Trust in managers and management was very low as per the response
given. Surely all the informal interaction with managers and mailers from
founders’ email id has not worked for Mohan and allsold.com. All the enablers
like free snacks, work timings etc were merely captured by the employees during
the survey. It was a significant cost for the organization but went purely unnoticed.
Now Mohan was worried. Tomorrow
the results will go public and everyone will know the fact. Today he is having
meeting with management team to share the results. He is absolutely clueless
about the poor show. He was almost certain of a top 100 finish if not top 50 as
it was their first entry. He doesn't know how to tackle the today's meeting with top management.
Few months later
Mohan has decided to put down his
papers. The second survey results were worse than the first. All his plans and
‘BHAG’ came down crumbling. The attrition in the organization has been on upward trend only since the survey happened. Few people blamed him for triggering a chain reaction of resignations by starting such surveys. In his illustrious career, this was perhaps the
only black spot and his decision led to his shortest stint with any
organization. There is no buzz about the best employer survey now. Neither anyone
is talking about the survey nor there are any plans to focus on next year’s
surveys. The show was over for Mohan, allsold.com and employees- Curtains !!
Some open ended questions related to the subject
- What makes Google the best employer? Most of the surveys have Google as best employer (2014) in India.
- In 2013, an old world industry like NTPC with 25000+ employees and a new age venture Make my trip with 1500 employees featured in top 10 as per Great Place to Work (GPTW). Is there a common practice between the two contrasting organizations?
- In 2014, all of top 10 employers as per GPTW, had an employee base less than 9000. Is it a coincidence?
- Is it right to segment employers as per employee strength during such rankings?
- Below is the list of best
employers ranked by business today magazine. Do we see a trend?
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References
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