People at Work & Play

India’s IT majors face a challenge of employee productivity says an article in the Economic Times. The Big 3, TCS, Infosys & Wipro added as many as 57,554 people in 2007.

However, rising staff costs and the appreciation of the rupee, amongst other factors, have affected their average employee productivity. As far as turnover per employee is concerned, only Wipro showed an improved performance from the same period last year.

The average turnover per employee for the 3 companies dropped marginally to Rs 5.75 lakh in the October-December 2007 quarter, from Rs 5.79 lakh in the year-ago period.
Wipro’s average turnover per employee rose to Rs 6.80 lakh in the third quarter of this fiscal, from Rs 6.13 lakh in the year-ago quarter. However, TCS and Infosys recorded a dip in their average per employee turnover to Rs 5.58 lakh and Rs 4.99 lakh, from Rs 5.85 lakh and Rs 5.35 lakh respectively.

The average per employee net profit of the three companies also declined to Rs 1.23 lakh in the latest quarter from Rs 1.30 lakh in year-ago period.

The combined net profit of the three companies rose 19.1 per cent to Rs 3,411.67 crore in Q3 of this fiscal from Rs 2,864.50 crore a year ago.

Their total revenue rose 25.4 per cent from Rs 12,679.73 crore to Rs 15,904.18 crore during the quarter under review.

At the same time, the total employee strength of the three firms stood at 2,76,662 people at the end of December 2007, against 2,19,108 in December 2006.

Are you friendly with those who work around you? If yes, the chances of your coping with stress are much better says a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

A story in the New York Times speaks of research at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Data was studied data of over 24,000 Canadian workers in 2002. They found that 5 percent of the workers suffered from serious bouts of depression. Notably, men who endured high job strain were two times more likely to succumb to depression than men with minimal job stress. Women who had little decision-making authority had twice the depression risk compared to women with more power.

Employees who feel social support at work are far less likely to suffer serious depression problems.  “It’s more than just friendship,’’ said Emma Robertson Blackmore, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester and the lead author on the study. “Your family and friends give you support, but because they’re not in your work environment they don’t have the level of understanding that your work colleagues do.’’ Work friends, she noted, “get where you’re coming from.’’

So the next time, some one shares a problem at work or wants your time to talk about something which is bothering them, remember you too may need their time and help sometime.

The Red Zone , according to an article in The Fast Company , is a program started 3 years ago in the Boston Consulting Group to spot and tame chronic over workers. When a consultant averages more than 60 hours per week over any five weeks, he or she is flagged on reports seen by partners and managers.

What is striking is the effort made to get consultants to slow down and reduce risk of burn out in an industry characterized by long work hours.

Of course, hours of work is but one indicator. No one claims that the best achievements are from those who work most.

Do you want to have a variant of the Red Zone in your organisation ?

Increasingly in today’s world, more and more work is being carried out in teams. A key factor in carrying out an assignments effectively is the team composition. As they say, you cannot have all generals and no soldiers!

One way to understand team composition is the model presented by Dr. Meredith Belbin following his work at the Henley Management College. Dr. Belbin defines a team role as:-
“A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.”

He identified 9 clusters of behaviour:-

• 3 Action-oriented roles: Shaper ( drives the team to task completion), Implementer( turns ideas into action) and Completer Finisher(ensures task completion)
• 3 People-oriented roles: Co-ordinator ( ensures every one’s view is taken into account ), Teamworker ( maintains team harmony)and Resource Investigator ( builds contacts outside the team)
• 3 Cerebral roles: Plant ( provides new ideas), Monitor Evaluator ( ensures all choices are considered) and Specialist( contributes deep knowledge in specific areas)

All the roles must be represented for the team to succeed though one person may play more than one role. Team members may actually work on the basis of a primary role - based on their strengths -and secondary roles which they could perform if called upon to do so.

• ” It has taken my boss 5 days to meet me. If this is the treatment I get when I am new what will happen after a few months?”
• ” In the absence of any structured program, I just went ahead and did what I would have done in my last organisation. Now I am told all that I did was wrong!”
• ” The person chosen to guide me turned out to be the most frustrated guy I have met. He was more concerned about telling me his hard luck stories than help me understand the job”

Comments like these are fairly typical when the crucial process of onboarding is not managed the way it should be.

David Lee wrote about the 4 Deadliest Onboarding Mistakes. It reinforces that the best of processes done without competence does more harm than good.

A survey commissioned by Cisco on “Understanding and Managing the Mobile Workforce” makes for very interesting reading.

It has lessons for business managers, organisation development practitioners and students of business management alike.

The summary of their findings:

• Mobile working can enhance productivity, motivation, flexibility and staff retention.
• Technological and cultural trends support the growing adoption of mobile working.
• The key competencies required for effective mobile working are adaptability, communication, planning, organisation and relationship-building.
• The emerging psychological profile of the successful mobile worker suggests that resilience, extroversion, openness to new experiences, self-confidence and self-motivation are critical markers to consider when selecting staff.
• Mobile workers are at risk of stress, isolation and alienation from their employers.
• Managing mobile workers effectively demands high levels of trust, respect for individual autonomy, and close attention to communication styles and content.
• Organisations with mobile workers must invest in the creation and maintenance of rich relationships.
• Readiness for, and approaches to, mobile working vary according to national cultures.

I was surprised at the job knowledge level exhibited by a middle level HR Manager I met recently. In the course of our conversation he said he was responsible for “Talent Engagement” in his organisation. When I asked him what he had done to increase talent engagement, he said he had added 450 people to the workforce. It soon transpired that for him - and I sadly suspect for many others as well - talent engagement meant hiring or “engaging” talent.

Talent engagement is about employees going the extra mile and putting in discretionary efforts because their values and interests are aligned with that of the organisation. I have come across excellent examples of talent engagement in the service/hospitality industry where it is not uncommon to see committed employees provide superb service out of true engagement.

According to David C. Forman, Chief Learning Officer of the Human Capital Institute
“Talent Engagement represents the extent to which the workforce identifies with the company, is committed to it and provides discretionary effort so that it can be successful. Engagement is a key leading indicator for high performance workplaces, improved employee productivity and subsequent turnover.”

I am sure my young friend will soon realise that truly engaged talent is of greater value than large numbers of talented people who are not engaged!

Apparently an on-line survey by compensation company Salary.com found that 6/10 workers admitted to wasting time at work. The average employee wastes 1.7 hours of the typical 8.5 hour work day as per the survey.

Personal Internet usage topped the list as the leading time waster(34 % of respondents). Next came socialising with co-workers(20.3%) and conducting personal business(17%).

Interestingly, boredom and not having enough to do were cited as the main reasons for wasting time!

Some respondents felt even some of their work-related activities were a waste of time like fixing someone else’s work, dealing with office politics or responding to emails.

I believe respondents were largely in the US but suspect the responses from employees in India may not be vastly different.