Motivating the front line workforce

Let me not talk about the Frontline employees here and how they need to be motivated. Let me move a step ahead and talk about a more fundamental point here. How does a frontline employee impact my customer? I remember what Bob Farrell once said, “Every- thing you do will end up in front of your customers”. Let us think about this for a moment. e people I recruit, the policies I make, how well do I train, what equipment I use will and does impact my customer. And my customer decides whether I stay in business or not. Isn’t this a big statement to make? But let me assure you it is true.

The need for more than basic skills

I have owned two franchisees of an International Food Chain for the past two years in Delhi. I have been happy as I make good money on my investment. One day, while seeing young boys and girls working at my outlet, I wondered on what kind of employment is being generated in our country for youth. Today there are over 500 outlets of this International Food Franchisee chain employing over 5000 people across India, thus it might seem that it has been a wonderful concept which has bene ted our country. I have not been able to understand why the government gave permission to these restaurants to enter in our country? What our government, our country and our youth gain from such restaurants? e answer which comes to a simple mind like mine is employability. But then I went on to think that what is the quality of employment being generated in our country? A student who just passed school may want to work with these foreign franchises for approx.. Rs. 7000 per month, and what he will acquire is the skill of sandwich making. After 5 years his level of skill will be the same and another new person will come and replace him for the same salary. us gaining any experience in this nature of work, does not lead to any advantage for such an employee’s career or salary.

Business Sense in Hiring Persons with Disability

As per Census 2011, 2.21 per cent of Indian population constitutes of PwD amounting to 26,810,557. They represent the single largest minority group which can productively contribute to the country’s economy. Employers are beginning to recognize the need to tap this vast resource pool. Some companies that started proactively hiring PwD have acknowledged that it had bene ted their business in many ways. While a few employers are beginning to recognize the abilities of PwD, there are still others who, though willing, continue to have concerns and doubts in their mind, preventing them from hiring a PwD. These concerns vary from; can a person with visual impairment work on computers to can a per- son with mental disability work at all. Such questions mostly arise because of lack of awareness. Our country has taken the initiative through the recently passed Rights of Persons with Disability Act 2016 by identifying the disabilities, establishing the rights of persons with disability and giving a guarantee of 4 per cent reservation for PwD, among others, in govt. jobs. India was one of the first twenty countries to ratify the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD), which clearly lays ground principles of equality of opportunity and accessibility. In terms of business sense in hiring PwD, there have been many positive observations and responses. According to a research, over 70 per cent of the respondents interviewed across 15 retail organizations revealed that hiring PwD has helped in curbing attrition rates, which resulted into overall organizational performance through benefit of continuity, reduction in costs towards regular talent search and induction training etc. Talking about right attitude at work, PwD make good, dependable and honest employees. Employers of PwD workers consistently report that, as a group, PwD perform at par or better than their non-disabled peers on measures such as productivity, safety, and attendance. A few employers have pronounced that hiring PwD has led to reduction in labour litigation and brought down the man-days loss to nil. Majority of their employers are of the view that their focus and commitment on the task is found to be much higher. At Lemon Tree Hotels, the company has witnessed higher productivity in the performance of housekeeping attendants with speech & hearing disability. They are able to clean on an average 19 rooms in any given duty cycle, as com- pared to the average number of 16 by others i.e. 20 per cent higher productivity. Similarly, persons with speech & hearing disability are able to work comfortably yielding higher productivity in mills infected with noisy environment. When PwD employees use their potential, others get motivated to use their potential and do better at their work and hence the bar gets raised. When there is better performance from more people in the company, the bar gets raised, which leads to higher standards being set in the company. With growing competition and stress in the job market, employees tend to leave companies even for a small pay hike or a small problem. The employees want to feel valued in the company. Hiring PwD in a company makes its environment more diverse and inclusive. It opens doors for learning from each other’s experiences and hardships. It is important to overlook the disability of a PwD employee and look at his/ her abilities, merits and how he/ she can be an asset to the company. Diversity or differences between employees benefits companies. PwD employment drives positive word of mouth of the organization, driving higher customer retention. PwD represent an overlooked multibillion-dollar market segment: at market consists of PwD and their families and friends. In the Indian context, if one looks at the market size of the PwD population, it includes not only the 70 million PwD but their families too, who impact the consumer market in a significant way. Ignoring this market may mean losing not only the PwD consumer but his or her family and friends too. It makes sense to have employees, who know first-hand about the product and service needs of this consumer segment. e additional cost incurred on hiring PwD is in fact marginal and the long term reward much higher. While at times some cost may be visible in hiring and retaining PwD, however, if one compares that with losing a trained and skilled employee, hiring, and rehiring, training and retraining, the cost in terms of time and financial resources is much higher. Companies that hire PwD can take advantage of several Government incentives for employers of PwD. e Government of India provides a host of benefits to employers recruiting PwD in the workforce. For e.g. Special Employee State Insurance (ESI) and Employee Provident Fund (EPF) benefits are offered by the Government to employers recruiting PwD in the workforce, a fact few organizations are aware of. Employing PwD can support organizations in achieving their social responsibility objectives. It helps PwD achieve nancial and personal independence. Today several organizations and industries are embracing PwD in their workforce to fulfill their CSR objectives, as well as increased organizational performance. Shell India has employed hearing and speech impaired persons at their filling stations as Customer Service Associates. ese employees are provided with special boards, where customers can put information on their fuel requirements. Shell’s initiative demonstrates, how focus on abilities can help retailers identify roles for PwD. To sum it up, everything comes back to creating accessibility and embracing acceptability. SCPwD is only trying to provide a gateway for a person with disability to feel dignified and be empowered through meaningful employment, call it an enticing prospect or one’s very own valued right. Hiring PwD in distinct companies not only benefits PwD alone but also the company as a whole and there are plenty examples, as mentioned earlier. It’s a two way process, benefitting both the ends.

Verbs over Nouns! Empowering the Indian Skilling Eco System

Indian Vocational Training & Educational System deals with Occupational Standards, Targets, Certificates, Content, Quality assurance Systems, Infrastructure, Monitoring & Evaluation, assessments and so on. These all are what I term as ‘Quantifiable Nouns’. Much of the discussion is about number of trainees trained, funds provided and spent, certificates issued, number of courses tweaked and upgraded etc. In this world of make believe nouns what is overlooked are the mindset of trainees, their aspirations, their frustrations, lack of motivation of instructors, real time difficulties of operating a centre profitably given the meagre resources, non-continuation of trained youth in gainful employment etc. These are real time activities/ actions and ‘ verbs’. What should really matter are the verbs and not so much the nouns. The mistake is easy to comprehend. Nouns are quantifiable and visible whereas verbs are not easily visible being dynamic in nature. The ‘mathamatization’ of these visible metrices largely overlook the not so visible yet profoundly significant factors affecting the overall efficacy of TVET. Our TVET suffers from ‘equilibrium thinking’. At the end it is all about economics and not about behavioural economics. As someone has so correctly pointed out and I quote “. The reason here is simple. Noun based economics links nouns to other nouns via systems of relation and balance—equations. It is easier to analyze these if they hold still, so to speak, much as it is easier to study the workings of a butterfly if we nail it to a board. And so we purchase understanding by assuming stasis—equilibrium. But the results are at best mixed; all too often the system hangs lifeless, unchanging in time.