The ‘emotional’ connect in modern management

‘People’ are the main asset for any company or institution, more so for the research and innovation based organizations. Companies which are known to put ‘employees’ in the fore front are found to be more productive, positive and in the long term provide value to not only to its share holders but also to the society in general. 

Two Indian corporate giants HCL Tech and the Tata group are known to have great employee friendly outlook. HCL technologies, the IT sector major, surprised the world when it announced the policy of ‘employee first, customer second’ slogan. The idea is that a happy and may I add a satisfied employee can add more value to the organization than a de-motivated one. I strongly believe, if an employee is made a stake holder in the company’s decision and path it takes or envisions, then it brings the employee much closer to the organizational DNA and its values. 

People have slowly started to realize the power of the ‘emotional quotient’ in managing an institution. Humans are not robots so to expect productivity of a robot from a human is not only undesirable but absurd. Long working hours, expectation of taking work to home, working hard even on weekends may bring good returns in short term but these practices eventually bring about high ‘burn-out’ rates in employees and eventually organizations take a beating in the long run! 

Talented employees always do not work for monetary benefits only. They also look at the way the organization treats its employees. In today’s world of high attrition, many organizations overlook this aspect and focus on other factually incorrect reasons to address this issue. 

This empathetic approach is very important for research driven organizations. Research is a 24X7, 365 days a year affair and requires huge commitment from the scientists. To top it, a high percentage of failed experiments, tougher deadlines and lower employability options burden the researchers. Therefore, to improve productivity, it is important for the managers to harness the‘emotional quotient’ much more and come out with radical shift in the outlook of 'people management'!

The hub and spoke model – from aviation to pharma

Every idea has its place under the sun. Two industries, pharmaceuticals and aviation which are known to be ‘high risk – high gain’ business are strikingly employing similar practices in order to maximize productivity and profits.

Everyone would agree that both aviation and pharmaceutical businesses require ‘deep pockets’ to start and sustain. Both have long periods of gestation but if run properly then returns can be huge eg. Pfizer, Merck, Emirates etc. 

Let us look at the paradigm shift being brought about by the major aviation companies and pharma giants to improve sustainability of their respective businesses.  In aviation, big players like Etihad, Emirates, Singapore airlines utilize their home base airports of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Singapore respectively as hubs which then is used to improve/increase traffic. Traffic is brought in from various airports around the world and the hubs provide seamless connectivity options to their respective customers – a typical hub and spoke model!

Similar kind of approach is now being utilized by the pharma giants to increase their R&D productivity. R&D is the base on which any pharma company stands. But with increasing drought of blockbuster drugs coming out from the stable of Merck, Pfizer et al., it has become imperative for them to look for other ‘innovative’ means. The answer- ‘reduce expenditure on internal R&D efforts and create smaller hubs to scout for interesting research done in smaller companies/universities’. The companies feel this would help them to maximize R&D productivity and will be better focused on bringing in a stream of new deals. This is another version of ‘hub and spoke model’. 

There are critics of this approach but with increasing cost burden, lack of nimbleness in the big pharma set up it is probably important to decentralize and open up.