‘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'!
