Author: S Ramesh Shankar

Born in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, I have been brought up in different parts of India. Graduate in chemistry and post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations. Have been a HR practitioner for 38 years in the industry and have experience in working in steel , automobiles, FMCG and engineering industry. Was head of HR for Siemens in South Asia based out of Mumbai till March 2019. Currently founded hrishti - joy forever, a social enterprise to give back to society and work as Chief Joy Officer.

Loyalty may not be a virtue anymore

I was brought up in the family with the strong belief that loyalty is a virtue. I believed it and saw it being practised around my family members and in the communities I lived.

Then when I started my career in a public sector undertaking, my role model was my father , who served the central government for almost four decades in his career. It was considered inappropriate even to think of leaving a government or public sector job , primarily driven by job security which people believed ,the private sector would never offer.

Even in the community around me, loyalty was considered a virtue. This could be seen in family run businesses and even in kirana shops and vegetable vendors and so on. Loyalty was not only a virtue but was rewarded and recognised by organisations.

I remember we used to get a special award on completing 25 years in the organisation and all of us looked forward to it. After serving the public sector for 14 years I moved to the private sector and then worked for multinationals. The silver jubilee award almost became extinct and was replaced by 5, 10, 15 years awards and so on. Nowadays, employees get rewarded for serving for one full year in a organisation and the anniversaries are celebrated.

This transformation in employee loyalty ,has reflected in the social fabric of the community as well. Marriage as an institution is breaking down and may soon become obsolete. While I do agree that in the past couples coexisted in marriage , more for the sake of their children or others ,even if they did not get along well, divorce is no longer a taboo.

I have the habit of attending any employee marriage in a city I lived, if I was invited to it. Unfortunately in the last decade, one in every three marriages I have attended ,have not survived. I do not want to blame anyone for this. However, it is a fact that loyalty is no longer a virtue, in marriage as an institution too.

I am for couples to voluntarily separate and re marry if they find themselves incompatible for whatever reasons. It was sad to see couples under one roof, even though they could not see each other’s face every day , in the past. But not to believe in marriage as an institution ,may be the evolution of the next century.

If children are not loyal to their parents, it is time to realise that family as an institution is also transforming. It is normal for children even in India today to let their parents stay in old age homes and they are comfortable financing it rather than taking care of them.

While the rest of the world is learning yoga and other Indian traditions of the past, we are learning to redefine our social institutions like marriage and family from the west. It may be time for a churn ,since life is after all a full circle and we will begin all over again.

My belief is that “Loyalty is no longer a virtue in family, society or organisations. It is time to sit back and reflect on the same and move forward to the society of tomorrow.

May be time to redefine the word “Loyalty” itself ?

S Ramesh Shankar

20th April’s 2022

Never judge anyone

Every day we tend to judge people around us in every possible way. It may be positive or negative based on our own perceptions or hearsay. We rarely judge people based on facts. This is the reality of life.

An incident in my life today triggered this thought in me and hence this blog. I had given some clothes to stich to a nearby tailor. As usual, this tailor kept giving me new dates every time I called her. I was fed up and hence decided to reach the tailor’s shop one day, unannounced.

I sat down in front of her and got a few things stitched. As they were curtains, she readily did it and told me that the rest will take some more time. I was curious to know why this inordinate delay. She then narrated to me her story. She lives with her hubby and two college going kids.

Her husband who was working in a factory nearby got a paralytic stroke and she went literally from pillar to post for his treatment. Many hospitals near her home including a national centre of excellence refused to treat her husband and she had to drive him all the way to Mysore from Bangalore ( which is 120 kms away from her home) where some hospital agreed to treat him.

This illness made her hubby jobless and she was the only earning member in the family with a shop, which had to be closed ,as she had to take care of her husband and her kids. Luckily her husband is recovering now and her college going kids are supportive .so, she is limping back to normalcy in a slow and steady way.

I had almost decided that I will never give any clothes to her for stiching, based on my perception of her, before knowing the facts. After listening to her story, I decided that she will be my first choice of a tailor for all my future needs.

In life, we tend to judge people based on perceptions or hearsay. We listen to some stories or have some bad experiences and we decide this should be right or wrong. It may be worthwhile to dig deep into the facts of every experience ,before we make any judgement on people.

This happens in family, society and even in organisations. In the family, parents judge children and vice versa. Similarly in organisations, managers judge employees and vice versa based on perceptions and hearsay rather than facts. While it may be the reality to judge people on perceptions, it may be worthwhile to check back and ask for real life instances to substantiate a perception before we make a judgement.

I remember some manager stating that his employee is argumentative just because he is not able to manage him. When I used to ask for real life examples, the manger did not have many to share. When I checked with his peers ,I found that that the employee was smart and the manger found it difficult to bull doze him to do things which the employee felt was not in the best interest of the organisation.

Life is no different. We tend to judge people on the go. It is time to reflect, sit back and gather facts before we judge. If we are able to put ourselves in the situation of the person whom we are about to judge ,we may be more objective in our judgement.

May be time to look at the mirror before we make the next judgement about others.

S Ramesh Shankar

20th April’s 2022

Listening to your stakeholders

One thing which fascinated me always is – “ why don’t we listen actively to our stakeholders ?”. Be it your customer, supplier or employee – it does not matter. I have seen multiple instances where instead of listening to them, we assume what they have in mind and make our own judgements.

This attitude leads to misunderstanding stakeholder issues and thereby leads to wrong diagnosis of the problem and hence inappropriate counter measures at our end. Let me illustrate this point with three real life instances, which I have witnessed myself and understood how deaf we are to our stakeholders.

In the first instance I was working in an automobile company. We were travelling in a bus for an offsite with the sales and marketing team. I noticed that the bus was not our brand and was wondering why customers don’t prefer our brand in that region of our country.

When enquired, our sales guys promptly told me that “Price” was the issue. On the other hand, when I asked the same question to the driver of the bus who was also was its owner, he said that “price”was not an issue but the issue was “non-availability of timely service and spares” and they could not afford their bus to be off-road for long as it could impact their business income.

The second instance is that of a patient and a doctor. The patient had mistakenly taken a tablet with its aluminium foil without realising it. When she complained to the doctors that her tablet had got stuck in her throat, they did not listen to her actively and investigate appropriately.

On the other hand, they examined her throat and told her everything was fine. Even in the end when they did an endoscopy the doctors said it was possibly a denture and not a tablet. Ultimately, a tablet with its aluminium foil was removed from her upper oesophagus. If the doctors had actively listened to the patient, the agony of the patient could have been reduced from one month to a few days.

The third incident is that of an employee. We were in process of selling a business to a buyer. We had a fantastic track record of employee well being and never had a strike in our history in that business. However, on the day when we were to hand over the business to the buyer, the employees went on strike.

I was incharge of that business and never realised that I did not listen to our employees. I had fought hard with the buyer to take over all the employees as part of the sale. The buyer had reluctantly agreed. On the other hand, while our employees were very happy with us, they were are not keen to join the new employer. They wanted to make their own decision to join or not. A clear situation where we did not listen to our employees.

In the all the three cases, if we had listened to our key stakeholder, we may have been better placed and the decisions we may have taken could have been a win win in each situation.

Organisations need to train their employees to listen to all their key stakeholders and not put words in their mouth or assume what they have in mind. If we listen attentively and act objectively, all our decisions will be the best we could make in any situation.

Let us learn to listen to all our stakeholders.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th April 2022