by teamrec“Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river and the current swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth . But one creature said at last, I am tired of clinging; I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. The other creatures laughed and said, Fool! Let go, and you will die quicker than boredom! But the one heeded not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah! And the one carried in the current said, I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.” Excerpts from “Illusions” by Richard Bach.
How very often, we see ourselves tied down by the weight of tradition, beliefs not ready to try out the unseen or tread a new path. Be it peer pressure, elders advice or professional advice given by seniors, the very thought of change or experimenting with a new idea is faced with closed doors. In these times, when the world economy is going through a sea of change, when business processes are being re-drawn, economic policies are being re-strategised, and careers are being refocused upon; these are changing times ….. and it requires a Changing Mindset. Be it students, fresh passed out professionals, HR Team, Sales Team, Senior Management or Business Houses, one has to let go and experiment with new ideas, processes, strategies, policies etc.
Sometime back, we had organized a Campus Drive at one of the Technical Colleges for a client of ours. The profile was new and an experiment by the HR Head, to source and train, freshly graduated Computer Science and Electronics professionals, for a career in the field of ever growing US IT Recruitments. The profile has tremendous potentiality in IT Sector companies in India and abroad. But, to our surprise, there were very few takers as most of them were afraid to “experiment” but were ready to sit out and wait, till a suitable opportunity cropped up. Similarly, we found quite a few fresh Graduates and even at times their Placement Officers, not ready to adjust to the new “salaries”. By the way things are moving, it seems that it would take quite sometime before the economies come back to their normal or abnormal levels, once again.
Millions have lost their jobs and the rest live in the fear of losing it. These are tough times and tough decisions have been taken. A middle Management professional from the Retail Sector has been in touch with us on a regular basis for the last year or so, fearing his neck to be next, on the chopping block. The fear crops up every time his company re-structures (the frequency in the last year or so has been very high). In these trying times it becomes imperative for the HR Team of all organisations to take stock of the damage done to the sentiments, morale and performance of the team and work towards addressing these issues at first, stabilising and then moving forward from there. We have been bombarded with calls from professionals from all fields in the last couple of months, distraught, frantic, frustrated, disoriented, shocked, to name a few feelings. It has taken all our expertise to soothe a lot of these frayed nerves. But now we feel it is time that our Human Resource Team Members across the industry is proactive, it helps and motivates its TEAM in moving in the right direction.
The Sales Team too needs to focus once again on new and innovative ways of pushing up Sales in these times of low returns. Add to that the low morale (because of dwindling Sales), salary cuts and even lack of job security in the ranks; performance is surely to be affected everywhere. There have been instances, while working on positions for the Broking Industry, we have interacted with Sales professionals who have had a decent track record but have been affected by the lay-off for various reasons. These people are ready to sit out for sometime rather than take up new assignments for the fear of carrying job breaks on their resume, under the present market conditions.
The Businesses and their management has gone back to the drawing board, made new plans, re-strategised and at times re-structured their existing processes to evolve into a new look enterprise. A news item from the Retail segment is a case in point. “The retailers have formed a rainbow coalition that will align their sourcing operations and share private labels, logistics, warehouses and hiring details on a transactional payment basis,” said top executives with some of the largest players in the sector. The move mirrors a similar step taken by manufacturing firms in the late 90s to share markets and cut costs. “We may fight at the front-end, but we need not compete at the back-end. Collaboration is the way forward in retail. We are taking lessons from telcos that share towers. Our infrastructure and resources are designed to be shared with others,” said Kishore Biyani, who runs Future Group, the country’s largest retail player.
We have come across Senior Sales Professionals turning into Faculty Members / Sales Consultants, Finance professionals turn Guest Lecturers, IT Programmers teach Software programming and quite a few of them become students – taking training programs, enrolled for Professional courses, exploring new avenues…. These are tough times and the people after taking a hit, have slowly re-grouped and are today better equipped to tackle any such situation or problem.
Human is a “responsibility” of the organisation and at the same time Human is a “resource”. The solution has to come from within….. That serves the human as well as the orgnisation……
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhay has 19+ years of experience in Recruitment, Mentoring and Business Development. He is an entrepreneur and a professional with 14+ years in the industry specialising in Manpower Planning, Strategy and Recruitments. He heads Operations and Business Development at Team Recruiters a Delhi based Manpower Consulting company with clientele in both domestic and overseas market. Abhay is widely known across the industry and has a great reputation across Capital Market and Travel Trade, which has been the focus of Team Recruiter’s business interest for the last two years. He has been a hands-on person spearheading the operations for the company and has a good connect with people across the board.
He has earlier been an entrepreneur with 12+ years at the helm of Teamvision Solutions a Delhi based Manpower Consulting company with clientele in both domestic and overseas market.
In his previous roles, prior to Teamvision, he has also worked with Thapar Groups IT venture iBiLT Technologies Ltd, Excel Infotech Ltd and US based AVS Systems Inc. and was instrumental in growing the business tremendously.
