Understanding this phenomenon and learning to manage it would be critical — for organisations, the young workforce and society, in general.

The term "deserve" is used to describe the state where the individual has the competence and abilities and is, therefore, "worthy of" or "merits" rewards. The term "desire" is used to describe the urge, the "craving" and the "hankering" for rewards and material gains.

Are today's employees in particular and youth in general more desiring than deserving and why? Ask the average senior professional or HR manager and they will tell you with a sense of despair that today's young employees certainly "desire" more than they "deserve". The demands made by young employees, their career aspirations, the frequent job changes, the rampant cases of falsification of employee records, would all be seen as symptoms of today's young employees desiring beyond deserving.

The excessive pursuit of money and material ends, the media celebration of "the richest", "the highest paid" and "youngest millionaires" and so on only fuel the desire of today's youth well before they deserve, they will maintain.

To broad brush everyone into one category might however be unfair. In fact, I see "four types of employees" on the desire and deserve continuum as depicted in the model. Let us now answer the question using this model.

The unmotivated

For long, Indians were misconstrued as being fatalistic in their approach to life and therefore unmotivated. In fact, Max Weber felt that India's spiritualism, philosophy of renunciation and asceticism were obstacles to its material progress.

Even David McClelland was of the opinion that `achievement motivation,' (the desire to achieve purely for the sake of achievement) was lacking among Indians, a conclusion he based on his experience with handloom weavers in Orissa and artisans in Kakinada in 1969. However, subsequent researchers have questioned this belief.

They have held that while socio-cultural factors definitely influenced the motivation levels, appropriate structural interventions could make all these socio-cultural attributes play a favourable role in enhancing the level of enterprise in Indian society.

It would be fair to conclude that the opening up of the economy and the emergence of a whole host of new business and employment opportunities has helped a large number of the previously "unmotivated" people to desire and do something to deserve.

The contented

A recent conversation I had with one of my clients, a successful entrepreneur, best summarises the point I wish to make. He was mentioning to me that till recently he had believed that he would retire working for the company he had founded.

That was till many VCs started meeting him and telling him why he could not scale and why it was good to exit and that the time was ripe. He told me that he was now unable to sleep, and, more important, began to doubt his own ability to run the organisation any longer.

It would be fair to conclude that even as there is a huge pressure on people to desire for more, the tribe of contented people is fast dwindling. This is true not only in the corporate world, but also among the so called noble professions such as teaching, health-care and so on. Getting people to work for a cause is much harder today than it was, several years ago!

The motivated

It was never too hard to manage this group — be it students or employees. They deserved what they desired. Those who belonged to this group made the effort to get what they wanted. These are the people that McClelland called achievement motivated. However, this group as a proportion of the overall workforce remains a small minority.

The greedy

This group is perhaps the hardest to manage and will need to be the focus of a lot of debate. While every organisation and society always had its share of "greedy" people who desired more than they deserved, there is growing fear that the modern way of living and doing business is helping nurture this group in large numbers. In a world where all success is measured in terms of money, the greedy are naturally likely to swell the ranks. Opportunities, Western influences, shortage of talent, free supply of money have all contributed to people desiring before deserving.

What is of particular relevance to India is the fact that the large numbers being added to the workforce at disproportionately high wages with few skills and fewer role models to emulate, will soon fall into this group.

Overall, it would be fair to conclude that the answer to our first question seems a categorical "yes".

We will now turn to the second question:

What does it take to manage employees who desire more than they deserve? Over years, organisations have managed to find quite a few ways of managing employees who desire more than they deserve, albeit reactively!

Organisations have moved to an adult approach to welfare, they now have employments Bonds, variable pay programmes, role based promotions, restricted annual pay increases and a host of other "no frill" approaches to manage expectations.

We are also aware of the how organisations have successfully dealt with the unreasonable demands that unions have made so often in the past.

The point I am making is this: Having cultivated a culture where employees desire without deserving, organisations will also find ways of dealing with it, however unpopular the means might be.

What is unfortunate is that the more facilitative and proactive measures continue to elude us. Let me list a few ideas that come to my mind.

The question of excellence

We are for sure, dealing with a very aware and intelligent workforce today. Its ability to learn and master new skills is high. Managers of today have the onerous task of keeping them challenged and constantly raising the bar of excellence for them.

HR needs to play the role of defining professional standards and job skill expectations and communicating them to employees early in their careers. If we are able to build the "creative tension" in the minds of young employees, they will work to deserve before they desire.

Plain speak

One other area where much needs to be done is plain old-fashioned candour. Managers should be candid in their feedback to young employees.

Equally, they should also be open to feedback from and criticism of the latter. Both sides need to develop an honest self-image based on events around them. For fear of attrition, we should not end up with spoilt employees.

Walking the talk

Leaders will need to set a personal example of deserving before desiring. Leaders need to demonstrate delayed gratification before they can expect their employees to respond in good measure.

I can never forget my last boss and his eight-year-old Contessa which he refused to change because he felt the organisation could do without the added cost burden. Only visionary and value-based leaders will be able to do this.

Saying no

Most important, we need to say no to what we consider unreasonable demands and expectations. In saying no, we would have actually done our employees a great favour.

In my mind, true human resource development is about managing the D-factor — making people more deserving of what they desire!

(The author is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR Consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and process for organisations across industries. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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