The Hindu Business Line : The year of the wage earner!

Even as the industry rode on the BPO wave, issues such as job-hopping and shortage of skilled manpower threw up the need for fresh attitudes and perspective.

NO single year could be said to have truly started a major revolution, unless it were a bloody war or violent overthrow of a system, in the political or the industrial arena. Yet, some years do go down in history as milestones. Thus 1917, 1945, and 1989 signalled, respectively, the birth of communism, the world's first-ever nuclear bomb capable of decimating an entire city in a flash, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, along with the Berlin Wall.

On a limited scale, within the Indian economy, the year just ending has seen some remarkable developments. The internal markets for savings as well as white-collar jobs have boomed. The stock market continued its dizzy rise, defying any dire predictions of overheating. A palpable effect of this was on the market for and the policies relating to human resources. For long, our senior managers have worked on three assumptions as regards people resources: they are plentiful on the whole, fairly easily replaceable and relatively inexpensive. Most reflective and responsive managers had begun to realise the fallacy of these assumptions for a decade or so, but more gradually than during 2005. It was, for instance, widely accepted that the phenomenal growth of the ICT industries had a ripple effect on compensation and salary expectations among the young and freshly qualified. It was only during the current year, however, that it became relatively easier for the well-educated but `mere graduate', say in commerce, to get a decent job.

The call centre industry set the trend at the bottom rungs of the career ladder, making a monthly wage of around Rs 6,000-8,000 fairly accessible to a 21-year-old. What he needed above all was the English language, a set of decent clothes, an intelligible accent and self-confidence — the last of which the young seem to be acquiring in large doses anyway. Regardless of class or occupation, today's youth show a propensity to be on their own and live by the peer standards to an extent that was not seen even a few years ago. The young have really been liberated by the liberalised economy.

One could well say this was the year the pains of market economics hit the HR field for the first time. At least in the major metropolitan areas, if not in the next rung cities, job-hopping has taken on a new dimension. The average person entering an organisation at say, age 22, looks seldom beyond the first two years. The reason for this is peculiarly a feature of the current scene. The young job-hopper is not driven by any great dreams of entrepreneurship or strong views on scope for learning or career growth.

The simple fact of economics is that after two years his external market value shoots up far more than it does internally. And he or she sees no reason to earn less than what they are due in the market place for skills and experience. And in most organisations a pay rise of 50 per cent is still quite unthinkable - but a competitor is ever willing to offer that, especially to the really capable and above-average performer. This is more so in the categories that demand initiative, energy, travel and meeting people. Sales and service vacancies are, therefore, very difficult to fill. The same goes for customer relationship oriented positions that call for a certain gift of the gab and empathy besides a presentable personality.

The story is far worse in the financial services industry, where you never seem to be able to speak to the same person at the customer service desk on three successive visits. Of course, there are some exceptions, always a minority, who stay on with a company despite alluring offers from head-hunters but they too are on a short fuse, so to speak. The longer they wait, the higher their expectation of an explosive growth in rewards, for their comparatively less fickle, sacrificing, behaviour. If the company does not satisfy the ambitions and hopes after, say, four years, they will not only leave but do so with a bitter taste.

A group of young women in the first step of the career ladder said when interviewed that getting another job was (in that cliché of the year) "no issue". This is something one had not been used to hearing so unequivocally even from the graduates of the prized engineering and medical streams. Though the war for the consumer spending rupee has been a painful reality for many, the "war for talent" had been just fashionable rhetoric. This was the year that it really intensified. Almost everyone agrees that the demand for talent grew faster than the supply during 2005. As a result, it was quite common for managements to re-jig their executive salary scales, more so for the younger age group. Mid-year revisions of 10 to 25 per cent were not unheard of.

India has still not become accustomed to the notion of an overall shortage of skilled manpower, though the foreign media and consultants have been sounding warnings about this for some time now. In the booming software sector, McKinsey has already warned that one could not be too sanguine about reaching the ambitious forecasts made by organisationslike Nasscom of IT exports for the end of the decade.

As the reality of competition in every `resource' catches up with the senior management, the need for a fresh set of attitudes and a new perspective should dawn on some of the enlightened managers. One must find it possible to bend the inevitable bureaucracy of large organisations to yield to the demands of the young (below 35 years) in particular. And some experimentation is becoming obviously imperative. It will take the majority of top managers some time to appreciate that some changes won't go away. Poaching of the best of the talent across the board will only intensify.

Tying people down with golden shackles may not always be the right response. This is the unique challenge to older managers at the top, who bemoan the loss of older values and regret that every employee, more especially the better paid ones, is willing to sell his soul to the highest bidder. And yet, few would deny the young and the capable ones the logic of their attitudes. After all, Western management orthodoxy has taught us for years that it is all right to treat the human being as a buyable resource on the market. It is considered smart managerial practice to pay them only for `contribution' and to encourage competition for the loaves and fishes of office. It is also cheaper and faster to buy the `resource' at a premium in times of growth than try to train and develop from within. The relentless pressure for growth also pushes up the target with the inevitable pressures of the variable pay component dependent on it — and naturally the insecurity at the end of it all.

So, if one is an ingredient and a commodity, what is more logical and right than to keep putting oneself on the market for higher and higher bids, every other year? Perhaps the process of the market-based economics, an unforgiving master enslaving us all, has just begun?

(The author is an independent management consultant.)

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The year of the wage earner!

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