The Hindu Business Line : Of ‘open’ discussions

This evening, we will have an open discussion on our HR policies with all you young managers. We will take the opportunity to gather honest feedback from all of you and see how we can make our company a better place to work. We look forward to your en thusiastic participation.

Refreshments will be served. Maybe. We jest! Perhaps not. Ha!

We expect to see all of you in the conference room at 5 pm sharp.

I will be there to evaluate your grievances. This is because I firmly believe that people are our biggest assets and I intend to handle this process personally.

Sincerely,

Secretary of the VP-HR

For the VP-HR

P.S. Some of you may have received a previous draft of this e-mail, which we sent out earlier today. We apologise for the error and, as you would have no doubt noticed, this time we have put the ‘t’ back in ‘assets’.”

Every manager, at some stage in his/her career, would have received an e-mail that roughly conforms to the above example from HR. Young managers, perhaps many of you, will be tempted to gobble up this correspondence at face value.

Tut tut. Novice mistake.

In cinematic terms, this is exactly like that scene where the aliens land on earth and say in a benevolent yet mildly robotic voice: “Earthlings we come in peace and fellowship. Feel free to ignore this here spaceship bristling with advance laser weapons.”

We all know in our hearts that within the hour, and well before the intermission, the aliens will be blowing up large urban areas all over the planet, only stopping when Bruce Willis eliminates them with a spanner of some sort.

What I am trying to say through that exciting metaphor is that there is more than meets the eye in that e-mail. The real message is: “You new managers are all cribbing pains in the neck who are making life impossible for all of us. This must end right now! We hope you will come to the meeting and spill your guts after we lull you into a false sense of comfort with words such as ‘team,’ ‘united’ and ‘synergy’. At which point, we will retaliate by putting several of you in notice period for not being team players. The rest will be so scarred that they will leave on their own in due course. This will make our company a better place to work. For us that is. Guaahahahaaaa!

P.S. Also we hate the fact you make so much money so soon because of the tight job market. I didn’t see cash like that till I was made DGM for god’s sake.”

Do note how even the hidden interpretation of that e-mail from HR has a post-script. Is there no end to their twisted ways?

Therefore, when you do go for the meeting — and you should for the refreshments and free writing pads — don’t try and be a hero. Leave that to the other people in your department who are morally upright, professionally responsible and have strong resumes which can get them other jobs. Unlike some young managers who got the job due to an error in the SAP HR module.

But all danger has not been averted. There is yet one more pitfall that slyly awaits the young manager when he goes for such a meeting. This is especially true of new recruits who haven’t spent enough time in the office to distinguish right from wrong and truth from corporate HR policy. They tend to take whatever is doled out at these meetings at face value and go away from these meetings upbeat and enthusiastic.

And before they can say “I am so unnecessarily motivated,” HR has signed them all up for the corporate marathon team, internal quality circle or newsletter editorship. And when they are up for their first performance appraisal, their boss usually tells them that they were ‘too distracted’ or ‘unfocused’ in office work and must reduce their ‘non-deliverable deliverables’.

Thankfully, I recently received by e-mail the minutes of the meeting from such an HR magnum opus. I will distil the various strategies used by HR to mislead you . They are:

The Kennedy Defence: HR whips this one out when someone pulls out a long list of cribs about the company that are all indisputably true. They look at you with piercing eyes before saying: “So? What did you do for this company? Wh at did you do to improve the situation? Huh? Huh? Back off boy!”

Learn From Our Enemy Defence: If you are unlucky enough to work in an industry with at least one blood-sucking employer that chews up employees and then spits them out, then you are pretty much doomed. “Look at them,” HR wi ll say, “Those guys work twice as hard as you guys do and don’t crib half as much!”

If someone brings up the fact that the competition also pays twice as much, HR will brush it off and make a mental note to send their CVs across immediately.

The Wikipedia Counter-attack: Nothing needles HR more than people cribbing about the lack of infrastructure. “So what if your keyboard doesn’t have any vowels or semi-colons? We haven’t had tomato soup in the HR coffe e machine for three days now,” is what HR is thinking while you rave and rant.

When this gets out of control the VP-HR will immediately pull out a great business fact and quieten everyone. “You know where IBM started out of? A garage! However, we will get the soup thing working today itself!”

The Secret Survey: Nothing silences a rabid young manager more than survey results that prove contradictory to his beliefs. “But a recent survey indicates that 75 per cent of employees are extremely happy with the current environ ment. So we see no basis for your argument,” the HR person will say pointing at a large PowerPoint slide. She skips the part where she confesses that she downloaded the survey off the Internet and included the results because they fit in well with her bonus criteria which was: “Seventy-five per cent employee satisfaction with current work environment.”

The Blackberry Feint: “Ok ok. I see many of you are unhappy with our catering. I want my employees to be happy. So I have decided, with immediate effect, that our meals will be catered by that wonderful hotel in... Oh, my surpris ingly quiet Blackberry is vibrating and this looks urgent. Excuse me, I need to take this and I don’t think I will be able to come back to finish this meeting!”

And finally:

The Sinister Agenda: This is the most popular trick to handle issues that arise in a feedback forum. After listening to your rant for over 20 minutes, the HR person ruminates. He then picks up a pen and makes some notes in his pad look ing very severe.

After that he says: “That is an excellent point. I have made a note of it. . This has been an excellent meeting, let me take these notes and share it with my colleagues while we decide who to let go... err... I mean identify leaders for our succession planning.”

He then goes up to his office where he has a fresh, warm cup of tomato soup.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work as a freelance writer, author and general handyman. He blogs at www.whatay.com)

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