The Hindu Business Line : Will employees share the burden of a downturn?

There has been significant debate and speculation about what happened at Jet Airways recently. Did the company handle the situation well, was there political pressure, did the Chairman act emotionally, was it legal, were employees justified in their protest and so on were some of the dimensions that were debated.

I do not have authentic answers to any of these questions and certainly do not wish to engage in any form of guess work.

This event, along with many other related developments that I have been closely tracking does, however, raise this larger question in my mind: Will employees share the burden of the downturn that is now a reality?

The Jet Airways event seems to give us the impression that its employees were not willing to share the burden of the downturn. Many who see things from the employers’ perspective believe it is unfortunate that the employees did not seem willing to share the burden. They argue that if employees shared the fruits of an upturn by way of good career opportunities and pay and great rewards, it only seems fair to expect employees to share the burden of the downturn too.

As I witness these unfolding events, I am convinced that the issues are much larger and much deeper, and I’m left with several questions to which I see no easy answers. Let me at least share some of them.

Can we stop seeing employees as being part of the problem and start seeing them as a part of the solution? History tells us that an economic downturn almost automatically triggers a predictable set of actions in the form of pay cuts and job losses. This cause-effect relationship seems to suggest that employees are part of the problem and their removal will solve it. This belief seems strongly held, especially in the western world. The end result always seems to be that employees are affected in one form or the other.

What will it take for leaders to help their employees become active partners in solving the most serious problem of a business — its very survival — I wonder? Is it possible, at all, to create a culture and climate where employees become part of the solution and work with their organisations to manage the situation?

Can expectations of engagement co-exist with a marketplace-like relationship? The entire employee engagement movement exhorted employers to create environments that would inspire their employees to freely give discretionary effort, offer tenure and remain proud about their organisational membership. HR leaders took this on as their magic mantra and put their lot behind it.

What will happen to all these efforts if organisations go through a downturn and take actions that impact employees, their pay and even their careers? Will the wounds heal quickly and things go back to what they were or will the memories get etched on the organisation’s long-term memory? Will employees continue to give discretionary effort while organisations continue to take actions that are driven by market exigencies? Should employees give tenure when the organisation needs it and leave when the organisation wants them to?

What is the nature of the leadership that will inspire employees to make the sacrifice? Even if it is inevitable that employees bear some part of the risk of doing business in today’s times, it seems quite clear that it will take an extraordinary kind of leadership to inspire employees to make this supreme sacrifice willingly and without leaving scars forever; the kind of leadership and culture that inspires armed forces across the world to fight for their nation and even be ready to sacrifice their lives. If unprecedented business cycles are an inevitable reality of doing business in the globalised world, I am beginning to wonder if we will also need the highest quality of leadership to inspire employees to willingly make sacrifices and partake in the rescue efforts.

Do Indian corporate leaders suffer a lot more while taking decisions about people? In times when organisations do have to take some hard decisions, I wonder if their leaders agonise over these decisions or whether it comes to them easily, almost dispassionately.

It is my sense that business leaders in India to this date seem to suffer while taking decisions to sack people and I think that is good. Will this suffering help us provide the healing touch and manage to retain the soul of the organisation, I wonder?

What is the role of human motivation in all this? Maslow had argued that while people had needs that are arranged in a hierarchy and that the needs that are fulfilled no longer motivate, he also maintained that that under stressful conditions or when survival is threatened, we can “regress” to a lower need level.

The ease with which organisations have been able to implement pay cuts seems to indicate that when job security is threatened, people seem to be comfortable trading off current pay levels for the security of remaining in their jobs. Does this basic human behaviour hold vital clues for many creative solutions that organisations can pursue in times like these?

Would I share the burden of the downturn? I have been asking myself this hard question in the course of my reflection: If I was a young employee and I had to pay the price of this downturn, would I do it or would I resist it?

I think I would do it if I believed that my organisation deserved this act from me. If I thought it did not, I would resist or sulk or leave if I could.

So, I wonder if it is time for consulting companies to add a new measure of employee engagement beyond things like tenure, pride and discretionary effort — the willingness to lay down one’s job to save the firm?

(The writer is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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