Operation Camouflage Read online

  I would like to invite you to the townhall meeting scheduled this week for further common information and clarification. Please also feel free to reach out to your respective HR for any individual concerns.

  Aakash

  Head of Human Resources

  GALAXY Group

  The anxiety that had been there amongst the employees about their future, their careers was laid to rest significantly, if not completely. Never had they seen or heard of such a brief mail addressing all the immediate concerns of employees, expectations from them, what to expect from the company and an exit option for those wanting to leave, as transparent and as employee friendly as this one.

  While the employees knew about the remuneration package for the core team and basis that, continuing with GALAXY group would definitely be monetarily rewarding for them as well, it had smartly been kept out of this communication perhaps for the simple reason that it should not hamper the individual’s decision making process of continuing or moving out.

  And biggest of all, the employee’s fear about their individual safety was addressed without even mentioning it. Aakash had successfully created the environment for the employees to remove the lens of fear. The tone of the mail had smartly addressed this concern. The mail from one of the most powerful person in the world today, was neither commanding nor flattering. Instead the mail was humble throughout and demanding at the right place i.e. when it came to expectations from employees. Even the demanding tone, was immediately followed by a humble one, reflecting respect for the reader and the matter assuring him about the benefits of continuing and at the same time giving an option of leaving with dignity for those who did not wish to continue. This added to the genuineness of the mail. It showed respect and care for the individual, thus eliminating the apprehension in the minds of employees to a great extent.

  Most of the employees were immediately inclined towards a particular side but had kept their decision to themselves. They wanted to wait for the townhall for further information and moreover there were no brownie points for early disclosure. They had a month’s time to inform their decision.

  Meanwhile Aakash was in another dilemma. Ideally he wanted to conduct separate townhall’s for each company and each location to let the employees open up freely and give everyone a chance to have their questions answered. But while most of the questions were expected to be common, there was a risk of some trivial question being asked at one of the townhall and not being asked at another one. He wanted everyone to have answers not just for their own question but for all questions of all employees. Thinking over it he finally arrived at a conclusion of conducting a combined townhall, which would be held at Mumbai where most of the employees were located. The townhall was not to be conducted in any of the offices but in a cricket stadium, where all the Mumbai employees could come, and other location employees could join through video conferencing. He communicated this decision to Sanjana, the HR Manager of one of the companies, who was co-ordinating the townhall activity with him. Her immediate reaction was

  SANJANA: Sir, but this is a question answer session and not a one way broadcast. With over one lakh employees, even three hours might not be sufficient.

  AAKASH: Who says three hours will be sufficient. I am keeping aside three consecutive full days and if need be willing to extend beyond till all questions are answered.

  Sanjana was shocked. She stared at Aakash with wide open eyes. For a moment, she could not believe what she had heard.

  AAKASH: Sanjana…Sanjana…Sanjana…

  Sanjana shook her head and when it seemed she had come out of her trance,

  AAKASH: Schedule it starting this Saturday. Make arrangements for food and refreshments at all locations. Every employee has to come. If someone has made any personal travel plans, ask them to cancel it. The company will bear all the rescheduling expenses.

  SANJANA: Yes Sir.

  AAKASH: Collate all the employee questions and you will read them out one by one. I do not need to know who has asked what. We begin with anonymous questions and once the employees are comfortable opening up, we rotate the mike for spontaneous and follow up questions.

  SANJANA: Sure Sir.

  As decided, the townhall was conducted from Saturday at Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium. While Sanjana was tensed about getting the preparations ready for this grand affair in a short span of time, her apprehensions were automatically laid to rest by Aakash. He had given her clear instructions, ‘This is not a celebration, so all the splendour has to be kept aside. No formalities including welcome of other GALAXY dignitaries or myself. Even the food has to be an extremely simple affair. All we need is comfortable sitting arrangement for all for long hours, provision for restroom breaks, simple refreshments and a simple lunch.’

  Objective was simple – keep all the grandeur away so that it does not in any way influence the individual decision-making process. Employees are supposed to come there for the answers to their questions and that is ONLY what they should get. Nothing extra to interfere with their decision making process.

  THE TOWNHALL MEETING

  16th May 2015, 9 am

  SANJANA: I welcome you all to the townhall meeting. As has been informed earlier, this session does not have a defined time limit and goes on till all questions are answered. We all are aware about the recent developments pertaining particularly to our respective companies and hence we have gathered here to address concerns of all employees, including myself. We have with us Mr. Aakash, Head of HR, GALAXY group who is going to answer all our questions. He strongly believes that this session is not for him to communicate his expectations to you. He has already done it in his mail. He believes that this session is completely for us employees to raise our concerns, clear our apprehensions, ask him questions and it is his moral responsibility to answer the same. And hence he has decided to get away with any formalities or any introduction message and directly jump on to the questions.

  There was a round of applause and even some whistling could be heard after the clapping died down.

  SANJANA: We had invited questions from all employees, which I have collated. I will be reading them one by one followed by answers from Aakash Sir. Once we are done with these questions we will take up all the spontaneous or follow up questions. If you have any questions request you to temporarily park them aside as it may happen that your question has already been shared by someone else earlier. If not we will take them up after finishing this set of earlier received questions. I will now begin with the first question.

  SANJANA: Sir, your mail mentioned going forward policies and practices will be more employee friendly than now. While it might not be possible for you to elaborate on all of them can you give some examples?

  AAKASH: Sure. When the town hall was planned, just three days ago and over a weekend, a holiday for all of you, quite possible that some of you would have made personal travel plans which you would have had to cancel. While normally a company would have expected employees to bear the cost or at best reimbursed the cancellation charges, we are reimbursing the entire rescheduling expenses which even include the incremental travel fare that the employees might incur.

  While you may submit the proofs at a later stage, the entire incremental amount is transferred to your account as soon as you enter it into the system.

  Same procedure will be followed even for expense reimbursements. Employee enters the expense incurred into the system and amount gets transferred to his account, proof submission formalities keep happening but expense incurred by the employee is not delayed for that.

  The answer received an applause.

  SANJANA: Thank you Sir. With your first answer itself you seem to have won the hearts of the employees. Second question that I have is ‘Would the existing healthcare benefits continue as-is?’

  AAKASH: Currently, they are different across different companies. They will be standardized across and will surely continue.

  SANJANA: Next question that I have is ‘Sir, you all work
for 7 days a week and at time 24 hours a day. What would be the expectation from employees in terms of working hours and working days?’

  AAKASH: We were working 24/7 till now doing our respective jobs and after that managing multiple hats at a time, while keeping everything discreet. But, no longer. With immediate effect, we all are saving eight to ten hours a day of our jobs. We might have to continue working for long hours for some more time till situation stabilizes. But this is only an exception and the exception does not become a norm… Neither for us neither for you. We strongly believe in working efficiently and hence you all are expected to finish your responsibilities in the scheduled eight hours. We do not want to incur additional operational costs by keeping the offices open beyond 6 pm. As far as working days are concerned we will continue to follow five day week.

  SANJANA: The next question that we have is ‘How does the exit process work?’

  This was followed by a pin drop silence. Questions till now had been on the positive side. This was the first question with a negative facet. While the mail had indirectly hinted that the company would not hold any grudge against the leaving employee and instead will help him in getting a job with the erstwhile employer, crowd was eager to hear Aakash’s answer to this question.

  AAKASH: (Maintaining the same calm and composed stature) We do understand that not everyone would be aligned to our philosophy. That’s human nature and it is perfectly fine, hence the exit provision. The way it works is, within the stipulated one month time frame given for decision making the employee who wishes to pursue a career outside of GALAXY group informs us accordingly. There will be no questions asked and neither any efforts nor any kind of pressure on an employee to stay back. The employee decision would be communicated to the respective erstwhile parent company and they would be offered a role, designation and compensation at par with their current one. In case of no suitable role, they would be given an option in any of the other Partner companies. If the employee wishes to join any other company on his own he may do so. In the worst case scenario that none of the options work out in the two month notice period, we will provide the employee with placement assistance till he gets a suitable job. And till that time or six months whichever is earlier, we will pay him half of the current salary.

  The employees were in a dilemma. The approach was definitely praiseworthy. It deserved a clap. But would clapping indicate their support to the exit process and hence indicate intent towards exiting? One person however stood up and started clapping, slowly one became two, two became four, four became eight…and within seconds the entire stadium was on their feet clapping out loud.

  AAKASH: Thank You.

  SANJANA: Wow Sir. The company’s approach and consideration even towards the exiting employees is really commendable. I now move on to our next question and this is a question that has been sent by the maximum number of employees, ‘Why once with us always with us policy?’

  AAKASH: (Smiles) I understand that in today’s world this is an unusually strange expectation by an employer but that’s the way we see ourselves moving forward. Ask any employer what they feel should their attrition be? And the answer would be NIL. That is exactly what we also desire. Just that we are taking it a step further. We have learnt in Marketing that it costs 7 times more to acquire a customer than to retain one. And employees are also in a way customers of the company. They buy into the vision, the purpose of the company. So it makes sense to retain them than to recruit new ones. There’s a cost of recruitment, cost of handover and overlap, cost of training new employee, cost due to lower productivity of a new employee in the initial days and cost in case of a time lag between vacating and filling of a position. Secondly as mentioned in the mail earlier, there will be a drastic change in the style of working which is unique to our organization. That is the reason that in spite of our core team with less than hundred members, has been able to take the organization at the heights that it is at today. We want to keep this approach to ourselves and definitely do not want these secrets to leak out. Hence, ‘Once with us Always with us.’ And hence an employee not comfortable with this approach, is being given an exit option at this stage itself.

  SANJANA: Thank You Sir. The explanation has not just answered this question but cleared few other doubts as well. I have one more question that can be considered as a continuation to this one. Does this policy therefore also assure a 100% job security to all the employees?

  AAKASH: Companies normally have a vision of growth. A social cause, Corporate Social Responsibility happens to be a by-product of the vision. We are different. We are working in an opposite manner. We are working for a cause and company growth therefore will be aligned to the requirements of the cause. We believe that a person works best when he is internally motivated. When the purpose behind the work is not just the monthly salary, not just personal growth but goes beyond that and connects to a much larger purpose. Hence the first expectation mentioned in the mail emphasizes on acceptance of the company’s purpose, being in sync with it. Only then will an individual be able to give his best in this environment. Once with us Always with us, does assure 100% job security to the performing employees. But in no way should it be misinterpreted that even without performing an employee will be able to stay in the company. In fact for such a person, situation will be extremely dangerous as he will have to leave the company and at the same time not be allowed to join another one. But if you are working for the larger purpose, like our core team, you will surely perform well.

  The session went on in this manner for the entire day with lunch and refreshment breaks as planned. Only a few more questions remained. But at exactly 6 pm, Aakash called off the session living on to his commitment of standard working hours.

  All the employees went back to their homes to return again next day. The session started sharp at 9 am. The collated questions continued for another hour.

  After an hour

  SANJANA: We have come to an end of this session on collated questions and now throw open the session to the audience for any spontaneous questions that had not been covered up till now.

  By now whatever fear in the employees mind regarding the changes, the job security, the new policy that existed, had drastically reduced. The employees started looking at Aakash as a no-nonsense person, a person who was extremely precise and transparent in his communication. If he did not want to disclose a particular thing he would clearly communicate that but never beat around the bush. There was consistency in his mail and his answers given now. So they knew that for an employee performing his expected duties there was no fear about the ‘Once with us Always with us policy.’ They also understood that Aakash had anticipated this fear in their minds and hence would have insisted on answering collated anonymous questions first, to allay the employee fear before opening up the session for spontaneous questions. They started feeling lighter and were now ready to ask the other unanswered questions.

  One employee stood up. He was passed on the mike by one of the many volunteers in the stadium.

  EMPLOYEE 1: Hello Sir. I am Atul Mishra, AGM in the telecom business. First of all I would like to thank you for this wonderful townhall. This has really been an enriching session and I would also like to thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak. My question is related to the changes in working style that you mentioned earlier? Can you please give us some examples of the same?

  AAKASH: Thank You Atul. Your gratitude received and sincerely accepted. In the interest of time, I would request all the other employees who would ask questions after Atul, to skip the gratitude portion and directly jump on to the question.

  Answering your question, first and foremost change you will witness is about speed in decision making. In the combined experience of the core team while working with different corporates, we have observed that time taken in decision making is at times even greater than the time required for execution. To avoid the risk of taking a wrong decision, people ponder over a decision for unnecessarily long tim
e even if it is a very small one. Many small decisions get delayed or stuck up in the approval process. Going forward we will empower the employees to take certain decisions by themselves without having to go through the approval chain. Of course the employee would then also be responsible for the decision. Second change will be devoting few hours compulsorily every month to work for the group’s purpose. Participation in CSR so far would have been voluntary but here since you would be aligned to the cause of the group, expectation would be of a compulsory participation. There will be many more changes which you will better comprehend once you actually see them. But be assured they will in no way be detrimental to any employee.

  ATUL: Thank You Sir.

  EMPLOYEE 2: Sir we heard about the ‘infinity pay package’ for the core team. Can we also expect something similar in the near future?

  The mood had by now lightened up and this particular question brought a giggle in the entire stadium. Even Aakash could be seen smiling.

  AAKASH: When you heard about the ‘infinity pay package’ you would have also heard that the core team has worked for five years without any pay before this benefit was extended to them. It was possible for them because GALAXY was not their primary source of income. But how many of you would be willing to work for more than five years without getting paid? We understand the significance of a monthly salary to an employee. Hence, all the employees will continue to get their regular salary. Now that you have brought up the topic, let me also throw some more light on it. It’s been more than three years after the benefit was extended but so far only Seventy Five Lakhs has been taken by a total of ten individuals, most of which was during medical emergencies in the family. Even if the group were to pay all of them a regular salary for the eight years of work they have put in, it will be significantly more than this. So, you see, this is a very cost-effective method of remuneration there. Once all of you reach that stage of Nirvana, I can surely extend that benefit here.