Punching yourself in at the biometric, throwing your bag at your workstation, running to the coffee machine for that much-needed burst of mental and physical energy, before finally taking a deep breath and beginning your day (fifteen minutes later than you have to)… sounds like your daily routine, doesn’t it?
However, in all this rigmarole, you failed to notice that the floors were mopped, your cubicle was in perfect shape, coffee machine restocked, and most importantly, you simply brushed aside that warm morning greeting from Rana Ji , the guard who also opened the gates much before you reached office. Electricians, plumbers, guards, mechanics, factory workers, and so on, every one of them belongs to an army of millions of untrained, often unnoticed little soldiers who are hired in bulk, and often leave in bulk. But that’s hardly what we have to discuss here, right?
It’s not an organisation, it is a war. Take a look at the business landscape today. Corporates are devising new strategies for their expansion into new markets, sectors, and geographies. To use the analogy of a war, new territories and new battlefields. Defeating their competitors in the fist fight to become the more preferred brand, or rather to grab the prestigious title of ‘the first’, ‘the leading’, ‘the biggest’ or ‘the most innovative’ seems to be all everyone cares about. They keep intact the tether of the organisation with strong corporate governance and display their acumen with rapidly changing business dynamics (read: battlefield). Constantly increasing their area of influence, this is less of an organisation of a business, and more of a war.
Businesses are sharpening their blade with cutting-edge technologies, adding one more figure to their workforce as they march forward, eliminating the scope of mutiny, and often capturing new regions with a location-centric approach. All the talk is ‘of the leaders’, ‘for the leaders’, or ‘by the leaders’. Blue collar professionals — be it in a corporate set-up or a usual factory atmosphere — do not receive similar fanfare. On the contrary, they are perceived to be quite dispensable. They are the lowest in the hierarchy, crushed under the bottom of the bulging pyramid, where they receive minimal return for their services, and almost negligible job security and their salaries are rarely appraised. They are often so pressed for cash that they leave jobs they’ve been in for long, for a mere 500-buck raise at the new job. The fact that’s seldom pointed out is that entry-level salaries have not grown in accordance with the capital-hungry economy.
Complete alienation
When a blue collar professional leaves, the cost associated might appear to be bearable, but when they leave in numbers, they create a dent. What’s the problem, then? The problem is simple. Everyone is so deeply engrossed with the white-collar dream that there’s a complete alienation with the blue collar collateral.
A cheap, disposable, and compliant labour force has certain problems associated with it. It brings along insecurity and resentment which further results in higher attrition. The turnover rate can also reach an overwhelming but realistic figure of 76 percent. This is a point of significant concern as the percentage of blue collar to white collar employees in India is 78:22 (Annual Report 2015–2016 by India Ministry of Labour and Employment). Employee attrition weighs considerably on a company in the form of recruitment, orientation, training, wages, salaries, lost productivity, service disruption, loss of expertise/ knowledge, and customer dissatisfaction. As per a calculation, this can turn out to be a staggering 75% of the annual salary of a leaving professional, spent in the development of its replacement.
Dramatic turn
Things take a dramatic turn as soon as the metrics are improved by analysing the workforce, appraised, and appointed based on merit and in accordance with the value structure of the organisation. Blue collar engagement draws higher rewards than merely increasing the productivity. It also reduces attrition, decreases quality glitches, and balances the cost of operation, and all of that while having a better cultural fit. The other way round, you stand to lose your most critical employees who’ve been holding your process chain intact, and yes, for a raise of 500 bucks, giving a significant blow to your war against attrition.
When post-war analysis will be done, an end-to-end solution with psychometric and advanced cognitive assessments will assist you comprehensively in recruiting your future soldiers, while increasing their performance and keeping the chances of mutiny at the bare minimum. This is perhaps the trade secret that we’ve been secreting away in the market (or, is it really?). But the question arises, when we meet again, as we soon will, will that be on the battlefield, or rather when you are wounded and out of it?
(Tonmoy Shingal is Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Mettl.)
