Every day, around 5.45 p.m., Ronak R. Kavle’s mobile rings.
Kavle’s colleagues know who is making that call. It is his wife Mrunali asking him to pack up for the day.
She is not trying to keep him on a string, controlling him from a remote location. Kavle is employed with Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC). So is Mrunali. She works on the first floor, and he on the second floor. They are in two different departments.
During work hours, their paths don’t cross, except when they have to interact professionally. They even avoid having lunch together. The only time they are together is when they walk in and out of office.
“At work, we interact like colleagues and maintain a professional relationship,” says Kavle, a geologist.
Many an organisation is now looking favourably upon letting family members, including married couples, be on its payroll. Only that they make sure family members are not in the same department or have a manager-reportee relationship.
Long-term association
These organisations are counting the benefits of letting married couples work for them. One, it encourages the couple to look for a long-term association with the organisation. In the case of good performers, this can stand the organisation in good stead. At the Raymond facility in Thane, nine couples are employed. In addition, there are seven other cases of family members being engaged in different roles. A few years ago, Raymond introduced an ‘Immediate Family Employment Policy’, which favours hiring the close kin of an employee.
“As per the rules of the policy, family members on the payroll should not be part of one department or work group. There should not be a direct reporting relationship between two family members. They should not be reporting to the same manager either. If two employees in a department marry during their tenure in the company, after marriage, one of them will be required to move to another department,” says Adhir Mane, CHRO — Lifestyle Business, Raymond Ltd.
HOEC enthusiastically offers internship programmes to family members of employees, on a ‘no stipend basis’.
Federal Bank is among companies that are open to the notion of couples sharing a work address. Aby Jose and Rose are employed with this bank, each working in a different city. They have requested the management to let them work together in the same city, and they believe it is only a matter of time before their request is granted.
Opposition persists
However, there are still many organisations that straight away rule out the possibility of hiring an employee’s kin.
Axis Bank subscribes to this philosophy. If an employee becomes related to another employee through marriage, the bank transfers one of them to a suitable role in a different location.
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has a policy of not hiring children of executive directors till they retire.
Sachin Rajan, managing director and country manager at Russell Reynolds Associates, a global search and leadership advisory firm, says many companies have revised their policy regarding hiring of family members.
“Earlier, hiring an employee’s family member was a big no-no with most employers. Later, there was some relaxation, with family members being allowed to work for the same organisation, but in different departments. Now, the arrangement is dictated largely by considerations of merit,” he says.
Uncertain ground
According to HR analytics startup inFeedo, which offers hiring solutions, when family members across generations are part of a team, sharp differences can come to the fore leading to a breakdown in communication.
Author and entrepreneur Prachi Garg agrees.
When Prachi started work on Supercouples , a book on start-up couples, she had 30 enterprises on the list. Towards the end of the book, she had whittle it down to 19.
“I tried hard to get the magic figure of 20, but it was difficult,” she says. During the one year, Prachi says, many of these couples had separated, divorced or their start-ups had folded up.
Prachi says one of the key takeaways was businesses run by couple-preneurs can be successful provided there is a clear demarcation between the personal and the professional.
