Employee Morale: what changed since Hawthorne studies, what might change in future!

Ever since Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger conducted experiments 98 years ago to test human behaviour in organizations, dozens of theories have evolved to study and enhance organizational effectiveness and contribute to employee morale.

Theories that evolved progressed from the classical theory to the theories of organizational change and culture with conceptual transformation from production orientation to focus on values and culture. Despite the clear prescription of these theories, boosting employee morale remains a mystery to many, to this day.

Since the inception of a formal scientific study of personnel management nothing much besides ‘flexibility’ had notably revolutionized the way employees should really be treated, apart from largely dispersed incremental mechanisms to motivate employees! Sticking to the basic concepts of these eminent theorists with military precision and without dilution to serve the ulterior motives, could have led to an exponential progress of trade and commerce of the nation.

Theories of Org. Culture & Change consider that organization’s culture is no different from societal culture and therefore an organization is also vulnerable to some of the fallacies and systemic deficiencies that weaken a society. When the top management lacks the will to follow literature to invest in employees or try to tilt the balance of productivity and employee welfare to serve their own questionable motives, employees leave, draining the intellectual capacity of an organization.

Since Hawthorne days, ‘flexibility’ has been a lone weapon that managers used for motivation and it evolved and matured into various forms over a long history. As Charles Darwin points out that it might take a very long time to adapt an organism to some new and peculiar line of life, but when this has been effected, a comparatively short time would be necessary to produce many divergent forms, which would be able to spread rapidly and widely throughout the world. Why would this not be true of RPA and AI? A question that may not endure for a long time now!

As we are at the doorstep of robotic intelligence altering the ways of life, employee management will undergo a paradigm shift by placing the balance between productivity and employee satisfaction at an unprecedented level. Connected devices, lightning speeds of transport, time management like never before, transparency of top management, and employee learning with secondary brain processors will all synergize to redefine employee morale. This will be a real tribute to Hawthorne studies that would complete a century soon.

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Virtual Societies of Millennials: Are they really to be blamed for addiction?

The increasing view of social media as an addiction, especially to millennial population by the rest can largely be attributed to its current usage. A little altered perspective provides interesting insights and we may clearly understand that people who extensively use social media are generally not averse to physical social contacts but they would want more of it, provided they have the time for it.

Let’s see how! The very fact that any given sample of the millennials will have hundreds of contacts in their social sites, itself is a proof that they are more than interested in maintaining social relations. These relations may only be virtual for now, but may not remain so for long when technology becomes an enabler. Usage analytics of social media enables planned and organized opportunities to physically meet with their respective social groups. Connected devices armed with AI will manage logistics, end-to-end to the last imaginable detail and sometimes beyond. A scenario where your calendar is being managed to give you a few hours of free time and all your friends of a specific whatsapp group waiting for you at your favourite restaurant for dinner and the only thing for you to do, is to go sit in a pre-booked cab waiting at your doorstep, is going to be a reality pretty soon. Icing on the cake is, frequency of such connections will only increase in future. This however, will have its own limitations, as these scenarios may not apply to all social groups.

Finally, I may not use the word addiction, but such attachment to social media should not be attributed to the psychology of the current generation. We are at the cusp of technological transformation and very soon this will revolutionize the way social media is used and people will again maintain physical social contacts with tens of people with exponential efficiency and effectiveness than at any point in the past.

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How do you buy, what you buy, ten years from now?

It is interesting to see what technology can do to marketing a decade from now. Wearable (sometimes implanted) technology made out of nanotech will become as common as clothing. These wearables or implanted devices will measure the heart rate and other bodily vitals along with a ratio of food intake and fat being burnt at the speed of thought, while constantly storing that data for medical, social, and commercial analysis.

Influencing the mind and positioning the product/service without the knowledge of a customer may well be unethical in today’s scenario, which we’ve seen some marketers resorting to in the past, through subliminal perception. But next generation’s marketing may well be grounded on influencing the customer through the analysis of data accrued through these devices. Such magnitude of data when analyzed will provide insights that delight marketers. Customization of products or services at the individual level will no longer be an enigma, but a dream come true for them. The thin line between ethical and unethical marketing, can at that stage only be measured through nano technology!

People through these wearable devices are exposed to a constant rain of micro and milli second flashes (ads) on platform independent interfaces that may well influence their buying patterns by directly attracting their subconscious mind! What then remains may be a regulatory environment ensuring that people are not exploited.

Marketers, however will surely realize that competition may well remain cut throat and reaching out at personal level to sell, may well be the right idea, but exercising restraint and walking the thin line of ethical marketing will only prove successful in the long run even in the future.

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Intelligence – How artificial can it be!

Selection of newborns from an exceptional menu of physiological and psychological choices will commercialize production of mankind. An apparent visible layer that appears on the surface of a deeply developed permutations of a conglomeration of technology and life. From a toothbrush to a shoeshine and from haircare to nailcare, gadgets will rule the roost. People and their lives will be so exposed that privacy will become a rare commodity.

Intelligence is duplicated and challenged to fathom the power of human mind’s abilities. When programmed to deliver what a brain in normal course cannot, will deliver results at mind blowing speeds and efficiencies that humiliate supercomputers. Interplanetary human travel will be a norm while interstellar travel will be a reality for at least humanoids for the next few decades. Speed of travel will attain disruptive pace due to research on black holes and extra-terrestrial waves that are undefined today. These waves must be recognized and when leveraged can amplify interstellar escape velocity.

The periodic table will be altered or will be replaced with elements from outer space, mined and delivered by robots to sister planets including the ancient earth inhabited by humanity and its new race – humanoids.

Initial successes to control elements will deceptively encourage further attempts resulting in unimaginable losses to human lives, wiping out societies and countries. Theorists of the contrary will undermine the grand scheme and its eternal strength to control the universe. Myopic outlook of such propagators will slowdown the ethical and sincere developmental efforts of a unified world order. An eventuality is the division of the race into positive and negative colonies controlling the globe and its sister planets.

Civilization at rapid pace will evolve to a whole new format redefining human birth, every organ and every cell will be produced by intelligence, perhaps except the creation of life. Such attempts although would be counterproductive and a debate on that would undermine the essence of what is being discussed here.

Neural networks will take communication and consumption of goods and services to a whole new platform enabling real-time customization of people’s tastes and preferences. Interactions between humans would entail deep knowledge of choices and preferences and personality types. Body implanted electronic assistants would convey a volley of instructions to converse with the other person for an anticipated outcome.

Electronic data to the last byte would be leveraged to effectiveness in social order, every social interaction, every occasion, every celebration, every transaction, every business concept, every strategy, every time – past, present and future will be precisioned to perfection making today’s predictive analytics primitive.

Space will be exponentially explored as with the nano technological feats altering the shape of elements and innovating items that are hardly imagined in the current scenario. Translocatory buildings, commercial slingshot transportation that reduces travel time between corners of the earth to minutes and so on will become things of routine affair.

Intelligence will never be artificial, its utility and outcomes might!

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Tolerance is not a Compromise

Friends! Indians! Countrymen! Use your hearts to indulge in sensitivities and not your spats to blotch the fabric of nation’s unity. The purpose of freedom is blatantly impeached by venomous abnegations of freedom of speech, which prevails vibrantly across the nation. Protests made by uncivilized savages mocking the very shelter protecting them can only be detested to the highest degree. Select few politicians marching in support of such rapacious herds with an anticipation of sustenance by shamelessly latching on to anything that sticks is the saddest development of the country’s politics.

A careful observation of current political scenario provides a lucid enough picture that glares at every Indian’s face; competing to be petty. Stalling Parliament is just miniscule in a larger setting of obnoxious malevolence upon which their very existence thrives. Utilizing universities as a battleground to rage political vendetta and settle scores with the ruling party as they have diminished them to near non-existence, to say pathetic, is a mere understatement.

Our every act may have a whiff of vice, our every step may lead to abysmal turpitude, our strategy will always be degenerative but we are the constitutional police protecting the masses from the party in power that is striving and exerting every bit of its energy to secure the welfare of the citizens. Paradoxical though, this is the day we live in to see such absolutely ignominious behavior of a long standing political dynasty generation after generation denigrating the Tolerance and making a mockery of common man’s resilience. Ravenous hooligans may tirelessly endeavor to usurp power to swell their coffers but common men will always be ready to teach another lesson to drive home the point that Tolerance is not a Compromise!

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Thoughtful Complexity

Complexity of life is defined by the innate thought process an individual develops over a period of time based on the intensity and degree of maturity that unfolds bit by bit, piece by piece in the flow of time. The very nature of thought is scaled on complexity depending on several factors that define the environment that encompasses inner to outer, to, micro to macro frames.

Generation of thoughts and its origin intrigues many and fascinates an equal number and interrogation of reasons thereof, might be unnecessary as the result outweighs the process. What proclivities to such deduction is; the outcome of any such isolated thought can be immensely powerful than the ether that carries it.

Each moment, life generates innumerable waves of interconnected thoughts, any attempt to fathom such connection almost often proves futile for the simple reason that such comprehension is beyond normal course. An attempt therefore to measure and produce meaningful derivation of such complexity is a challenging journey that many dread treading for its sheer entanglement which demands perseverance – a costly quality that virtuous people own and hone. But a committed and persistent effort exalts enough energy to untangle the connectedness of thoughts perhaps paving path to the assimilation of gravity of thoughtlessness, surpassing commonality that ushers magnificent power of knowledge that strikes the initial chord of wisdom which lets you explore the openness of eternity by diving into your inner being enlightening you at some point with an everlasting reality of inner permeating the outer and vice-versa.

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Insaniyat

Arz Kiya Hai…

Bewaja Chedkhani munasib nahi
Ishq mein farebi jayiz nahi
Duniyabhar ki sharafati chehre pe nahi
Muttibhar ki insaniyat dil se sahi

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Crossroads Versus Emotions

Twists and turns of life throw you at a juncture that mines your memory to excavate a pain so seething that emotions race with your breath. Somebody invested their lifetime for you to take the baton further as long as the God wills, that very Divine hand vanishes and stops motivating you. Every step of the life now misses this warm shadow leaving you to the scorching flames prying at every mode to engulf.  

What then left for you is a mystery, why then you continue consuming oxygen is a rhetoric looped forever like a satellite that missed its orbit. But you still continue this journey with regret and remorse as a dreadful and painful luggage that you carry no matter what. What then does life ingrain that pushes you to pursue, is a question that needs enormous courage to answer and like many, I overlook and move on with every reflection of mirror throwing you away to unfathomable distances where the soul cannot navigate.

Dad, its been a decade but I miss you like the words that miss my mind, when I venture to express. I, but promise that I will continue as you wished, like I have been so far with a rock pumping blood into my veins in place of a heart. I would only hope you would continue to seat this rock and drive me like you’ve always been.

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Success for Differently Abled!

It is heartening to see people struggling for success. In normal situations this does not warrant any grin, but sometimes this very struggle of certain hopeless hearts is very amusing. They would go to any levels to be successful, even if it means crumbling their self-esteem. Did the education system, which offers modern MBAs play the spoilsport, by stressing on the importance of networking in corporate life and stopping short of actually teaching them about it?  I would not believe management education has deteriorated over the years to this level. Instead, I feel the way it is imparted has been condescending. Many people fresh out of college or with a few years of experience reel under the impression that their success depends on their bosses. This could be true to a certain extent, but what comes as a behavioral and attitudinal change because of this pitiful perception is very entertaining. These people constantly strive to take sycophancy to new levels, every passing day. The sheer observance of such people gives ample food to your laughter pangs. It is all the more funny to see these people, oblivious of their surroundings when they are licking the boots, do I have to say “not literally”!?

Sarcasm aside, this rotten behavior surely irritates any sane individual or rather should irritate any sane individual, but the people who wear these very boots accept such muddy adulation with open arms without realizing that they are falling down to an abyss along with their partner. Adulation of a pure heart may only spoil the adulated if it gets on to their head, but flattery with a deceit would surely plummet the careers of both the parties. This realization will not sink in as long as the drama is staged with the connivance of both the professionals. Their falsified minds cheat their inner voice to an extent that it ruthlessly kills their sensitivity. They violate every rule of corporate decency, act as breeders of company intelligence and grab the limelight at the whiff of any opportunity. The shameless display of such attitude is detested to the core by any average person. But somehow, it is a sheer delight to observe the actions of these dubious individuals that cross the borders of malignancy. Success in career is certainly not the end of life. In fact attaining success, in that order, in real sense is a disastrous failure. This however is seldom recognized by these pathetic people. Such success will never take them far in their professional journey.

Unfortunately, for hardcore bootlickers, by the time they realize what they are up to, they would find themselves deep in the sludge from where, their return seems pointless.

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Ablutions for a Just Society

If not now, when? If not us, who? Clichéd statements as they are, but apt to the core when taken in perspective and mirrored with the present sentiment across the nation. Ramifications may be too far, but creating the pulse that can quench the immensely parched hearts of millions of Indians, living in hope, is a remarkable victory in itself.

Saturation would be an understatement for resilience of the countrymen, but, yes, today we’ve got a vent, which everyone is so proud to let their deeply deposited anger and frustration out. I feel committed men do realize the brimming dissatisfaction of the masses and package a vent to unite millions of hearts and vouch for a better tomorrow. This pride should spread and with a pace enough, to bring in visible change in the lawmakers’ attitude towards the common man. Yes, the common man has been taken for a ride and for decades, stomping his dreams of an efficient society and riding on his patience. Our caretakers shamelessly bred corruption to graduate into a systemic process. This uncouth attitude has rampantly spread polluting every form of governance.  

Corruption is often mistaken as a fundamental right by these scavengers of the society, it is a pity that such repugnant individuals have grown so monstrous that they now can debilitate the roots of our very sovereign, socialist, democratic republic. The stooping base of our society badly needs a facelift, we must act now and build a strong foundation that can delight the generations to come. High time to react has already passed mocking our patience. We must be grateful to those who kindle the spirit of unity in us to bring in the common good. But unless we move, that sacred step taken with enormous commitment would fast wane bringing back the prevalent detested state of affairs.

It is just not enough to support such lofty men of honor verbally, but such support should manifest into a steely determination in everybody’s conscience to do something in their might that can move the elected. Kindling the fire in the masses’ hearts to raise their voice for an ideal society in itself is a herculean task, tougher still is the sustenance of such magnanimous spirit. Unless such a momentum lasts for as long as it takes to bring the struggle to its logical end, no good will ever happen. We cannot at any cost let the thought pass off, lest we recede to the prevalent rusty system. Arise, Awake and stop not till the goal is reached can never be a banal statement. This is the right time for such a statement to motivate and cleanse the minds off the dispirited and lethargic pretermit from millions of us.

The gradually building unity should seep into every heart and mind of India. Bringing change is glorious but all the more difficult, unless the change-maker gets the support. ANNA, I am with you.

 

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