Remember the R K Laxman cartoon where an executive is telling his boss that he doesn’t waste time in office chatting with his customers? In case you don’t, here it is: Pointing his finger at the crowd in his cabin, the executive says, “That’s my brother and his friend. Those two standing are my brother-in-law and his nephew!” The boss — you guessed it right — is shown scratching his head.
One of the most favourite HR mantras of all times is that work is most productive when it’s fused with fun. In creating a sustainable organisation, fun should be a core essential, not an add-on motivation. A lot of employees, it seems, are taking the “fun” part seriously. For them, work is something to do with your hands while chatting on your cell phone, unless of course it’s something to do with your mouth while text messaging a friend.
An exhaustive survey commissioned by TeamLease, India’s largest staffing solutions firm, has shown how work ethics are being redefined by employees across India’s top 401 firms. While every company worth its while has a detailed work ethics manual in place, the problem is that most respondents in the survey say they have never read it. The findings of the survey are an eye-opener: nearly half of the employees don’t bat an eyelid while logging incorrect in/out timings and feel that using the office line for personal long distance calls is fine.
Nearly 60 per cent people lie unabashed while applying for leave — “Too bad if the boss wants me at work, I need time off” is the attitude. The next time you bribe someone, there’s a chance you qualify to be among the 62 per cent of people who consider this act normal and ethical. Or, sample this: Need printouts/photocopies for personal work? Worry not; the office support system is there just for you. Nearly 61 per cent of respondents felt it was fine to take printouts and photocopies at office for personal work. Finally, if your organisation’s work productivity is dipping, the reason could be obvious: around 63 per cent respondents think it’s okay to do personal work during office hours.
What these numbers say may or may not be the norm, as the conclusions sound exaggerated to drive home a point, but it is clear that companies are grappling with this new morality at the workplace. The standard response of companies so far has been to restrict email access and make the work ethics manual more lengthy. Some companies, for example, closely monitor the recess period and the time an employee spends in office canteens. But it’s doubtful whether this headmaster kind of approach is sustainable. What is required is to follow McGregor’s ‘red hot stove’ rule, which says that the administration of discipline should be more like touching a hot stove i.e. immediate, impersonal, consistent, and foreseeable; in the same way the act of breaking ethical norms/code must be rooted out in its very initial stage. The code must be applicable to each and every employee. Many enlightened organisations also provide ethics management workshops for their employees. More importantly, instead of a top-down approach, they rely on and actively seek employee participation in such programmes.
The alternative approach would be to cast a tolerant eye on small transgressions like using the office photo copying machine, while cracking down on more serious offences like reporting false attendance timings and making personal long-distance calls. The world is not so impersonal that attending to the odd personal chore should be criminalised; besides which, as the survey shows, most people do it anyway. The intelligent approach would be to watch out for and penalise real deviance.