We have heard about new-age companies re-designating the vice-chairman as "Gardener", or the head of human resources as "Chief Happiness Officer". These designer designations once met with stifled sniggers and confused expressions, but not any more, although Google took it a step further with a job title called "Jolly Good Fellow" that was offered to Chade-Meng Tan, one of its earliest engineers who moved to people operations.
Before retiring from Google this year at the age of 45, Meng became "Jolly Good Fellow" with a job description of "enlightening minds, opening hearts and creating world peace". In case you thought it was just Google's way of sidelining somebody, here are the facts: Meng moved to the new position after an immensely successful eight-year stint that saw him help build Google's first mobile search service and head a team that kept a vigilant eye on search quality.
The closest that Indian companies have gone is "Chief Jolly Officer' whose main job is to organise fun events at a workplace. There are others, which have positions such as "Community Data Guerilla", "Chief Everything Officer", "Results Achievement Specialists", "Rainmakers" and "Ice-Breakers".
Welcome to the fancy, and in some cases, wacky designation party that has been started by new-age companies around the world - that explains titles such as "Cost Kill Analysts" for accountants and "Ambassador of Buzz" for corporate communications jobs. There is also a flux of "Wild Ducks" - designations for people to nurture talented individuals and coax them into sharing their bold ideas on internal social platforms for evaluation. The logic goes like this: not everyone can get a vertical rise to the top and hence, a lateral move, with an interesting designation tacked on, might just be what the doctor ordered.
Jobs at much lower levels have also not escaped this trend. Consider this gem: A business centre in New York has changed the designation of a front-desk receptionist to "Director of First Impressions". And it's certainly not an isolated case. Key in that designation on job websites and see the results. In careerbuilder.com alone, there are 25 openings for "Director of First Impressions".
Quite a few companies play around with conventional designations as well. For example, the post of managing director (MD) has been devalued by a large number of investment banks, which are grappling with the challenge of satisfying the bloated egos of a large number of high performers, all of whom are jostling for an entry into the corner office. Since that's a practically impossible task, these banks have chosen the easy way out by being generous in distributing designations. There are several private and foreign banks in India with more than 10 MDs, although that's small change considering that in 2012, Goldman Sachs was estimated to have 2,400 MDs. In reality they are nothing but functional heads of departments or high-flying consultants. Several private equity giants, for example, have MDs in high single-digits even though their total staff strength might be in double-digits.
Many HR consultants say fancy designations provide organisational flexibility to offer multiple roles to people, apart from giving them a degree of independence that in turn acts as a retention tool. But an equally formidable section believes that such designations can turn out to be traps for employees, who may find it difficult to switch as very few people fail to understand the meaning of these designations. Some organisations think a high-sounding designation might be able to keep employees happy, but the track record doesn't inspire much confidence. Rather, esoteric titles may make it difficult for headhunters to find out what the person really does and where he or she is a good fit. HR officials say employees' response to unconventional designations vary widely - while the young ones will take the "cool" title, the older ones will say, "you can call me whatever you want, just keep paying me more".
A senior executive of a start-up wasn't amused when asked whether he would exercise some restraint while experimenting with designations. "What about the media industry which has played a leading role in this," he asked, referring to the flood of senior editors with unusual prefixes. He then volunteered a suggestion - the media industry would do well to re-designate these editors as "Crappy Copy Banishers".
Point taken.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
