A Laymans Guide to "Thanksgiving"

I wrote this to my sister-in-law after receiving her invitation to a Thanksgiving bhajan evening at her place a couple of weeks ago. Thought you might enjoy it!

Jyoti,


We’ll definitely try and be there if only for a short time.

Just so’s the rest of the family unnerstans a bit more about this here “Thanksgivin”, I thawt I’d give ma version of the his-story of this innerestin American festival!

So there are these 100 odd rather puritanical Brits who were dead set against the Church of England and it’s debauched ways. So one day, they decided to head off to this magical place they’d heard of from previous settlers called the New World. (I really don’t know what Huxley was thinking of - trying to create his perfect world nearly 300 years later – didn’t he read history?) Anyway, so these Brits set off and completely by mistake, they first hit the Netherlands across the channel, thinking to themselves that they’d reached rather quickly. When they learned of their mistake, in pique they grabbed some easily subdued Dutch people and sailed off in the other direction.

After a terrible journey with no air-conditioning or even toilets, they finally hit a big rock which they christened Plymouth, out of respect for the tiny little island that they’d left behind.
They got off the rock and immediately tried their hands at communism, which hadn’t been invented at the time, a fact that did not seem to worry them unduly. They improvised. They decreed (decreeing was big in those days – people never just decided things, they decreed and in some cases proclaimed them) that all the surrounding land was hereby communal property and each man should work as much as he wanted and take as much as he needed. Yeah, right! That has the hallmark of a winning strategy! That’s like telling US Auto workers to decide their own work hours and salaries – whoops. That’s what they did for the past couple of decades, didn’t they? Anyway, just like a dude called Marx many years later, they failed. (Yet another example of how people could learn from the mistakes of their forefathers if they only spent some time reading). More than half of them died of starvation and disease and if it hadn’t been for some native Indians who, after curiously observing them for nearly a year in open mouthed astonishment, decided to help. So they shook hands and taught these strange people how to farm the land and tend to their sick. This worked and by the next harvesting time, there was enough food for everyone and some left over.

Now here is where there is a minor divergence of views on historical facts. Some good people say that in sheer happiness, the Brits proclaimed a great feast to which these very Indians were invited to celebrate and break bread with them in a spirit of “let’s all learn to share and live in complete harmony”. Some others, obviously ‘bad’ people however, rather rudely claim that having learnt how to farm the land and use native medicine, the Brits decided to eliminate the Indians so that they wouldn’t have to share the land any more. So they massacred the entire tribe and then a great feast was proclaimed to celebrate the elimination of competition.

Either way – you get the picture. Proclamations and celebrations are common to both views, so why quibble the details?

And by the way, all this happened in August for the first time following a harvest but subsequent US President’s sequentially changed it to November, declared it a holiday, struck the holiday and then again declared it a public holiday to be held on the fourth Thursday of November. (By this time declarations of various kinds had become popular, replacing the antiquated decrees and proclamations which were thought to be a mite feudal).

So ther’y’are folks! That’s the reel story of Thanksgivin for ya. Hope yo’all enjoyed it and will show up to share the celebrations even though you are Indians!

Sanjiv Desai
Senior Partner

TRANSEARCH INDIA
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New Delhi - 110 067, India

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Is Your Company Losing The Right People

India Attrition Study 2008
The Game Plan for HR Professionals

Attrition can never be wished away. One can reduce it to the right level. But what is even more important is – are you losing the right people.

The study of attrition by PeopleStrong and Business Today has thrown some interesting data. Since the study covered 59 companies in 8 industry sectors across India, for the first time, we have comprehensive data on attrition. Until now, each company had only its own data, since others would shy away from sharing theirs.

But, we now have the benefit of seeing some trends that could be used to make HR strategies. Here are some highlights:

Reducing Attrition: Losing new employee early leads to a lot of loss of opportunity as well as wasted expense and energy. The study shows that 33.8% of those who quit are Early Leavers. One of the most effective ways to reduce attrition would be to cut this down by half. If the overall attrition of a company is 15% and early leavers are one-third of this, then cutting down the latter by half would mean that attrition would get lowered to 12.5%, a huge change! A strong new employee induction and orientation program would create strong glue to hold them back. The first 90 days are most risky.

Women are leaving earlier than men across industries. Is there a special intervention that is required here?

Regional Practices: All big companies have regions, and they have regional HR organizations. While each region may have its own cultural flavour, but they all fall under the gamut of common corporate policies. This study clearly shows that different regions need to make a different implementation plan for the same HR strategy. For example, 40% of leavers in North and 27% of leavers in Rest of India are Early Leavers. What this means is that there is a different need in North because of which a stronger and different approach is needed, so common
broad brush may not work. And the gains would be much higher too. Also, as an HR Head it makes more sense to implement ‘reduce Early Leavers’ plan in the North as the gains there would be maximum.

Reducing Early Leavers: Early Leavers constitute a whopping 64% in BFSI, followed by a significant 40% each in ITES and Retail. If your company operates in these industry segments, you know where the priority must be.

Undergraduates and Frontline Staff are the biggest categories in Early Leavers across all industries. A targeted approach in these categories will bring the biggest gains.

Quality of Attrition: No company likes to lose the Top Performers. They are the ones who drive the growth as well as the key strategic initiatives. Surprisingly, the IT sector has emerged as the dubious winner here with 45% of quitters rated as Top Performers, followed by Manufacturing at 23% and BFSI at 22%. The best are Pharma (9%) followed by Retail and Telecom (10% each) and FMCG (11%). What can the HR Heads of IT, Manufacturing and BFSI learn from their colleagues in Pharma, Retails and Telecom?

North seems to be able to keep the Top Performers the best (17%). The other two regions are at 22% each.

One of the best ways to keep the top performers engaged would be by implementing a strong career planning program for them. Give attention to everyone, but focus on them. This is well supported by the study’s findings – the biggest driver of attrition is Opportunity for Career Growth (25%) followed by Salary (10%), Type of Work (9%) and Training and Development (8%). A good career planning program impact 49% of the drivers!

Check out the story at http://businesstoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=1&task=view&id=10919&sectionid=5&issueid=55&page=archieve.

If you are interested in somewhat deeper data, check out http://www.peoplestrong.com/tl_ias.htm.

The Power of One

Today was the day of polling in Gurgaon, and we (my wife Vandna and I) went to cast our vote in the afternoon. We were armed with our Voter ID Cards, but when we reached the polling station, things were pretty messy. The list of voters was random, not organized by voter ID or by residential areas, and a large number of people were not able to find their names on the lists. We were amongst such people. It was frustrating to note that despite have voter ID cards, our names were not on the list, or at least we were not able to find it, even though the people from the political parties tried their best!

Someone in the booth of the political party brought a laptop with wireless internet access and they were able to find the details of many people through the website of election commission of Haryana. My phone had internet access too, and we tried to check our names, but to our disappointment, we could not find our names on the database. Seeing us checking things on the phone, many people requested to check theirs, and this lasted for two hours. In this time, we were able to find the necessary details (room number and serial number) for voting for over a 100 people. All these folks would have gone back without casting their vote! This was truly an amazing experience. And they were full of thanks as they had lost all hope.

Although this worked out alright, so many people went away without voting, some because their names were missing and some because they could not find their names. One couple told us that they were at the booth since the morning trying to find details so they could vote. Their commitment was just amazing! Finally, they were rewarded when we found their details on the web! So much to learn from them. Of course, all of us need to contribute such that the government organizes things more efficiently. In the meanwhile, we can all play our part, and help the organizers as well as other fellow citizens in some way, to keep the hope alive and making things better.

Lastly, the posting I had made requesting friends to vote and inspire others to vote got a lot of response. So many people called, sent sms and emails to say that they had voted! One friend even asked me whether I had :). And so many friends forwarded the email to their contacts and got similar response. This shows that contribution and change is not that difficult. All of us feel the same way, and some of us just need a gentle reminder.

Building India - Elections and Voting

Let us have a look at the following perspective:

1. A Lok Sabha constituency has about 15 lakh voters.
2. On an average, about 50% people vote, i.e. 7.5 lakh.
3. Winner usually gets 1/3^rd of the votes, i.e., 2.5 lakh votes.
4. The 1^st runner up usually loses by up to 50,000 votes.
5. Most people in the middle class (including you and me) don’t vote.
6. Actually, we do not count for the politicians! Has anyone from any political party approached you yet?
7. Basically, the politicians know that we do not vote, hence we do not count.
8. People in the economically and/or academically poor segment vote, and hence are counted by the politicians!
9. Who can make a bigger contribution in making India a better place? The guys who usually vote or us? Obviously us, because we have the experience and ability.
10. If only 3.5% of the people who don’t vote decide to vote for the 1^st runners up, he/she would emerge as the winner! This is the power we have.
11. If 1/3^rd of the people who do not vote decide to vote, they can choose anyone they want as the MP!
12. But we don’t vote because we think that our single vote won’t matter! But, if we join together, it does matter.
13. The 2^nd reason we don’t vote is because there is no one good enough to be selected. But the point is that they are being selected anyway.
14. When the choice is between devil and the deep sea, choose the one who is less evil. If we can get this person to win, then he/she knows we have the power, and will listen to us. Next time, we can negotiate with this party for better results and performance and less corruption. Gradually, the system can get cleaned.
15. This may be somewhat slow, but it would work. All you have to do is to cast your vote tomorrow.

Actually, you can do a little more, with only some effort. Please read the following:

In a T20 match, if we have to make 15 runs in the last over, it is not easy, but good teams know that they can do it. So imagine that you are on the crease in the last over, and a six, a couple of fours combined with a single would take you home, as a winner.

Here is how we can bat in this last over :)

1. The Single: Make sure that you cast your vote tomorrow.
2. The first Four: Call at least 20 of your family members and make sure that they cast their vote.
3. The second Four: Call 10 of your friends and neighbours, and make sure they cast their vote - each family will have 3 voters on an average, this means 30 people cast their votes.
4. With the above, you have got 51 people to cast their vote.
5. The Sixer: Inspire 5 people to do the above – this means another 255 people will cast their votes.

Tell people not to worry about the bouncers (like hot weather) or the wide deliveries (we are going for a movie), etc.

If 5000 people do the above between now and tomorrow evening, 12.75 lakh people will cast votes tomorrow, majority of who may not have cast their votes otherwise! This can make a big difference to who the winner is. Generally, the difference between the winner and 1^st runners-up is not more than 50,000 votes.

So, let us all get ready, only one more over left, this is the time to give our best.

Let’s vote for change.