Celebrating The: Rise Of Aspirations!

It is natural for humans to aspire in their personal and professional fields.

An employee's desires have to be correctly understood and fulfilled, be they

financial rewards, increments or incentives. Mentoring can be an option to look

after the emotional aspirations of an employee. But the mentor-pupil relation

has to be built gradually otherwise it could do more harm than good.

I wish I could take a break from work and go for a long holiday! Human beings

never cease to desire. Thus, we are continuously faced with situations that call

for aspiration handling in both personal and professional life.

Call it consumerism if you will, but ever since India tasted liberalization,

exposure levels to objects of gratification have been on the rise. And this has

added to peoples' aspirations for the good things in life. It's a natural

phenomenon.

But aspirations aren't just limited to desire for physical objects alone,

which can be fulfilled through money. In that sense, aspirations is quite an all

encompassing term and can include the need for recognition, respect, belonging,

empathy and other soft issues.

In

one of the articles in DQ Channels, I had read about how Sanjeev Bhavnani of

Vishesh Infotecnics arranged for a cook to provide Indian food for his team

members stationed in Thailand. I am sure that he did this to make sure that his

staffers were provided with the predictable cuisine they were used to, the

gesture helped to satisfy a more soft aspiration — the feeling of being cared.

Many times we attribute the cause of attrition to dissatisfaction with our

financial state. This is a kind of generalization - since money seems to be the

common denominator for acquiring things that will make us feel good. But what

does a person do with money? Buy things. Why? To feel good. At the end of the

day it may not really be about money, as it might be about simply changing the

way you feel!

Understanding employees' aspirations



Getting to understand each individual's aspirations requires conscious

effort, and a lot of it. Most times, managers may be too pre-occupied with

target pressures to be able to find time to relate to their team members at an

emotional level.

An analogy can be made of parents, who do not spend time with their children,

but inundate them with money at them in the belief that they are taking care of

their children well. But do the children think so? The same children grow up to

blame their parents of having neglected them. The emotional bonding has not

taken place.

An organization's environment, of course, is more complex. There are many

more 'children' to be taken care of. Since each person's need may be

different, money may be perceived to be the means that will help each 'child'

get his 'toy'.

But therein lies the dichotomy. This independence itself means that the

person is now capable to seek fulfillment of his feelings outside the ecosystem

- the organization. Financial rewards, increments and incentives in a way help

make the individual independent of other support systems in changing their

feelings. But what about the emotional bonding?

Handling aspirations correctly



Sometimes I wonder whether some our large public sector organizations have a

better model to handle aspiration related employee situations. Many of the large

enterprises have plants located in far-flung small towns. In fact, the town

itself may owe its existence to the organization. These organizations build

entire townships for their employees, arrange for school, clubs for

entertainment and social events. In fact, they create an entire lifestyle that

provides people an opportunity to experience a large spectrum of feelings on a

regular basis. Many people would like to stay on in that organization for this

reason alone.

However, I would prefer not to over-simplify this phenomenon. It isn't a

black and white situation. Managements try and cater to mass needs. They look

for cues that surface as group needs and provision for these. There is comfort

in numbers. But numbers do not necessarily give out the whole story.

An attrition rate as high as 35% to 40% on an annual basis boils down to

about 3% on a monthly basis. And every month this 3% is a different set of

people. Even if the same emotions and feelings are experienced by all it is

happening at different stages of one's career.

At any point of time the number of people going through one type of

experience may be as low as that 3%. That makes it 30 to 40 different emotions

to cater to simultaneously. It is complex and it is huge - definitely not

something that the HR department can be relied upon to handle on its own. In

that sense the concept of mentoring can provide better answers.

Mentoring to address aspirations



Mentoring does not appear to be on the radars of most companies. One reason

for this could be that large numbers of mentors are needed to ensure a healthy

one-to-one relationship. Mentoring is a great skill and if one does not possess

it, the program could actually end up doing more harm than good.

Add to this the fact that the problem of attrition is most acute in the high

tech IT and BPO sectors. These sectors employ large numbers of the 'young and

restless'. There may not be enough experienced people in the organization with

mentoring capabilities to go around.

However, that is a problem if one is looking for mentors only from within the

organization. There could be a lot of professionals with mentoring skills in the

population of retired senior citizens. Many of them seem to lose their sense of

belonging and feel the need for an anchor in life. Engaging them in mentoring

programs has the potential of creating an effective solution to bridging the

mentor-pupil ratio problem; and also serving a social cause.

Admittedly, there are no simplistic answers. Many organizations have tried

finding solutions in their own ways. Some have worked for some time. It's

natural, for aspirations like water have their own way of finding their levels

— only it is a higher level each time.

The intensity of needs drive the quality and intensity of effort. A lot of

learning emerges out of experimentation. Theories need to be validated through a

process of action and observation and analysis of results. The question is

whether we are willing to experiment and learn? Dealing with aspirations can be

exciting. It is what leads us to discover new solutions on an ongoing basis. In

that sense, all progress is a result of aspirations. We would do better to

welcome it rather than lament the rising levels of aspirations in the newer

generations.

The author is VP, HR and Head of Training and Consulting Business at RT

Outsourcing Services and can be contacted at Sumeet

Sharma