Child and Company...changing with times

When I closely observe the childhood of my child and myself, I can see a lot of difference in the way they are growing up. It was days our growth & development, interest, habit, preferences & choices were highly decided and determined among family and centred around society. They can stand by to support, guide and influence on our growth path & decision making. But with passage of time, not only family and society are participating in each of stage of childhood but the company are also coming forward in their capacity to collaborate their growth, development, habit, choices & preferences. With this thought, I have observed and researched how the companies are coming forward in ideating new product, service and brand at different stage of childhood and hence, giving immense contribution to our nation building by providing employments and full filing the needs. With changing times, the company is segmenting the child on his/her needs, behaviour, habits, interests, upbringings and come out with new products, services and brands. The company is also coming up with idea & innovation on improving life, society and environment considering children as centre stage.  In this article, I am presenting my observation and thoughts how do the manager or organisation are taking decisions keeping the child at centre stage. 

Change in working Culture within the company- Mother gives birth to child, she bears the pain and carry the child in her womb for nine months. She bears mental & physical pain during the journey of birth of new baby. Its true that father not bears the pain as much as mother does physically but he also bears mental pain. He is not physically pregnant but mentally he is. His contribution is not just ends at time of copulation. Mother & father are both equally bear the fruits of mental & physical hardship of the journey for bringing new birth to the earth. To recognise the importance & value of father towards child birth & care, over a period of time the company are changing the policy of maternity & paternity leaves, also ideating and implementing the culture of working beyond official boundary like work from home. The companies are recognising the need of hour for change in the policy because of shrinking of larger  family to nuclear family, enhancing the bonding with children & family, maintaining work life balance, promoting gender parity and also helping young women partners. This can have a remarkable results with the company in terms of retention and motivation and hence, many companies are coming forward to introduce the policy for paternity leave and keep work from home options. Now companies with 50 or more workers must set up creches within office premises under the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016, that aims to stop women from leaving jobs to care for babies.

Studies have found that 38% of companies globally provide paid paternity leave. In Asia-Pacific, 41% of the companies provide paid paternity to their employees with India being among the top-10 countries that have the highest percentage of companies providing paternity. Cummins India has now set a new benchmark of sorts. It has become the first among manufacturing companies to come up with a path-breaking 30 days of paternity leave for its employees, which can be availed of during the first six months of becoming a father. Deutsche Bank offers 6-months parental leave to men if they are primary caregivers. Asian Paints offers 10 days leave for male employees. The world’s leading steel company Tata Steel also introduced 10 days paternity leave to male employees.

Nowadays, work from home opportunities are also coming up with new trends. These opportunities are offered by company to keep the employees taking care of children and family. Same time, it has multiple of benefits like cutting operational cost and saving travelling time. But the most important aspects of working from home is  generation of no. of job opportunities for those leave the jobs for child caring. It has also ideated new avenues of jobs in the market with help of technology. It has open the door of opportunities like virtual teaching, web developer, content writer, virtual assistant and medical transcriptionist. Hence, genesis of caring child helping in contributing to the country as well.

Now, ideas of paid leave on Children’s birthdays can be explored by the company. An idea of a day off to the employees for giving a surprise and spending full day with children as celebrating ‘Children Surprise day’. Many more such ideas can explored for children while redefining culture within the company.

New Product & Branding- Today consumers’ need are changing fast with advent of increase in internet penetration & satellite TV & smartphones, higher disposable income, increase in no. of working parents, downsizing of larger family, higher rate of urbanisation and higher exposure to technology. In entire ecosystem children play important role in influencing decision making and preferences. They have multiple access & exposure to information and also been highly observant to advertisement or exposure to social media. Hence, the companies have been developing insights and knowing inherent and latent needs, delivering products and brands and delighting customers. We can see the catchy and flashy covers of bags or notebooks with superheroes, Ben10, Chota Bheem. We can observe many tv ads are targeted towards children, no. of animated movies and 3D movies are screening on theatres targeting to children. There was very few child related films, serials, cartoon shows were there in 15-20 years back. Now we can have several tv channels running around the watch especially for kids that combines with entertainment and educational. We can see micro segmentation of baby & kids products & brands. Firstcry or Mom&me, Gini & Jony are new brands for the needs & choice of new age of children. Right from entering to washroom using toothbrush & toothpaste, soap, shampoo, having breakfast with chocos with sparkling shapes, and entering to classroom with catchy bags and water bottle all are micro segmented by the company. Even kinder joy is made for boys and girls with separately mini gifts. Do we remember any such brands exist in 15-20 years back? With few examples, I would like to give special weight-age to some of the brands and its ads that I like most. We are experiencing the brand ‘Paper boat’ which reminds old memories of our childhood and connect with its flavoured drinks. All its ad gives really nostalgic feeling and takes us to our old & sweet days memories. In another example on feeling of manhood, few years back ‘Vogue’ released an ad featuring Madhuri Dixit that highlights the pressures put on men to be manly as opposed to what they should actually be taught. We know that lack of proper sanitary measures have resulted in severe illnesses across our country among children. ‘Lifebuoy’ ads had come out with a beautiful ad and the work that followed it, done by children at Lifebuoy tries to counter that exact problem. I can’t forget an ad of Times of India in which in a video a child shows how a single person can lead the mob. Recently, Tata Steel launched ‘The Green School Project’ in association with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). This initiative is aimed at creating awareness and understanding about environment issues in school campuses in the operational areas of Tata Steel.

Safety Awareness & Consciousness- Safety is always important in all circumstances. We all need cultural & behavioural change to keep ourselves consciously always aware and safe. Many companies are bringing this change among the managers through child as a role model and developing new habit among the managers by repeating the same activity as child is doing. As everyone knows that over-speeding is leading cause of road accidents but not everyone follows the rules.

On this issue a tyre company ‘Ceat’ took initiative on National Road Safety week and visited to schools to impart road safety awareness to the children. Same time, they intrigued the children on their observation to dad’s driving over-speed. So they come out with a concept and made bumble-head of child and added with a sensormatic chip installed at dashboard of car. When dad over-speeds the car, bumble-head of his kid shakes and warns the dad in pre-recorded voice of the kids and it reminds the dad to control the speed of car. This helps in limiting the speed of the car and hence, chance of accidents get reduced.

Child develops good habits once they are persistently given task & and checked. With this philosophy, Tata Steel follows the safety journey within the company. To keep its workplace and in around environment safe, the company has been taking several remarkable initiatives. An initiative of periodic logging of safety observation & safety walk by employees at ‘Ensafe’ platform. A practice of discussing on safety observations under ‘safety pause’ is followed at the beginning of meetings. All these practice results in changing the behavioural and developing habit of safety awareness and consciousness as child develops good habits.

New idea of introducing ‘Safety Classes’ in schools to have much bigger impact on change towards safety and its engagement among children and henceforth in the society and the country.

New Ideas & Innovation- With the changing trends in needs of children, the companies have not just launched the products of its basic needs, but also micro segmented the trends and come out with new ideas and innovations. This has led to come up with no of creche, talent shows, laser games, new financial services etc. If we look at sector-wise then we can seen a lot products and services targeted for children across the segments. We can see a lot of startups based on  skill mapping & grooming of children, ideas of extra curricular activities, tv channels on talent shows, Creche for young mother and options of career planning & counselling have come up with changing times. Here, I am highlighting key ideas and innovation that can remembered for many reasons

Embrace Innovations is a social enterprise created well-designed baby warmer incubator that cost less than 1% of a traditional incubator. Many parents could not afford traditional incubator for premature and underweight babies in the developing world. After extensive research, co-founders graduated from Stanford University developed low cost infant warmer incubators helping to save millions of infant lives that are lost because of  premature and underweight.

KidZania is the entertainment & learning world of children. It is a safe, unique, and interactive indoor theme park that empowers, inspires & educates kids through real-life role-play activities. It is designed for children from 4 to 14 years and equipped with rich learning environment where kids foster their autonomy, creativity, decision-making skills, problem solving and social values. When they visit to Kidzania, they can experience the fire brigade, theatre, hospital, university, post office what not everything that are seen in the real world. They can experience in making chocos, frooti,coca cola, ice cream and hands on experience in painting, masonry and also with banking & editing with news media. They can earn the money they could able to make it rightly. This is very innovative way to educate the real world scenarios under one roof. KidZania was founded in Mexico in 1999. Today the parks are open for children worldwide. In India, it is Mumbai and New Delhi.

Super 30 is a highly ambitious and innovative educational program in Bihar running under the banner of "Ramanujan School of Mathematics" by Anand Kumar. It hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among the economically backward sections of the society and shapes them for India's most prestigious institution – the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). For many years it has produced hundreds IITians from extremely poor background. During this program students are provided absolutely free coaching, lodging and food. Super 30 targets students from extremely poor families. They have all seen the change with sheer disbelief in their eyes that their children are now going to be top technocrats.

Many more such educational program in field of medical, law, defence should come up to shape the future of children at bottom of pyramid and henceforth India.

With changing times, companies should also joined hands with local governing bodies and design the products & services especially for rural India. Many companies and NGOs are dedicating towards this noble cause for upliftment & development of poor children. We must salute those companies or NGOs, they must be recognised and can be led by examples for others to follow. With this idea, a small attempt to share my thoughts.

Looking forward to your views and any other thoughts. Please leave a comment below.