The Cultural Conundrum

“Don’t run behind CTC, focus on the culture of the company”!!

“MNCs have the best working culture, Indian companies have the worst”!!

“Product companies have better culture than Service companies “!!

And many other quotes, some of which make sense, some of which doesn’t! I am sure you must have gone through these back when you were in grad school or in post grad, looking forward to get a place into those a shiny organization with a mouth opening CTC and many other perks. Some of your seniors might have warned you that don’t judge a job by the CTC, but in your early 20s, does anything other than the CTC ever made sense? Something as intangible and abstract as culture?

How do you even measure culture? What does it constitute? It’s not a number. So why would someone looking forward for a job and start his/her career look for something beyond the CTC, some of them might be careful enough to focus on job role also. But in a b-school, beggars are not choosers, when you have a loan of 20+ lakh and you are competing with the cream of the country for limited job roles, only the most daring ones can choose to be selective! After the bloodbath of summer internship process, the rejections of lateral hiring, the disappointments in case study competitions, the relative grading system, I doubt there are enough daring people left!

What is culture? The dictionary definition states:

“the customs and beliefs, art, way of life, and social organization of a particular country or group”

Makes sense? Let’s go to Wikipedia definition of organization culture:

Organizational culture encompasses values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of a business

This also won’t make a deciding factor for someone looking forward to an entry level organization job. Culture is something that can’t be understood well theoretically. You have to experience it.

What about those who are in corporate for many years?

Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey 2019, conducted online by The Harris Poll in June 2019, found that over three-quarters (77 percent) of adults across four countries (the United States, UK, France, Germany) would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there, and 79 percent would consider a company’s mission and purpose before applying.

What about India? A market driven totally by a large supply of labour. I didn’t find any good survey quantifying the stress on culture except few anecdotal articles, but more or less, we can agree on that with passing time, culture as a deciding factor for choosing your employer is indeed becoming a strong factor.

This is obvious from the campus presentation by every company who shows video of employees praising their employer. Offices with colorful furniture with employees looking vibrant, energetic and happy. People playing table tennis and carom inside the premise. AIB has made a great spoof on the reality of such videos few years back.

Now let’s come to the important questions then. Who is the custodian of culture?

The CEO?

Upper Management?

HR?

Or the employees themselves?

Or a complex equation involving all the stakeholders?

When we say that an organization has a toxic work culture? What made that culture toxic, who is responsible to fix that culture, and despite gaining the notoriety of having a toxic work culture, how those organizations are able to attract talent and score big profits year after year. If an organization, despite having toxic culture, can run smoothly year after year, showing great profit and attracting a great pool of talent every year, does culture even matter or it is just one of those topic good to talk upon but doesn’t matter much for practical reasons.

Few months back a video became very popular when an employee was leaving on time and a co-worker takes a jibe that he is taking a half day. It is followed by a big monologue from the employee who justifies and puts a strong case that everyone must leave on time. There was also a message who used to be very viral few years back by Narayan Murthy in which he says that people staying late for work are harmful for the organization. Staying late for work becoming a common practice is just a very small symptom of a bad work culture. There are many other symptoms. Some organizations have a culture of insult and ridicule to make people work. Not only it is acceptable, it is also celebrated with those managers awarded as assertive, strong and reliable. Some organizations have favoritism, some comprises on ethical parameters, some comprises on safety parameters, some are pure torture on emotional wellbeing of employees.

I was just arguing with my friends on a whatsapp group that employees, who either start a bad trend for some brownie points or those who are just silent sufferers are equally responsible for formation of bad culture. Some of my friends were of the opinion that a culture is strictly top driven, and even if the employees are starting a trend of bad culture, the onus is on the top management to rectify the bad culture. I, however feel that the majority of bad trends that exist in Indian work culture are something employees have imposed on themselves and they have become unwritten rules now and rather than a written mandate from the top management, they will get rectify only when employees will speak up for themselves.

I remember back when I was working as a software engineer, there was a team where a person used to be very proactive. He used to work really late till 9 PM daily, he used to connect from home during weekends. He used to do his work much before deadlines and then he used to do work assigned to his teammates also. Of course, he received great brownie points for all that on the cost of his work life balance. But at the same time, his team also suffered who were looked down upon as less efficient and productive. There was a huge rift in the team. So the ambition of one person made the whole team suffer.

At the same time, I used to have meetings with our on site manager who was an Israeli. Our team comprised of some people from Mexico and some from America. So the cultural norm back then was, US and Mexican counterparts used to work 9 hours a day, the remaining time was covered by the Indian team. As soon as it was 6 PM, they will draft a mail that the ongoing issue is this and they have solved this much and remaining is supposed to be done by the Indian team. However, such flexibility was not for Indian team. Even if an issue came at 5:58 PM, we have to stay in the office till it is resolved.

Once our on-site manager proposed that there should be a meeting at 8:45 am US timing for a catchup. He said he is flexible on the place and people can attend from anywhere via telephone, no need to come in office for this. A female employee resisted strongly and said she won’t attend it as at this time she drives her kids to school. I was positively surprised, that you can directly refuse to attend a meeting, a mandate from the manager casually. We can never imagine it here because we have never done it, we never tried it, because we fear repercussions. What are the repercussions, we don’t know, no one knows as no one has refused before. But we are afraid of them, something very very bad will happen to us if we say no to meetings, or leave office exactly at 6 PM.

Some employees partake in bad culture to earn brownie points, some employees partake because they are afraid of repercussions. I was quite irritated by this recent trend of interns and new joinees tagging their mentors, guides, CHRO, CEO, founder who is dead from last 60 years in posts of how grateful they are to be given this opportunity for working in this organization. Now, the question is, how many did that to earn some brownie point and how many did that because they were afraid if they don’t do it, they will face repercussion. I am not taking the case of whether this posts are genuine and written truly from heart, because all of us know the reality of that.

So a trend started soon propagated to people writing posts and tagging the higher ups in their first 30 days, first 100 days, first 150 days, first meeting with boss, and first meeting with manager of manager and so on. I bet, if you open Linkedin and browse for even 30 seconds, you will come across one such post. A post, which in all probability, is fake and written solely for either earning a brownie point or being afraid of left out. Now, tomorrow if the CHRO writes a mail that please don’t tag any employee on LinkedIn, will it work? Can a mandate from top down fix a bad trend forcefully or people themselves are responsible for it?

I have lived my corporate life with few times I am proud of being assertive and standing for myself but many times being a spineless person who was just afraid of repercussion. Towards the end, I did try to fix it. I tried to speak up, I tried to call what is wrong wrong, I tried to say NO to things which were not acceptable to me, I tried to correct things, I tried to stood up for my subordinates where I thought they are being exploited. Yes, that does come with repercussions, but I do feel it was worth it. At times, it’s good to take hit for something you feel is correct rather than having the regret of being spineless and silent for whole your life and let wrong things happen. Of course, that doesn’t mean being a rebel and unprofessional person, that means taking ownership of standing up for the bad culture and doing your role to rectify it.

As I write this post, the world faces one of the worst hit pandemic. The corporate world is also facing its repercussion, people are laid off, there is no new job in the market, and those who are currently employed are working for home in an uncertain environment. There are silenced cries of being exploited from all domains of workplace and then there is this unsaid pressure of being grateful for having a job when many are not having one. The visible boundaries between work and home have thinned so much that some people are terming it as ‘Home at Work’ instead of ‘Work from home’!

Obviously it will led to many problems in personal life. People will have tough time juggling between family responsibilities and office responsibilities. People will be exhausted, tired and fatigued. There will be a huge toll on mental well-being. Facebook confession pages of most major companies are already filled with it. It has turned into a productivity contest. I shared an article of how people are quitting job without having one just because they can’t take it anymore.

I think this presents the best opportunity to fix what is wrong with Indian work culture and I personally feel the onus is on both the management and employees. The management need to take a view of how things are running on ground level, whether employees are happy or not and whether the well-being policies being formulated are implemented properly on the ground level or not. Also, there needs to be proper checks in the system and also an eco-system where employees can raise their voice if they feel they are wronged. Employees at the same time need to take a holistic approach. They need to decide the boundary of how much work they can do and how much they can stretch. They need to raise their voice in a professional manner rather than being a silent sufferer. Also, they need to avoid the tempt of indulge in any practice that yield short term result for a long term cost.

All of us, are the custodian of the culture we live in, and yes, we can make a difference if we try!