Ethical recruitment eh!!

Ethical Recruitment eh!!

By Sanjay Patro.

Last week I had a virtual run in with some virtual colleagues over the issue of having an ethical stand in recruitment.

The discussion was amongst four individuals - virtual HR GOD, virtual DEVILS ADVOCATE, virtual DAMSEL IN DISTRESS and finally a group of virtual standby spectators (taken together as the final individual) who partly cheered the GOD and others who applauded the advocate’s bitchy stand!! The story unfolded as below...

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS from INDIA (DIDI) starts the ball rolling - "Hey guys - is there any place for ethics in recruitment?" she asked swinging from side to side - hoping to catch the attention of the World Wide Web (www).

High on speed and extremely volatile on issues pertaining to ethics, GOD changes gear and moves fast to DIDI's rescue - "Sure. Why not my child?" he questions knowingly, and proceeds to deliver his sermon on ethics, its virtues and the punishment for not following his ten commandments. By the end of it GOD is happy to have released his sermon and a motley group of the spectators applaud. Some of them start the ritual dissection of the GODS sermon analysing the articles, prepositions and tenses to examine the philosophical, evangelical and moral meanings of each word, phrase and prose that GOD just delivered.

The DEVILS ADVOCATE (DA) who is cringing in his black robe all this while can contain it no longer and releases his imp in the guise of a case study. Humans give in to the excitement of a revolution in making almost instantaneously and swear by the imps case study observations. God promises a duel to the end and the virtual Mahabharat of HR starts. Conch shells are blown, swords drawn and arrows fly - all at virtual targets.

The DA uses his armour of wit against GOD’s arsenal of morality till finally DIDI can take it no more. STOP IT she yelps in distress. The pair of you can have your closing statements now and the final decision shall be mine, she says swaying her hips valiantly at silencing the forces that run the HR in the universe.

GOD blinks first and commences on another long diatribe. He partially gives in to the DA but closes his monologue swearing by the victory of good over evil and that finally let the childhood values of high morality prevail.

The DA swishes his black robe in the air and makes his closing remarks – DIDI, your honour, I just wish to bring to your attention the biggest corporate on Earth and its recent recruitment standards. India – the biggest democracy on the globe after a herculean election mania churned out a majority for the congress. But look at the council of ministers and take your decision if ethics has any place in recruitment in the biggest organization of the globe.

Next, look at the mightiest democratic organization of the globe – the US of A. After a prolonged duel of the equals and the unequals, woman and man, white and black, each maligning the other to no extent and literally damning their opponents to the fires of hell …. They recruited each other and are living happily till they switch organizations yet again!! Once again, DIDI, your honour, take your decision if ethics has any place in the mightiest organization of the globe.

I rest my case your honour.

The author is the Director for Trainers 'n' Mentors - A skill based corporate training venture. Check out their activities at http://www.trainersnmentors.com

Maternity leave for adoption

This one could possibly open a new debate on adoption and maternity benefits.

I call upon the archaic law of maternity benefits dated 1961 to explain to the citizens of this country why parenthood was singled out as a status achieved through conception alone??

Thank you prime minister for breaking the shackles of ignorance that befooled law makers for so long and reinventing the law to include adoption.

Flashback 1961 - the provisions for maternity act read, and I quote;

WHO IS ENTITLED TO MATERNITY BENEFIT · Every woman employee, whether employed directly or through a contractor, who has actually worked in the establishment for a period of at least 80 days during the 12 months immediately preceding the date of her expected delivery, is entitled to receive maternity benefit. · The qualifying period of 80 days shall not apply to a woman who has immigrated into the State of Assam and was pregnant at the time of immigration. · For calculating the number of days on which a woman has actually worked during the preceding 12 months, the days on which she has been laid off or was on holidays with wages shall also be counted. · There is neither a wage ceiling for coverage under the Act nor there is any restriction as regards the type of work a woman is engaged in. The term pregnancy is central to the idea of maternity as is self revealing. I am sure even then the word mother meant the same as today in the English dictionary (I was born slightly later than 1961 !!). Mother means the same to a CHILD and maternity means the same to a mother - adopted or otherwise. I am sure that the law makers then could not conceive maternity sans conception. Choosing not to wail over spilt milk I would like to move on from here. These are good times. These are changing times. This is the new century where no longer will corporate India show governance the path ahead. The polity has chosen to speak and rebuild its laws dusting off the archaic jurisprudence of the bygone era. This is also the time when corporate India chooses to do its bit in governance (Thank you Nadan Nilenkani). This is the moment where I call upon all active HR professionals worth their salt to rise to the occasion and revisit their provisions. Make a start. Implement maternity benefits for adopting couples (IT industry folks - you got employees to use laptops. Research proves laptops to be a source of impotency. You owe your employees an explanation. Start by giving an option). Moving on I also wish to call for all HR professionals engaged in archaic compliances to revisit rules book and think positively. Lets form a forum where we can support the government to make amends for lapses caused int he past. This is the time to do it. The moment of truth has truly arrived.

Communicate!!

Lessons in communication - the Indian style

I have struggled in the past making my clients understand the difference between communication skills and spoken English programs. I am sure I will not struggle any more in the future. 

Thanks be to a certain Mr. Khushwant Singh whose enlightening write up on the need to communicate well irrigated my parched need for doing this well. Well I would have loved to plagiarise the contents and put it for all to see and appreciate good communication skills. But morality forbids me from doing so!! (Someone somewhere told me - "If you want to tom-tom your integrity - make sure you make a hell of a noise about it - else be ready to get a kick and you know where!!).

Getting back to the communication story - this was about the need to communicate well sans the complexity of language or how floral it can get. Any communication skills trainer worth his salt will tell you how important it is to make the language simple so that "what you say is what is heard is what is understood". How often is that implemented is a question that is debatable. The least that can be expected is for the state run public announcements to be made as simplistic as possible.

And here is where I go a full circle - back to Mr. Khushwant Singh's article. He describes vividly the story of wording the governments success in establishing public toilets in Palampur in Himachal Pradesh (India).

The agencies displayed a loud notice claiming the newly built structure as a 'shauchalya' (a sanskritised version of the humble loo) and the poor hill folks went around liberating their natural juices around the hills of Himachal. (I wonder if they thought it was a natural extension of the sachivalay - the secretariat). Realising their folly the agencies quickly replaced the board with a lesser complicated and more cultured version featuring 'sandaas'.  However correct the intention, the message failed to hit home. Actually, as I see, the poor folks would have been confused more.

Failing to attract the desired audience into the portals of the humble public toilet and yet realising the complexity of the language, the authorities this time rechristened it in layman terms. It was magic!! The audience came, performed and (maybe) applauded the good work of the government.

This time it was called "TATTIYAN" (slang for shit / loo / toilets !!!)