Jan 5

One of the things that caught my attention during the HR lecture was the change that Indian companies are facing in this “flatter” world. One of the changes involved changing personnel retention to employee engagement.

This summer when I interned with Cargill Business Unit, I had the opportunity to work on a balanced scorecard. One key statistic they tracked was employee engagement (through a survey with they sent quarterly to about 300 employees). It is interesting to see that Indian companies are worried about the same HR factors as US companies. Would this have been the case ten years ago (Indian and American companies having the same HR issues)? Has this paradigm shift resulted from an uncovering of innate human nature, or is it a result of the flattening forces which the world is interacting with?

Some would argue that this shift is a result of human nature (for arguments sake, ignore the straw man here). It is human nature to enjoy doing something (whether it is a necessary activity or an extracurricular entertainment activity). Therefore if companies want to attract and keep the best employees, they need to keep them happy. Otherwise, they will just leave and find another job that they enjoy. A key way to keep employees happy is keeping them engaged in what they do. Therefore, logically, employee engagement is good for the company - wherever it may operate.

However, I will argue that this paradigm shift in India is mainly derived from the new globalized world that we live in. Before India opened up its borders to global companies, there was less of a demand for knowledge workers. There would have been plenty of labor everywhere. If someone left, they could be easily replaced because their knowledge didn’t have to be replaced. However, in this flatter world, where knowledge workers are an extreme asset, replacing employees isn’t easy. If someone leaves, their knowledge has to be replaced, or there could be serious issues in the company’s daily operating routine. This gives employees an immense amount of power – power which they didn’t have before the spread of globalization. As a result of this power, employees have asked that they be engaged in their work. Companies, not wanting to alienate and lose their talented workforce, have no choice but to comply. Therefore, this focus on knowledge workers, in both the US and India, is rooted deeply in globalization.

However, it possible that the value of the knowledge worker is grounded in the shift to more service oriented tasks.