Rohit Hasteer, the newly appointed HR-Head at UTi Worldwide, India, entered his new office, with mixed feelings and was proud to be a part of one of the leading names in the supply chain management and logistics domain. Rohit’s greatest asset was his ability to connect with people and build organisational culture from the scratch. As he walked through the corridors of UTi, he was greeted with warm smiles, expectant stares and murmurs – “Who is he?”; “Why would they hire a new person for the role? Why not promote from within?”; “He seems friendly!”; “I have heard that he is strict.” Rohit smiled and walked confidently towards his cabin.
After a month, R. K. Kapoor, one of the oldest employees of the company suddenly stormed into his cabin and said in a daunting manner, “What do you think? You think you can change the organisation in a day! You are highly mistaken Rohit, and it is best if you adapt to the ways of the company instead of trying to change the status quo!” Rohit was shocked, however, he maintained his cool and asked Mr. Kapoor to calm down. He let Mr. Kapoor speak his mind and consciously heard every word he said. That night, Rohit kept wondering about the troubled Mr. Kapoor. What was the reason of his outburst? He recalled the few changes that had happened last months. Introduction of Sodexo vouchers for tax saving, withdrawal of overtime allowance for deputy manager level and above, were the only initiatives taken. Then how can such small changes become a big deal for him? Was there something else that he was missing? Rohit decided to investigate this matter. The next day, he asked one of his team members to share the list of changes that took place in the past three years. He also had a detailed conversation with the Regional-HR SPOC to understand the background of Mr. Kapoor.
Then Rohit found something quite surprising. Over the past three years, employee engagement and people centricity had taken a back seat in the organisation. There were initiatives that did take place, but were often taken without the consent of employees and more often favoured a small section of the employee base. Moreover, initiatives were regionally driven instead of being conceptualised and centrally driven. Due to the same, people management was more a function of the leadership style of the regional business head/branch managers and differed from location to location. There was a divide that existed amongst management and the employee. It was this divide and the pent-up feelings of being discriminated that came out when Mr. Kapoor spoke to Rohit the other day. The coming of a new HR-Head seemed to worry Mr. Kapoor, as he was threatened by the pace of change that was about to come. His resistance to change came out through the conversation he had with Rohit.
Rohit began to gather more facts and decided to spend the next month travelling across branches and meeting employees to hear their voices. So, Rohit started meeting employees of different grades, levels and backgrounds. He ate with them, met them and spoke to them as a friend. For the first time, employees opened up to a person from the senior management. Here is a snapshot of what surfaced through his conversations:
1 Lack of people engagement 2 Lack of transparency and communication 3 Doubts and skepticism in the minds of people when it came to change 4 Distrust in leadership and absence of connect 5 Archaic mindset and existence of yes man culture 6 Absence of fun at work 7 Lack of participative decision making process 8 Lack of standardisation and clarity of policies and processes 9 Absence of investment in L&D 10 No structured approach towards managing performance. 11 Lack of clarity of objectives 12 Lack of a structured hiring approach leading to mis-matched hires
Rohit was worried, and he kept thinking about the ways of changing it and breaking the status quo. He knew that biggest challenge was to challenge people to think new. Being an old organisation with its traditional culture and style of working, there was doubt and skepticism in the minds of people about any steps that the company may take towards change.
Converging different people with different mindsets into a common objective, getting acceptance and participation of people were some of the major challenges. This was something that he possibly could not do alone. Hence, the questions that concerned him most were, “who should he partner with to bring the change?” and “How should he approach this challenge?”
