Great Places to Work: Perceptions, Trade-offs and Happiness

 

Agonda Beach, Goa. Imagine this is your workplace. 

Nestled in the lap of nature. 

Where the dominant workplace sounds are not ringing phones but the constant crashing of waves. 

Where meeting rooms are open-air with the sand kissing your feet and the constant breeze - even if a little warm - constantly billowing against you. And most meetings are a quick huddle for status updates, a little gossip and exchanging notes. All verbal. No emails, no daily reports.

Where the constant aroma you get is not of air-fresheners or colognes, but of the saline sea and grilled food wafting through the shacks.

This may sound too good to be true, but it is true.

Here are the folks who actually "enjoy" this work environment.

This is not a sarcastic post - I salute these women (there were 3 of them) who clean up the beach every single morning. The "unskilled" ones with "limited education" who clean up the mess made by the "educated" and "skilled" folks. Nor is this a parody on "Great Place to Work" recognitions that many organisations pride themselves with, and deservedly so.

My point is that much too often we get swayed by what we see and read (more so with social media) and allow our definitions of "happiness", "success" etc., to be defined by this. In doing so, we often lose context, perspective and the larger picture.

I was enjoying the view this morning and was soaking in the ambience when suddenly these 3 women came up and started cleaning up the beach - everything from litter to animal poop. 

As I watched them, I couldn't help be struck by the irony of their occupation - "Great Place to Work" but not the work anyone would want to do.

Everyone has their own shares of joys and sadness, ups and downs. 

Every industry, profession and workplace has its trade-offs. 

The key to happiness is to have our own definition of "happiness".

The sky is the limit with customer experience

Image from https://careers.goindigo.in/ifs.html

I recently made the acquaintance of a professional specialising in customer EXPERIENCE and have been quite intrigued by it ever since. It is more than just jargon and it is definitely more than customer SERVICE. 

While customer service essentially relates to addressing WHAT a customer wants (and maybe even going out of the way to address it), customer experience delves into WHY the customer wants what s/he wants. Understanding the WHY usually helps address the requirement better because it provides a context and often even involves understanding the emotional/unstated aspects of what the customer wants.  

In a world which is increasingly process-driven, this human touch of understanding the 'WHY' often goes backstage and we have many a case of "operation successful, but patient dead". 

It was a refreshing experience therefore, that I had on-board a recent flight with Indigo.

I had opted not to pre-purchase an in-flight meal and had purchased a sandwich at the airport food counter to eat on-board. I was mid-way through it in-flight, when the meal service commenced. I asked for a beverage. The airhostess asked what meal I'd like to purchase, to which I responded that I wanted only the beverage. Apparently the airline only sells beverages with a meal purchase. So I declined and settled for just water instead.

To my surprise, she placed a cup of chilled Coke along with the water. I looked up and thanked her and asked her how much I owed for the Coke. She waved me off and said since I was "already in the middle of a meal and obviously wanted a beverage to go with the meal" she didn't want to decline my request for  a beverage and didn't want to charge me for a full meal+beverage when I was only taking the beverage. 

It was her observation and comment about my being mid-way through my meal that came as a pleasant surprise to me.

Had she only served only water, I'd not have minded and not given it another thought. She was following airline policy (and even though it seems lopsided, I think I understand that they want to have enough beverages to cover passengers buying a meal). 

Had she only served a complimentary Coke and left it at that, it might not have triggered this post - it would have just been a case of good customer service.

But when she said I was obviously asking for a beverage to go with the meal which I was already eating, I was impressed. It reflected a quick and subconscious thinking about WHY I asked for a beverage and not merely WHAT I had asked for.

It might come across as a trivial case of a complimentary beverage, but somehow to me, it was more than that. I think she was instinctively wired to handle the request the way she did. Her name was Sadguni and we need more such customer experience professionals.

May her ilk fly high.

Nothing "unorganized" about the unorganized sector

Just like we now use "differently-abled", I think it's time we switch to "non-formal" instead of "unorganized". Hence, we would have "formal" and "non-formal" sectors of the economy. Not "organized" and "unorganized".

Of late, in Goa, a ton of roadside tender-coconut vendors have sprung up. It is interesting and ironic - but not surprising - that the vast majority of them are non-Goans ("outsiders" as many would like to call them). Earlier this month, the irony got really "nutty" (pun intended): the local Municipality wanted to put an end to sale of tender coconuts because disposal of the empty tender coconuts was becoming a problem. 

I say "irony" simply because we seem to be doing okay with collecting a ton of junk (literally) and the system of door-to-door collection of segregated garbage has stabilised fairly well and yet, here we are, suddenly unable to deal with refuse that is 100% bio-degradable and has been an integral part of the local ecosystem for generations. Not to mention that it's decomposition does not generate wet discharge or stench like other wet waste. Certainly, it is bulky and adds weight, but so does all the other garbage we are disposing off.

In response, a meeting with held between the vendors and the Municipality. It doesn't matter who convened the meeting. The point is, in a matter of days, a mutually acceptable solution was found and the vendors were back in business. No riots, no demonstrations, no political slugfests. At least nothing in public view.

I noticed that they all now displayed a board that requested customers who take "parcels" not to dispose off the waste in the municipal collection but to bring it back to them. Moreover, they were all having boards that had the exact same size, style and matter.

My curiosity got the better of me, so this evening when I went to purchase tender coconuts, I had a little chat with the guy I usually buy it from. 

What I learnt, astounded me:

1. The tender coconuts are supplied by people coming from Karwar, Sirsi and Mysore. This raised several questions for me: (a) where are all the Goan bhatkars? (b) what economics are in play here that someone is able to supply tender coconuts from these places and still sell them @ Rs. 40/- each? Sure, there's no municipal tax, no FSSAI license, no GST, no income tax, no KYC, no nothing, but even so, the economics of this confounds me (c) How does a place like Sirsi and Mysore which are not even coastal, generate enough surplus tender coconuts to come supply them in Goa? What is their supply-chain like? What market research did they do? What inventory management do they do?
2. The vendors got the board made at a centralized location - hence the standardisation of size, matter, font, format
3. The board they display requests customers to bring the empty tender coconuts back to them instead of disposing them off with the waste collected by the Municipality. So I asked him what they do with the waste given that the Municipality is unable to deal with it - he said they have tied up with someone who stacks it up in a nearby field and then uses it for composting, selling to people who use as fuel for fire, etc. So much for the "organized" Municipality!
4. Most of them are on carts that are sort of anchored to the ground. I asked him what they do at night. He said they just cover it up with tarp and tie it up with ropes. I asked him whether it is safe. He pointed to two places in the vicinity - one, a tea cart (not a stall or a shop - a tea cart) and two, an eatery. The tea cart is open till midnight and the eatery till around 1:30AM. He says they keep a watch for him and the rest is Ram bharose (or Jesus or Allah, as the case may be)

I walked away feeling incompetent. 

This isn't restricted to the tender-coconut vendors alone - these basic tenets of courage, perseverance, risk-taking and jumping-in against all odds extends to many of the roadside vendors and other players in the non-formal ecosystem that we see.

Woe betide the next person who says they belong to the "unorganized" sector.

The spirit of these folks astounds me. This isn't jugaad - this is just dogged perseverance. This is the spirit of Indian entrepreneurship.

Jai Hind!