There is a misconception that the public sector staff has to be treated differently from its counterpart in the private sector, and this has to be corrected if there is to be a proper strategy for human resource management in public sector undertakings. It is a fact that PSUs do not enjoy the kind of autonomy that is widely perceived to exist in private sector companies and there is a lot of back-seat driving by the administrative ministries, but this does not mean that motivation has to be different.If the approach has to vary, this has to because of varying demands of enterprises whether these be in the private or public sector. Indeed, one can say that after allowing for the influence of the bureaucracy element in the running of public sector enterprises the same rules of the game have to apply to private and public sector players in a comparable activity. For instance, in a knowledge-intensive sector, the same or similar incentives would be called for irrespective of whether a company isbureaucratically run or not.
The ONGC is not comparable to several other PSUs in this respect but a comparison can easily be drawn between the oil sector giant and a private sector company engaged in the same activity. Yet, there will be a difference between the two in respect of the options open to the management to get the most out of the manpower. Even though both the private and public sector managements have to be very sensitive to trade union pressure, the latter have greater problems regarding the better performing staff than those of the rival private sector units. Apart from the constraints arising from article 12 of the constitution, which the public sector management can do nothing about, there is limited scope for giving the dead wood the summary treatment that it deserves and simultaneously giving the diligent and result-oriented supervisory officials and work force the encouragement needed.
Any strategy for making human resource management totally result-oriented in a knowledge-intensivePSUs cannot, obviously, give a short shrift to article 12 of the constitution but accept both the article and the related reality of parity between good performers and confirmed laggards in spirit and action. This, on the face of it, is a serious limitation to any meaningful exercise at motivation in a knowledge-intensive undertaking like the ONGC.
But, ways have to be found to ensure that the best men and women are happy to continue to serve the enterprise, even while non-performers either feel like doing better and justifying the parity on incomes and perquisites or, alternatively, feel so disgusted as to want to take the VRS route and quit.
The employee stock option scheme recommends itself as a measure of discriminatory treatment between the best performers and those who simply have no right to be around, since on this the management can exercise its own prerogative. But then, there has to be another mechanism whose impact can be felt immediately. The incentive bonus can be used to reward the morecommitted worker, but this will still have only a limited impact and this sort of measure rules itself out for managerial personnel.
Ideally, it makes sense to convert dead wood into average performers and later on into good workers. The old Japanese style management relied on taking the workers and supervisors along and the strategy of employee involvement (EI) pursued by the automobile giant, Ford of the United States, was similarly focussed. For a knowledge-intensive PSU, a programme of employee involvement can succeed. Now, what is EI? When Ford embarked on EI, no one could freely use the word productivity. To many, the term meant line speed-up' `conning the worker,' and so on. So, every effort was made to avoid that word. But, quality was the goal everyone could agree on.
In a knowledge-intensive public sector company, the dead wood may have the same difficulty about accepting the stress on productivity but may opt for quality. Although academics were cynical about Ford's EI programme, the fact isthat it worked. The American giant used formal EI sessions, and surveys showed a remarkable jump in the number of workers dedicated to quality and, as a result, the auto major was able to improve quality by an impressive 59 per cent over three years, based on external audits, as against a mere 2-3 per cent annually prior to the introduction of EI.
The programme involved, first and foremost, educating the workers and supervisors and the cost being borne by the management. The cost was mainly in terms of overtime being paid to workers for participation in educational and other related efforts. In the Indian context, specifically for a knowledge demanding company like ONGC, it would be appropriate to have regular training sessions for workers and supervisors and also constitute employee groups for resolving local problems. Persuading workers to accept quality as the main goal would be the task of committees comprising representatives from different departments.
Instead of openly rejecting dead wood, theproductive policy in the long run would be to inculcate a sense of involvement among those workers and supervisors who willingly or otherwise don't perform. When they are put on committees entrusted with the task of promoting quality awareness, they will involuntarily accept their own deficiency and begin to perform better. Ultimately, motivation relies on persuasion of those who refuse to be persuaded. It is interesting to note that Ford used as change agents precisely those who were not performing well.
In a situation where managements cannot either offer rewards to the better performers or weed out the laggards, a modified EI for the Indian context is easily recommended. This has to be seriously considered as a strategy for sound human resource management, particularly in units where knowledge is constantly tested and ignorance or a lack of expertise can have disastrous consequences. Knowledge has to be spread and shared for improved quality awareness and achievement in due course.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
