The Hindu Business Line : Don’t quit, just stay put!

While it looks good to have a variety of experiences in different jobs, the reality is vastly different. Those who quit often realise that they get to do more of the same job, and their profile has not changed. This is more so, as the job-hopping happ ens mostly at the junior and middle management levels.

Another myth

The most important reason why people quit jobs is said to be money. This is once again a myth. The additional money that one gets to earn in a different location is often offset by the high cost of living and the hefty income-tax that is applicable to the extra pay.

This is all the more so in the metros where the cost of housing, education and other basic amenities has gone through the roof in the past five years. So, the zero sum game becomes a reality, and the last factor, which often gets quoted for job-hopping — “job satisfaction” is also singularly absent in most cases.

Instances of employees wanting to go back to the organisations they quit are so common. And this happens when the pressure cooker work environment in the new organisation makes them regret their wrong decision. They start sending feelers, and mostly succeed in going back to their old organisations, where they had built a reputation for functional excellence over years of hard work.

The rules of the game are clear. Since the organisation’s priorities are urgent and strategic in nature, it is always better to work hard to achieve the “cultural fit”. The moment this becomes possible, the individual should start doing a lot of homework to find out where exactly his/her skills will add value to the organisation, within the framework.

Learn new skills

Once this is done, the individual would have to voluntarily take up a number of jobs that are quite apart from his/her regular duties. This serves two purposes for the individual. For one, the individual gets to learn new skills or techniques, which he/she would have not have acquired in the normal course. Second, the management starts recognising that the individual has the “fire-in-the-belly” that is so vital for organisational excellence in today’s context.

Another skill that today’s youngsters need to develop relates to managerial skills. It is so easy to fall into a technical trap, if one can call it that. Since the majority of jobs are highly technical in nature, most engineers and even those who have technical qualifications in fields such as information technology, develop a quick distaste for anything that has to do with acquiring managerial skills.

They often give the excuse that they do not have time. This is just escapism, since the organisational work will always demand that the individual spends several hours mastering the techniques that add to functional excellence.

Whatever spare time is available can be optimally used to at least read a couple of business magazines. If this is not done, the employee becomes a frog in the well; blissfully unaware of what is going on, in the wider global organisational context.

Professionals needed

One could acquire the domain knowledge pertaining to competitors, their strategies, and so on. In short, what every young man/woman needs to do is homework.

This is hugely individual-specific, though it is organisation-specific in the wider sense. Some organisations have appointed professionals with a medical and psychiatric social work background to counsel the employees on achieving the vital “cultural fit”.

Indian organisations will do well to appoint such professionals. The individual has to work out a strategy that fits well with the changed times, and in doing so, has to necessarily acquire the additional skills. There is no alternative here. The crux of the whole thing is — don’t quit, stay put!

(The author is a Chennai-based freelance writer.)

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