"Take a close look at who stands by you when the chips are down, and remember that when eventually things get better"
Why shouldn't we hold organisations accountable for the way they treat employees? PIC/Getty Images
Loyalty is an overused term in corporate India. It is bandied about by HR executives who insist that our companies are on our side. We are asked to be team players, think about the bigger picture, work as one towards profits for the whole, and promptly tossed aside minutes after a crisis appears.
I watched this scenario play out repeatedly over the past months, as friends and colleagues were summarily let go by organisations they had devoted years of their lives to. Some were given a month's notice, others sacked with no salary, still others denied what was rightfully theirs via insidious tools like 'variable pay' thought up by immoral managers for precisely these conditions.
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It is impossible to deny that COVID-19 has damaged the global economy in ways that few of us are qualified to understand. Economists the world over are struggling to find answers in the dark, so dismissing the real loss of income that companies are facing would be a facile argument to make.
I still can't fathom why it took a pandemic to reveal how hollow so many of our much-celebrated firms were though. How did a month's loss devastate them to such an extent that they had to let go of one employee, let alone thousands? How did the managers paid to run them not foresee the possibility of a rainy day, given that children grasp the concept so easily?
We are taught, at an early age, that people who stand by us through thick or thin are the only ones that matter. That friends who don't kick us when we are down are the only ones worth having. It's strange that we don't apply these rules to the places we work.
Why shouldn't we hold organisations accountable for the way they treat employees? Why shouldn't we ask why they put out public statements in support of the very things they fail to uphold in private? Why shouldn't we question business houses that donate crores to the government but claim to have no funds for employees? And why shouldn't we take a closer look at what our CEOs get paid when companies say they can't pay office drivers?
I have spent decades in corporate India, engaging with it in all kinds of ways, from different points of view. I have been a cog as well as a slightly big wheel and watched the double standards that are entrenched in every one of these organisations, from global names to start-ups.
I recognise how impossible it is for anyone to speak up and ask questions from an employer given how dependent the majority of us are on the salaries they give us. And yet, every once in a while, I believe it makes sense for us to step back and take a close look at who we work for.
There are undoubtedly a few companies that will do the right thing and support their employees when things get rough. These are the companies that recognise what their people are worth and realise that their products or services mean nothing without those who help build them.
For every firm that gets the message, unfortunately, we have a hundred others who miss the wood for the trees. We should ask ourselves where the people we individually work for stand on this spectrum. Do they care about us in ways that lead to genuine support, or is it tokenism of the kind trotted out by overpaid spokespersons when a journalist with a camera comes into focus?
A shockingly large number of my former colleagues have been left unemployed by this pandemic. Most of them have spoken in private, afraid of repercussions in the event of sharing any public anguish. This is because the law is routinely misused by HR executives to force employees into silence and threaten to withhold pay in the face of any non-compliance. My colleagues speak of how they have been given no choice but to resign of their own accord because companies refuse to be honest about why they are firing employees. Some of these people have been working for these companies for decades, and have been shocked by how little their loyalty has meant.
I intend to go through the rest of my life by constantly questioning my loyalty for those who hire me. Loyalty towards anyone, be it a person or an organisation, has to be a two-way street. To expect just one party to stick to that part of the bargain is hypocrisy.
When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper
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