Peter Drucker observed in one of his books: "The two generally accepted concepts of managing the workerPersonnel Administration and Human Relationssee the task to be done as something one tacks on to a business. Personnel Administration concerns itself with activities and procedures such as hiring people, paying them and training them. Human Relations, as the term is commonly used, concerns itself with employee satisfaction, communication and attitudes. Yet both approaches seem to agree that managing workers and work does not require any change in the way the business is being conducted. The tools and concepts needed seem to apply equally to any business." As against this HRM scenario, the approach to life has drastically changed in the recent past: People are no longer working for money alone. The result is: Employees moving out in search of newer pastures.
In the industrialized countries, it is being noticed that people are no longer working for the basic needs of living alone. Money is no more considered as the lone driving force behind peoples' work. Yet, people continue to work hard. A question thus arises is: What drives them to work that hard? Is it their love for work? Or is it their passion for the job? This takes us to a story of the Old Testamentthe story of Nehemiah, a Jewish captive who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem that were destroyed by fire. The story goes on to say that when Nehemiah set out to reconstruct Jerusalem, the crowds mocked him and his work force and even threw rocks at them. To protect his workers Nehemiah is said to have divided his work force into two groups: One to work on the reconstruction and the other to guard them from the mocking public. Thus he re-erected the walls in straight 52 days and nights. All this, he says, he could achieve because "the people had a mind to work"they were intensely passionate to accomplish an ostensibly impossible task. Does the story offer any clue to our current problem of employee-retention? "Yes", in unequivocal terms. It says that organizations have to create an atmosphere which simply engender "a mind to work" among the employees. |
