A few days back when I went back home from office and opened the door, I was in for a shock! The house seemed to have been ransacked! I braced myself and held my helmet tight in my fist to counter any ruffians still lurking around the corners. But our TV was still there…and so was our DVD player. Then what the hell was missing? Clothes!!! For God sake, who on earth would take pains to break in into a house and steal some clothes? What has this world come to? Wait a moment…I can see my clothes…some of them neatly folded up and some others hanging pretty on the cloth rungs. Somewhere in my head a bell rang that it was no thief or miscreant. It was just my kaamwali bai’s handiwork. A shameless grin escaped my lips when I realized that we were so accustomed to such an unsystematic and disorderly way of living that seeing things in their rightful places seemed like a miracle.
But I was still wondering as to why our maid had undertaken this “Safai Abhiyan” in our house. I mean, nobody’s complaining and this is exactly what she was paid to do as per our initial ‘agreement’, but still, she’s never done it till today on her own unless we’ve specifically told her to do it. So why today? Anyways, my curiosity had to wait for some more time till my roomies came and I couldn’t wait to see the expressions on their faces when they saw their rooms all spic and span. And when they finally came, I had a good laugh seeing their reactions and a greater laugh at their frustration because they, just like me, couldn’t find a dozen items, which, till the same morning used to adorn a place of pride on our beds and every night when we went to sleep we resembled Egyptian mummies with all our worldly possessions placed around us so that we could rest in peace.
All the initial hula bulla over, my roomies dropped the bomb. Our maid had asked for her monthly payment that morning and was also hinting at getting a possible raise from the next month!
Welcome to reality. Its appraisal time!!!
Even though our maid doesn’t have any appraisal forms to fill up, no reporting manager to report to and definitely no reviewer to cross check any discrepancy, the fact still remained that we had to appraise her and believe me, it was going to be tough. An easy way out would be to act as if we didn’t even get the hint and hope that she doesn’t ask for a raise again. But then, in today’s world where getting a good maid is tougher than getting an engineer or an M.B.A, how long can we manage to hold her back. Not that she is an exceptional maid to let go off and neither has she often gone out of her way to conduct ‘Safai Abhiyans’ on her own, but still, she was good enough for us. And more often than not, being good enough is much better than being exceptional. After all, how often do you get maids with whom you felt comfortable enough to leave your house keys with and that too, right in the first month of employment?
I am pretty sure that any sane person in the corporate world would shudder even at the thought of having ‘good enough’ employees and not exceptional employees. I agree that exceptional employees perform exceptionally well, produce exceptional results and become hot property among any top management exceptionally fast. But corporate history has enough instances to show that exceptional employees have exceptional expectations, are exceptionally difficult to satisfy and more often than not, grow much bigger than the organization they work for and ultimately become the proverbial shark in the fish tank. But does that mean that exceptional employees should be discouraged. No! Never! An organization needs all kinds of employees for a healthy working environment. As much as they need a hen that lays golden eggs for a month, they need normal hens that lay normal eggs all their life. So, what am I trying to arrive at? What has it got to do with appraisals? Very rightly asked…
Dear everybody. Deny as much as you want, but appraisal time is comparison time. Employees compare their bosses, bosses compare their employees, bosses compare themselves and employees compare themselves. And as if that all this ‘Intra-Company’ comparison was not enough, there are ‘Inter company’ comparisons galore. I’ve got nothing against comparisons. In fact, I am all for it because that is one of the most important ways of assessing performance, but, comparison can be a double edged sword if done illogically and without proper understanding. Simply put, you can’t compare a donkey with a horse and vice-versa and I beg to differ with anybody who says that a Horse is a much superior animal to a Donkey, because, what each of them do best, can be done only by them. Welcome to that time of the year when most companies do the mistake of under-feeding their normal egg laying hens while over-feeding the golden egg laying ones and ‘good enough’ employees expect to get the same treatment as ‘exceptional’ ones.
Whenever the festival of Holi or Diwali is around the corner, various ‘concerned’ government departments and other organizations come out with the slogan – “Lets celebrate a happy, colorful and safe Holi/Diwali”. Extending that tone of anticipation and apprehension, let me take this opportunity to wish every body a fair and happy appraisal.
*All characters in this article are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to anybody living or dead is purely coincidental ;-)
But I was still wondering as to why our maid had undertaken this “Safai Abhiyan” in our house. I mean, nobody’s complaining and this is exactly what she was paid to do as per our initial ‘agreement’, but still, she’s never done it till today on her own unless we’ve specifically told her to do it. So why today? Anyways, my curiosity had to wait for some more time till my roomies came and I couldn’t wait to see the expressions on their faces when they saw their rooms all spic and span. And when they finally came, I had a good laugh seeing their reactions and a greater laugh at their frustration because they, just like me, couldn’t find a dozen items, which, till the same morning used to adorn a place of pride on our beds and every night when we went to sleep we resembled Egyptian mummies with all our worldly possessions placed around us so that we could rest in peace.
All the initial hula bulla over, my roomies dropped the bomb. Our maid had asked for her monthly payment that morning and was also hinting at getting a possible raise from the next month!
Welcome to reality. Its appraisal time!!!
Even though our maid doesn’t have any appraisal forms to fill up, no reporting manager to report to and definitely no reviewer to cross check any discrepancy, the fact still remained that we had to appraise her and believe me, it was going to be tough. An easy way out would be to act as if we didn’t even get the hint and hope that she doesn’t ask for a raise again. But then, in today’s world where getting a good maid is tougher than getting an engineer or an M.B.A, how long can we manage to hold her back. Not that she is an exceptional maid to let go off and neither has she often gone out of her way to conduct ‘Safai Abhiyans’ on her own, but still, she was good enough for us. And more often than not, being good enough is much better than being exceptional. After all, how often do you get maids with whom you felt comfortable enough to leave your house keys with and that too, right in the first month of employment?
I am pretty sure that any sane person in the corporate world would shudder even at the thought of having ‘good enough’ employees and not exceptional employees. I agree that exceptional employees perform exceptionally well, produce exceptional results and become hot property among any top management exceptionally fast. But corporate history has enough instances to show that exceptional employees have exceptional expectations, are exceptionally difficult to satisfy and more often than not, grow much bigger than the organization they work for and ultimately become the proverbial shark in the fish tank. But does that mean that exceptional employees should be discouraged. No! Never! An organization needs all kinds of employees for a healthy working environment. As much as they need a hen that lays golden eggs for a month, they need normal hens that lay normal eggs all their life. So, what am I trying to arrive at? What has it got to do with appraisals? Very rightly asked…
Dear everybody. Deny as much as you want, but appraisal time is comparison time. Employees compare their bosses, bosses compare their employees, bosses compare themselves and employees compare themselves. And as if that all this ‘Intra-Company’ comparison was not enough, there are ‘Inter company’ comparisons galore. I’ve got nothing against comparisons. In fact, I am all for it because that is one of the most important ways of assessing performance, but, comparison can be a double edged sword if done illogically and without proper understanding. Simply put, you can’t compare a donkey with a horse and vice-versa and I beg to differ with anybody who says that a Horse is a much superior animal to a Donkey, because, what each of them do best, can be done only by them. Welcome to that time of the year when most companies do the mistake of under-feeding their normal egg laying hens while over-feeding the golden egg laying ones and ‘good enough’ employees expect to get the same treatment as ‘exceptional’ ones.
Whenever the festival of Holi or Diwali is around the corner, various ‘concerned’ government departments and other organizations come out with the slogan – “Lets celebrate a happy, colorful and safe Holi/Diwali”. Extending that tone of anticipation and apprehension, let me take this opportunity to wish every body a fair and happy appraisal.
*All characters in this article are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to anybody living or dead is purely coincidental ;-)
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