‘Corporate Work Culture Dehumanizes You Into A Serving Robot’
Ankit Chakroborty, who left an MNC to start his own venture, says it is better to earn less than to sacrifice your wellbeing at a high pressure job. His views:
I used to work for an MNC where, according to my profile, my primary target was supply chain management. Despite the fact that the primary motto of the company was client satisfaction, there was no time or requirement for any direct emphasis on it. Despite tall claims of promoting the interest of the client, it always remained in the red on target achievements. Over 60 to 70 percent of the productive hours were wasted in meetings and useless paper works and making compliance reports.
Targets, projections and other business buzzwords kept swimming over your head every time you closed your eyes. Even your dreams consisted of your office work and every ping on your phone woke you up with a shock from deep sleep. Personal space and wellbeing were the first casualty.
At the time of entering this dark tunnel, the employees are often shown and promised a glittering heaven but soon you realize that you are on a different bandwidth. A choking feeling starts to develop with the burden of unnecessary things that were not a part of what you were expected to do. Another hard and bitter fact I would like to share is that most of the seniors tend to make your life hell; juniors are treated not as humans but machines. You are only expected to be bang on target and over-perform; in corporate yardsticks of Bell Curve, they called it ‘Exceeds Expectation’ or ‘Excellence’.
This often results in conflict of interest with seniors and if at all you dare to get yourself heard and try reaching out to get your issues settled, you are again faced with the same set of seniors and their dehumanizing mindset. The worst department, as far as Indian MNCs are concerned, is the HR department which does everything but managing human resources of their company. I am sorry to say but this department even tends to interfere with your personal life, keep track of the gossip in the office, or encourage spying or ratting on your colleagues.
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It should be none of the company’s business what an employee is doing after office hours. But your seniors want you to be just a phone call away even on weekly offs and after work hours. This has a number of times resulted in fights with the family but you have no choice but to carry on like a machine or give up on your career growth.
I am happy that I abandoned such a workplace and started my own small business. It just didn’t make sense to sacrifice your family and personal wellbeing for a few silver coins.
My suggestion is that the government should look into the white collar employees working condition too and implement work culture of employee-friendly MNCs. Take for example the notice period in the companies of our country – if you go with the fine lines in the contract, there is no notice period as such and you can be kicked out any time!
The severance package that is followed by big international companies provide a financial compensation to the employee at the time of termination or completion of employment. It is a goodwill gesture that can help employees transition from work to unemployment. There are many such things that our MNCs need to learn or the government should take stringent steps to get these practices of the west to inculcate in the employers’ of India.
As told to Rajat Rai
