CMYK

HR IN MSME S

SUMEET VARGHESE

Pursuit of employee happiness in MSME

ith talent proving to be as important
as capital in a crunch economy,
MSMEs in the country have to engage
with several issues to ensure high
levels of employee satisfaction and
engagement. At one MSME where this
author conducted an employee satisfaction survey,
while 97% of those surveyed said they were quite
satisfied with their working environment, results on
some key satisfaction drivers indicated a mixed trend.
Specifically, employees reported mixed scores for
factors like:
Personal and professional development: Only 60%
of employees stated they had received some formal
training after joining the organization. Apparently, since
a bulk of this population served the company from
various pockets across India, the task of bringing them
all together for a program in any centralized location
was proving to be a major concern. However, when
this author spoke to 2 employees, one placed in Kolkata
and the other at HQ, both seemed satisfied with the
emphasis on employee training. Apparently the
employee in Kolkata had switched 2 jobs before joining
the present one. Since the 2 previous MSMEs that he
was with had no formal training programs for their
employees, he found it rather fortuitous to have
undergone one training program in the last 2.5 years
that he had spent in the present company. For the
second employee, being stationed at HQ afforded easy
access to many training opportunities that were
conducted throughout the year.
Opportunities to learn and grow: For 30-year old
Sumanta Mitra, presently working as a Marketing
Engineer with the firm, joining big brands like L&T,
Schneider or ABB was out of the question. As a student
in a Diploma Engineering college, he knew very early
that the big players would not consider diploma holders
like him. Naturally, the only choices available to him
were MSMEs that had a brand name in the market.
Interestingly, what drives his satisfaction quotient today
is the terrific opportunity to learn and grow on a daily
basis. The firm that he works for develops new products
every 6 months and that forces him to keep in touch
with the latest technology and the competition. Other
employees that were surveyed also voiced a similar

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sentiment. And though some of them found that

discussions over personal progress were quite limited,
each one found no dearth of opportunities to explore
and discover one's potential
Leadership capability and support: A majority of
the employees that were surveyed said they had full
faith in the leadership capabilities of the founder their present MD. According to Aarif Patel, a 29 year
old Marketing Engineer who has been working for over
6 years with the firm, the MD had a magnetic influence
over all those who interacted with him. Incidentally, in
an organization where there are more than 600
employees, the opportunities to interact with the MD
are far and few. But thanks to a recently launched
talent identification and development program, many
employees found themselves rubbing shoulders with
the MD. These initiatives helped to reinforce employee
faith in top leadership.
Interestingly, many employees found their
immediate bosses quite caring and supportive.
However, not all bosses reported similar satisfaction
scores. While some of those who were surveyed said
their bosses clarified job expectations at the outset,
some found their leader's communication to be quite
ambiguous and not at all effective, especially in
connection with clarity over day-to-day tasks. This is
so because, some employees at this firm regularly end
up multi-tasking or doing someone else's job, at times
with little or no acknowledgement for their effort. As
one employee put it, "it is absolutely essential to be
told at times that the occasional tasks we undertake is
not a regular part of the job and that we are stretching
to meet such requirements."
For Sumanta Mitra, critical leadership support
comes in the form of day-to-day boss inputs. Though
his boss sits at HQ, Sumanta and his team mates discuss
their daily plans over phone everyday in the morning
and in the evening. Any information or resource
support that is required is discussed almost daily during
these meetings. Infact, these group calls with the boss
are further augmented by the regular local team
meetings that provide a platform to discuss market
problems and developments and arrive at a common
solution.
Inter-departmental cooperation: A critical area of

October 2010

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CMYK

CMYK

HR IN MSMES
concern for most employees who were surveyed was
the level of cooperation they received from other
departments. According to some employees, a critical
factor aiding inter-departmental cooperation is boss
support. As one employee put it, "whereas it is easy to
garner support from someone in another department
who is at my level in the organizational hierarchy
because of our personal rapport, it is extremely difficult
to get the required resource or information in time
from someone senior. This can be more frustrating if
my boss is also unable to influence the same person.
Consequently, this leads to an unending blame game."
Incidentally, as most of the employees who
participated in the survey had a customer-facing role,
they strongly felt that a range of customer issues that
hinged on inter and intra departmental support were
directly responsible for both customer and employee
dissatisfaction. For instance, challenges like not being
able to give clear information to the customer due to
non-responsiveness or delayed responsiveness from
other departments, not having the authority to
negotiate terms with the customer in the absence of a
clear decision matrix, or delayed resolution of customer
issues, punctured employee confidence and morale.
On a positive note though, some employees declared
that internal cooperation and support would pick up
gradually as elaborate systems and procedures were
being developed by the company to root out many
inefficiencies.
Salar
y, pr
omotions & incr
ements: An all too critical
alary
promotions
increments:
item, not just for an SME but any large organization as
well, Compensation & Benefits oftentimes proves to be
the proverbial Achilles Heel for any professionally run
firm. While most employees surveyed found salaries
were not as competitive as they would like it to be they
were reasonably happy with the compensation and the
incentives they got. Apparently, most employees had
made the required adjustments in their expectations
given the fact that they were working for an MSME.
However, some employees did point out disparities in
the incentive structure. Quite obviously they did not
completely understand the factors directly impacting
promotions and incentives. Thus while one employee
reported receiving a 25% year-on-year raise, another
said he had received good bonuses that were directly
linked to specific sales-related performance.
Clearly, an MSME needs to work on several
employee satisfaction drivers at the same time in order
to boost overall employee engagement. While the above
analysis indicates there are 5 non-negotiable areas of
employee satisfaction that may be critical for any MSME,
there are likely to be many variances as to what really
drives employee satisfaction across employee
populations within the same firm or even between any
two MSMEs in similar or different industries. This
should not however, be an excuse for not tracking key
employee satisfaction indicators like the ones outlined
here. At a time when employee satisfaction has been
found to have a direct linkage with customer satisfaction,
it is absolutely essential for top management at an
MSME to keep themselves apprised of these factors on

a regular basis. Obviously, this is easier said than done.

What confuses and complicates such well-minded
efforts is the understanding that satisfaction is a
constantly moving target. However, the same can be
said of customer satisfaction. As customers continue
to evolve their demands shift and accordingly their
satisfaction levers evolve. Ironically, organizations spend
more management time and money on chasing these
details and only a fraction of that on understanding
those internal customer issues that directly impact
external customer satisfaction.

October 2010

www.humancapitalonline.com

CMYK

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