9/7/2017 Is there an ideal job anywhere?

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Home (https://telanganatoday.com/) / Education Today (https://telanganatoday.com/education-today) / Is there an ideal job anywhere?

Is there an ideal job anywhere?

Companies are not into the business of making employees life miserable by giving them a lousy work like that but it is
largely driven by high customer expectations. Almost 95% of the companies always put customers first and employees
second

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By T Muralidharan (https://telanganatoday.com/author/tmuralidharan)| Published: 4th Sep 201712:12 am Updated: 4th Sep 201712:13 am

Everyone thinks of working for the best employer which provides the best salary, enables a work-life balance and provides a
fulfilling career. However, does an ideal job providing all the three, exist?

Take the example of Adithya, a 27-year-old engineer who works with a startup and 28-year old Vidya, who works with a Public-
Sector Unit (PSU) as system engineer. While both of them strive to strike a balance between good salary, work-life balance and a
fulfilling career, they fail to do so. While the start-up gives Adithya a very attractive compensation and a fulfilling career, they
are low on work-life balance and demand longer and stressful working hours. For Vidya, working with a PSU does provide
work-life balance but they perform low on career and salary growth.

Why it is not possible to achieve all the three aspects of a perfect job?
To understand that, we need to remember that companies are in the business of satisfying customer needs. So, companies exist
because there are customers who value their products and services and hence, almost 95% of the companies always put
customers first and employees second.

With such priorities and customers needs going unrealistically high, employees are being forced to work for longer hours,
leading to disruption in work-life balance. For example, your customer might want a work done in 15 days, however, it would
take nearly 30 days to complete. While you will have a choice to say no to the customer but if it has high potential to grow, you
would ideally stretch yourself to complete the job.

Disrupting work-life balance

By getting high targets, managers along with their subordinates tend to stretch their work limits which leads to a disruption in
work-life balance. So, if a work comes up at Friday evening and the client wants by Monday morning, employees have to work
on weekends to finish it, disrupting work-life balance.

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9/7/2017 Is there an ideal job anywhere?
Companies are not into the business of making employees life miserable by giving them a lousy work like that but it is largely
driven by high customer expectations. Further, the quality of manpower is not uniform across levels and organisations. So, if
employees across levels are smart and competent, your work gets divided and everyone can finish their job on time. However,
an incompetent employee at any level in a chain of systems will make the life of others miserable by delaying it. Invariably, the
inefficiencies of managerial incompetence of managers at various levels contribute to disruption in work-life balance leading to
stress.

Getting realistic
When it comes to compensation, it cannot be what an employee wants but what the company can afford to pay and theres
always a gap between these two. Thats the single most reason why employees feel unhappy and underpaid. Salaries have gone
up over the roof in the past two-three decades. If you were to compare salaries in 1980s and 2010, salaries in 1980s were very
low. It started picking from 1991 because MNCs like Pepsi came to India and other MNCs followed post restructuring of the
Indian economy. Since, 2000 onwards, the IT industry picked up and they gave high entry level compensation to attract talent.

So in the last 3-4 decades, salaries of people have gone over the roof but work load too has increased drastically. For example,
when I passed out of IIM Amhedabad in 1981, my salary was about Rs 20,000 a year. The current average compensation of IIM
Amhedabad alumni is Rs 18 lakh. So, you take Rs 20,000, add a 7% inflation on that in 35 years, the amount shouldnt be more
than Rs. 2.2 lakh. In my estimate, salary levels have gone up much higher than inflation which means the person passing out
has to be twice as smart or hell have to stretch much longer. While one used to work for 8 hours earlier, they are putting almost
16 hours now. This is the reason most people feel stressed in jobs.

Also, the idea of getting promoted because you spent time is absolutely wrong. You need to prove that mastered the job you do,
prove it with numbers, show that youve outperformed everybody else. Secondly, if you change your job sand feel the same,
youre back to square one. These two questions nobody asks but they want a promotion.

No employer can score high on all three dimensions of an ideal job a high salary, perfect work-life balance and a fulfilling
career. Private Companies (Large Corporate, MSME Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise or a Start-up) or Public-Sector Units
all score a combination of High, Medium or Low on all the parameters. The best employer as compared to the others is the
MSME segment which scores a Medium on Salary, High on Worklife Balance and a High on a Fulfilling career owing to the job
satisfaction, learning and growth that it can provide to an employee.

T Muralidharan, TMI Group-Consultant, Columnist and Author on Career

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