Navigating the complex game of employee satisfaction

A certain superstar of Bangladesh Cricket once said that it is impossible to play better cricket with the amount of money they are getting paid. This statement was taken under heavy scrutiny by the masses of Bangladesh (who turned out to be the judge, jury and executioner). The said cricketer retorted, considering the payment structure of other stronger and richer cricket boards. 

Us Bangladeshis lamented how ungrateful the cricketer was for not acknowledging the chance to represent the motherland. They were enraged because they lacked the basic ownership/belongingness factor. This incident happened quite a while back, but this writer always found it hilarious as it provided the perfect metaphor to explain what he was about to write.

Real Madrid-Barcelona, Russia-USA, India-Pakistan, England-Australia, and Management vs. Employees. Yep, those are the top 5 age-old rivalries you can have.  

Let's not go into the common notion of how insatiable employees can be; apparently, you can bring them the moon, but they will be like, why not add the sun? But truly, how insatiable an employee can be? What do they seek from their organisation? Is it all justified? Let's look into the nitty gritty of that.

Yes, the basic relation between an employee and its organisation/management is simple: you work, you get paid. But can we bind it within that limit only? It can be broken down into various elements; let's try to fixate on some of them. 

Remuneration is undoubtedly the key, but the office environment should also be suitable for the employees. The organisation should assess who fits well in which sort of environment and try to place them in that, and this is not always based on educational qualifications or skills only. 

Say one wing of the organisation is full of extroverts, then by default, an introverted person, despite having all the right fits on paper, should not be plunged into that extrovert environment then and there. 

Yes, the employees are to be adaptable, but to what extent? While you might try to play an attacking midfielder as a striker at times, you would not surely put a defender as a striker (nope, not talking about Ramos). 

At the same time, it's about how the team lead handles the employees (yes, ETH, I'm talking to you about how you failed to handle Ronaldo, and now you keep on blaming everyone else for your poor leadership skills). It was jokingly said that even if Ronaldo and Messi decided to play for the Bangladesh Football team, Mr Salahuddin would do something to render them useless. Sadly, cases like these are prevalent in the workplace these days.  

Every employee has their strengths and weaknesses. It is the job of the organisation and the employee to capitalise on the strengths and transform the weaknesses into strengths in due course of time. But when placements are done based on some default criterion, often that doesn't bode well for the employees or the organisation in the long run. 

In the cases where training and workshops are present, there are instances where these are allotted based on seniority/personal biases rather than need base. Then again, let's not live in a utopian world; we all know while this is not ideal, it is normal nevertheless. All the selections in the world have some biases attached to it.

At the same time, since many new employees lack certain experiences, it should be accepted that the lack of experience doesn't make them any less than the existing employees, considering they are now part of the same organisation the existing ones are working in. 

Since experience is something you gain over time by working, and it kind of stops once you stop the continuous upliftment, this edge disappears quickly. 

The environment should be cordial to them as well, rather than being intimidated (mostly felt by the deadweights of the organisation who never resorted to perpetual innovation or self-development but instead slacked away and now get scared the new kids might take their precious spot, so they decide to use the one term to get away with anything and everything, yes you guessed it right, the 'seniority/age'). 

Even though a lot of pragmatic steps are being taken by modern-day HR, the different isms (sexism, racism, colourism, ageism, etc.) somewhat still exist, be it hidden or in an explicit manner, or masked under the term 'fun'. 

The heartbreaking fact is, these will be done to stigmatise you (mostly behind your back, and in the case that it is done upfront, that too will be waived by the "one ring to rule them all" term; again, the seniority) with anything and everything as they see fit but if this faction is in large numbers, the probability of caving in becomes high as you will feel maybe some parts of it is right. 

Continue Reading the second part here.

The writer is an engineer turned finance enthusiast, trying to drink gulps from the immensely stimulating ocean of finance besides his regular job in the capital market. Tell him how he can do that at [email protected]