The Corporates: Behind the shining glass Submitted by admin on 30 October 2013 - 9:05pm Articles Economy Indian Muslim By Azizur Rahman, TwoCircles.net Whatever might be the definition of the word “corporate” from the business perspective; and whatever economic growth, the government might have been claiming to have achieved through the corporate employments; in fact, the corporate job is taking a huge toll on the young workforce making them intellectually and socially bankrupt and robbing them of everything except for the bloodsucking token money. The corporates remain hell bent on exploiting even the last drop of the blood. Let’s take a detailed account of the devastating havoc it wreaks on the employees. Please bear in mind that when I say corporate, I mean the private company and not any government organization where the employees are more relaxed than at home since it takes them half an hour to issue a counter train ticket. Social Isolation Doing job in a corporate is replete with sacrifices. You sacrifice the joy of being with your near and dear ones whenever you want if working away from home, and in case of working somewhere near your hometown, you are unable to spend enough time with them due to lack of time, tight schedule and the fatigue inflicted by the crushing daylong work. The working hours are only on the paper and not in practice. They create such a pressure that one will automatically stretch for hours beyond the specified working hours to meet their so called customer expectations and “Turn Around Time” notoriously called as TAT and thereby leaving the least leisure time for family, friends and near and dear ones. The corporate employees always seem to be in such a hurry that they do not even shake hand properly lest it could result in some work not being done in time. Except for rare cases, a job in corporate means we will have to forget celebrating festivals with the family; we will not have to think of attending marriages, birth celebrations and funerals and so on. The life here is not much different from a machine working through a human body. Taking leave at your desired and convenient time is like milking a bull. So, if this grave state of isolation from the family and society is life, then what is the death? Behind the shining glass Intellectual Bankruptcy Another significant damage that corporates cause to a person is the intellectual insolvency. They keep people occupied to such a dangerous extent that they are unable to think beyond home- to-office and vice-versa cycle. I have come across some instances where people did not even know their countrys president, vice president and key ministers’ names. So, if the people working with a corporate are so ignorant of these basic information, how they would prove fruitful to the nation and the people, at least by using their voting rights. As surviving in this shrewd and callous world with dignity requires people to be sufficiently aware of the state of affairs around them, one has to think beyond managing the daily square meals; however the corporates seldom leave any chances to let them think beyond. 24/7 Business Cycle and Its Impact In this era of globalization, the policy of business continuity round the clock is a dangerous phenomenon. The corporates, in order to maximize their profit in the least possible time, have adopted the strategy of the business being run through the entire 24 hours day cycle at the cost of extreme hardships meted out to the employees. At the time of joining, either the companies ask their employees to accept by signing that they would work in any shifts including night shifts if required; or they would forcibly push them into any odd shift depending upon the requirement. One can imagine how challenging that would be for a person, working throughout the night and then managing his/her own affairs in the daylight including sleep that cannot be substituted with the one in night. Owing to this evil practice, the employee’s own life gets reduced to an abject toy being played whenever required leaving no room for his/her own priorities. For this nefarious practice, the corporates alone could not be blamed and the government is equally responsible as this happens under the very approval from it, for cheap economic growth. Stagnant Compensation The salaries offered by the corporates might look attractive and luring to people, however once offered they remain almost stagnant compared to the related inflation. Companies often set such ambiguous benchmarks and expectations that are barely achievable. Even if you toil day and night and achieve 100 % as per the defined parameters, at the end of the day you would listen to the wise sentence “Its good, however we expected even more from a person like you” resulting in getting you minimum for the maximum. As these companies are well trained in keeping the sparks of hope alive among the employees by extending promises like that of extending grass to a horse and keep holding it back one he comes nearer, many times, many people slip unintentionally into a long association with the company and ultimately getting even more frustrated. Health Hazards Due to hard and demanding work, working for longer hours and working at odd times like night, many times it results in depression, frequent headache, entire body pain, back pain and sometimes even diabetes and many more. So, working in a corporate environment for longer years is bound to entail one disease or the other. In view of the above, it is wise to bid adieu to the corporate at the earliest before it is too late to make a comeback as you would become more crippled with the passage of the time and the corporate hold upon you would emerge stronger. Government’s Responsibility To address this menace, first of all, the government should ban the inhuman odd shifts particularly night shift system as there is no use of the money earned through depriving people of the natural sleep. It should also warn the companies of asking employees to stretch beyond the legally specified working hours. However, in extreme cases, it could be allowed against the mandatory pay for the extra time worked. It must formulate very strict regulations to ensure that the companies provide a very comfortable and conducive work environment where one could work free from stress and pressure because there is no meaning of the economic growth and development brought thorough comprising on the quality of people’s lives. However this is something that could hardly be expected from the greedy government which would not want to let its patrons sulk, resulting in lesser taxes to be wasted on luxuries and illegitimate amenities for these insensitive and corrupt politicians. -- Azizur Rahman is originally from Uttar Pradesh and works for a multinational corporation in Chennai.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 11:51:49 +0000
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