"To grow in the private industry, there is only one thing you have to do and that is continuous performance. Companies need results from you and if you perform well then you will grow. In private industry there is no quota system, no reservation”
He started his journey with Indian Air Force. After 15 years of successful service he opted for Voluntary Retirement Service (VRS) and joined the private sector in a challenging HR management role. J Sivakumar, Head HR and Admin, J K Fenner, Madurai is very impressed with the Japanese work culture, discipline and their country’s industrial development and economic growth after the Second World War. In an exclusive interview with Corporate Citizen, Sivakumar elaborates his views on human resource management and shares his experience of over 13 years in managing the transformation from personnel management to human resource management and of effectively handling the growing business needs for improving productivity through effective people management skills
Sivakumar: I come from a middle class family and my parents were school teachers. After completing my graduation in B.Sc. (Chemistry), I joined the IAF, and after completing fifteen years of service, I left the IAF and started my second innings with the private sector as an HR Manager. I am with the manufacturing industries for the past thirteen years. After my graduation I did my MBA with specialization in HR, followed with various diploma programmers in Personnel Management, Industrial Relations, Foreign Trade, Material Management and also Hospital Management. My brother, who is a renowned doctor, runs a hospital in our home town Madurai and I am extending some administrative support to manage the hospital.
Though I am an HR person, I am passionate in learning new skills and processes, especially, the Japanese management techniques and concepts of production, which we are very much practicing here in India. I have had opportunities to work with Japanese people and I am very impressed by the way they lead their life, their way of thinking, their professionalism, and dedication to work and especially their can do attitude.
Their concept of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) which is widely used in industries, a system of maintaining and improving the integrity of production and quality systems through the maximum utilization of machines, equipment, processes, and employees to add business value. Another popular Japanese concept is 5S, a system for organizing the workplace so that work can be performed efficiently, effectively, and safely. Being associated with Japanese people, I have inculcated these techniques in my day to day life both in my work place and home for which I have been nominated as the Champion for Total Employee Involvement initiatives in order to improve the productivity and profitability my company.
Way back in the 80s, very conventional methods of working were practiced in the industries. Employees would come to work, do their job as per the instruction of supervisors and leave for the day. There would be no personal involvement or innovation. If we had continued that way in our industries we couldn’t have flourished. So, we did the change, over the years and involved employees in each and every transformation of the industry. They got to know what is the turnover of the industry, what is profit and loss of industry, what are the expectations of the customers or end users. Today, if you ask any of my front line to lowest level worker, he knows about his customer and the expectations of the Customer and how to deliver the best at workplace to delight the customer. They do believe in “First Time Right” don’t believe in rework again and again.
I have also played vital role in establishing Self Directed Work Team (SDWT) in the industry. In conventional industry there used to be a supervisor to supervise and in general the Indian attitude is that you need someone to supervise then only you work and you are habituated to that. I brought cultural change by removing supervision and empowering workers to make decisions about planning, executing and evaluating their daily work.
The teams not only do their routine work but also, take on management functions formerly performed by supervisors and engineers. This facilitates the supervisors and engineers to focus on improvement projects, teaching, coaching and facilitating rather than controlling
I also nurtured them in many problem solving techniques in the organization and have facilitated to show case their creativity at State level and National level competitions, felicitated them with awards and recognitions for their outstanding performances. This motivates them and they start getting involved in the growth of the industry.
“Today, if you ask any of my front line to lowest level worker, he knows about his customer and the expectations of the customer and how to deliver the best at workplace to delight the customer. They do believe in “First Time Right” don’t believe in rework again and again”
There is a big difference—Indian mentality regarding work needs a drastic change, if India has to grow from the developing country to a developed country in the world. In Japan, citizens help each other, respect each other and one of the best quality that I have seen in Japanese people is patriotism, for them country comes first. Whatever they do, first they will think “what I am doing is good for my country or not”, even if they are building a house they will think about their country. But in India, it is reverse—my house is first, then my street, then village, then town. Japanese people have a greatest level of patriotism, self-discipline and punctuality. In India very few bother being punctual.
Once, a Japanese, who came to meet me came early and was waiting outside the factory, opposite side of the road. I thought he will come in. He came in at sharp 8:55am as per the appointment given. I asked him, as you have come early why you didn’t come inside. He replied that if he would had come in early, the office staff would be doing some preparatory work and they would get disturbed by his stepping in early. This is the way they respect others time. Even if somebody offers them chocolate, their first reaction would be to search for a dustbin to throw the chocolate wrapper. If they don’t find any dustbin the will keep the chocolate wrapper in their pocket and on the way if they find any dustbin they will throw the wrapper.
After the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during the final stage of World War II, the country has grown to become one of the economic superpowers of the world. The per capita income in Japan is the highest in the world and their economic growth is phenomenal. Everyone in the world today trust and prefer Japanese products because it’s long lasting, durable, and maintenance free. I would say the development of India started because of Japanese intervention, between 1985-1987 and we started adapting Japanese technology, with respect to automobile, electronics and productivity technique.
Our education system needs a drastic change because, what we practice in the industry and what we teach in university curriculum is diagonally opposite, rather it has to be parallel. The syllabus has to be changed every two or three years and they have to update the same according to the developments happening in the industry. There are lots of innovations happening and yesterday’s innovation becomes obsolete the very next day. Something introduced a month ago, becomes obsolete in the next three or four months. Technology is growing rapidly in the country and to keep pace with technology we have to change the syllabus accordingly. The engineering syllabus, which are being taught, were formed sometime during 1980s which are almost obsolete by now.
I would suggest that we should start thinking with the future in mind. We should visualize, how the world would be in the next ten years. We have to prepare the students to face that challenges from now itself because there are lot of new technologies coming up like Internet of things and there are many emerging technologies which are yet to come. Now-a-days nothing is impossible, to cope up with the technologies we have to prepare the students from now itself otherwise it is of no use.
“I come across many students who score very less—I don’t believe in stats, gold medal etc.—there may be many reasons the student must have scored low marks. There are highly competent and innovative personalities and they may have scored good marks. I have come across such people in my career and it takes time to understand their competency”
Whether he/she has got the required domain knowledge about where he/she is going to work. Then we look for reactiveness, agility, risk taking ability. There has to be pro-activeness because I find it is very much lacking in us. Normally we react and we don’t show pro-activeness. Other qualities required are long term thinking, learnability and willingness to work as a team. We prefer someone who is a continuous learner and willing to take additional responsibilities.
I come across many students who score very less—I don’t believe in stats, gold medal etc.—There may be many reasons that the student must have scored low marks. There are highly competent and innovative personalities and they may have scored good marks. I have come across such people in my career and it takes time to understand their competency. We normally conduct interview for half an hour or so and within that time one cannot understand the potential of the candidate fully. We may get to know only about 5–10 per cent of his/her personality by his/her behavior, body language and through his/her academic records. It takes at least two or three months for the reporting boss to understand a candidates full potential and that’s why we have a system of appointing a person as probationer in the beginning.
I have seen many employees who have not even completed matriculation, but they bring lots of innovative ideas to the table which would fetch good amount of cost saving to the industry. A simple suggestion they give would yield savings up to crore at times. This is a great learning being a HR person that we cannot judge someone by his/her qualification alone.
To grow in private industry there is only one thing you have to do and that is continuous performance. Companies need results from you and if you perform well then you will grow. In private industry there is no quota system, no reservation. They take people on merit and they promote and reward them for their performance. If you give the result you will be rewarded.
They should be ready for the future requirements, what would be the focus of the corporates in another ten years’ time. They also should have good communication and presentation skills. These only would help them to sell themselves. They should have assertiveness, should value and approach others views empathetically. Apart from all these they should possess strong interpersonal skills, most importantly listening skills. One should be a good listener and should perform why-why analysis. They should be curious and ready to continuously learn and update themselves.
I’m not a big man to frame some philosophy of my own. I live a very simple life. My only philosophy is do good and be good, because what you do today will come back to you one day. Good or bad you will reap the consequences for your deeds right away.
I believe in updating myself every day to meet the growing demands of the corporate world. In todays’ world, knowledge is power. At the same time we must be aware that the world is moving from measuring a person with “Intelligent Quotient” to “Emotional Quotient”. So learning the soft skills becomes vital to be successful.
By Shantanu Relekar
