Insight: India Inc Shifts Focus From Individuals To Teams

By Sailesh Mehta / Mumbai

Attrition rates in India, which have climbed to anywhere between 10% and 20% from benign single digits over a decade ago, have brought under the spotlight an interesting insight that is prodding organizations to focus more on teams than on individuals. 
    
Organizations are gradually bringing about a change in their outlook, which involves a team effort, and the reason for the same is simple. Whether the current attrition is in single digits or double, a decade down the line it would mean that a large percentage of employees would fall into the “new employee” bracket, while the older employees would be relegated to a smaller bracket. 
Managing communications and team dynamics would thus become tougher for an organization. 
    
“Today, we have fewer younger and new employees who question every decision that the leader takes. Tomorrow, given the current attrition rates, the situation would be compounded with a majority of such employees wanting to be part of a decision-making process. This change is bound to happen eventually, so why not start the process today?” said an HR head of a leading MNC. 
    
What’s also enabling this change is the advent of technology, because of which organizations are responding differently to meet customer expectations. Considering that speed in the internet age has emerged as a key competitive advantage, workflows have become parallel rather than linear. Thus the only way to work is around teams, say HR experts. 
    
Last year, Siemens identified focus areas in its annual HR strategy workshop wherein 150 team members were divided into 15 teams. It was not a usual workshop where employees participate for a day and subsequently return to their respective work schedules. The workshop was made part of their targets and their annual performance reviews also considered their contribution in these project teams. Essentially, the workshop promoted cross-business and crossfunctional collaboration to encourage team work, according to S Ramesh Shankar, executive vice-president, HR, Siemens. 
    
Procter & Gamble India (P&G), on the other hand, builds its teams around individuals. It optimizes collaborative efficiency by ensuring that every individual has a unique set of deliverables. So an individual can be asked to lead a functional activity, if their expertise is in that particular domain, regardless of tenure. 
    
“While we believe in striking the right balance, we believe individuals are the driving force behind team efficiency,” said Sonali Roychowdhury, country head, human resources, P&G. 
    
The reason why teams are gaining more recognition in companies than individuals is because companies are shunning hierarchies to opt for matrix structures that force team work. “Fifty years ago, a company hired for specialist technical skills and work was done in a linear manner. The advent of technology, the internet, and the changing nature of consumer and customer expectations is forcing firms to respond differently. This has created both the virtual teams and the face-toface interacting physical teams,” said D Shivakumar, former head of emerging markets, Nokia. 
    
Clearly, no individual is greater than a team. If an organization is built around individuals, then according to Shankar of Siemens, it would not be sustainable. 
    
“Organizations are like a sports team. Although you have a captain, it’s the synergy of teams which make it a winner in the market place,” he said. What then must an organization do if a star employee is to be retained? While putting in all possible efforts required to retain the employee, Shankar added, “If the star employee is a loner and works detrimental to the team goals, then it may be useful to let the star employee go.” 
    
While there are quite a few positives behind productivity when focused from a team’s perspective versus that of an individual, such as good teams displaying better and faster learning and multitasking, P Thiruvengadam, senior director, human capital consulting, Deloitte in India, however, said: “Both team-based and individualbased organizations or a combination of both have been successful and would be considered. The key thing that is likely to happen is that the churn and change in terms of the actual structure would be quite high,” he said.