Attrition and Attachment

1. What are the basic necessities of humans?

Food, clothing, shelter and most importantly, 'attachment'. Let us say, the first three are taken care of by the salary component of an employee. 

2. How do we know that attachment is a basic necessity for humans (and other species)?

Harry Harlow's unethical experiments on rhesus monkeys proved this theory.

3. How can we ensure 'Attachment' at work place?

If an employee has a sense of 'belonging' to a team, there is a huge chance that he/she would stay there longer. 

Postive work environment, positive people and leadership team, work-pressure handled with 'care', job security, emotional support during personal crisis, timely encouragements and appreciations, work place harrassments and bullying taken care of effectively, lively work space, retention of energy level and enthusiasm of the team by means of innovative  methods, ensuring work-life balance, aligning personal goals with professional goals, ensuring job satisfaction are a few ways I could think of, to cultivate 'belongingness'. 

If we detach ourself from our work place (though we are talking about attachment here :) ) and think of why our team members are leaving, we can arrive at more ideas. However it is easier said than done. Detaching ourself and getting into the problem is not easy. Most of the time I have made the mistake of realising the importance of an engineer only after he/she decides to leave.

Fear, security and attachment are the aspects we often forget about, as we give more importance to salary and promotions. It is high time we start thinking about the psychological aspects of attrition.

#attrition #letstalkcorporate #attachment #workculture #leadership #workenvironment

Staying Relevant to the current world

What is scarier than death? The fear of becoming outdated and no more relevant to the current world is even worse.

Symptoms:
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How do we know that we are becoming outdated?

We are slowly becoming irrelevant to the current world if, :-

1. We are not able to have a meaningful conversation with the younger generation.
2. We are not able to understand many topics involving technology, culture, books etc., they talk about.
3. We find them living in a different world :)

Recovery plan:
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1. Remember, age is just a number. Becoming outdated has nothing to do with the age.
2. 'Listen to me and obey me because I am 40' is an 'old fashioned' meme. What you think? What you say? What are the values and skills you have acquired over these years, are more important for people to listen to you, than your age. This is the new normal. Again, 'Age is just a number'
3. Make a note of all the current topics that are difficult to understand/follow and make the best use of Google. Try to talk more about these topics with others in every given opportunity and read more books on those lines. Reading and exploring are the keys to acquiring knowledge. 'Knowing to read and not reading is the same as not knowing how to read'. :)
4. Acknowledge to the younger generation that you don't know and try to ask questions to understand better.

The world that looked at us as a tech savy person, might now look with a different pair of glasses, if we do not update ourself. And it hurts! 

#age #updatingourself #olderandstronger #ageingwell #generationgap #reading #exploring #stayingconnected