Great Companies to Work in India:Why There are Only 2 PSUs in the 2014 List of 100?

Today morning, while glancing through the business news, there was a not-so-important news coverage that got my attention. The news was about some organization doing some research to publish the list of 100 odd companies that are found as great places to work in India. 

Google India Pvt Ltd topped the list.[ surprisingly, Google's Indian wing, though registered as a private limited company in India, does not have a website of its own!] As per available information, Google India Pvt Ltd has 1625 satisfied employees, who really feel their company is a great place to work in India. There is no need for any one to doubt that, because it is the satisfied employees of Google who made their company- a small business venture registered by two PhD students of Stanford University almost recently in 1998- to become a 50,000 employee strong multinational entity whose name has become synonymous for internet search. Even this blog that you are reading would not have been possible without the dedicated work of many of these people who work for this great company.

Now the same Google helped me to find more information about the research finding that I was reading in the newspaper in the morning. I have found out the list of those 100 best companies which are declared as great companies in India to work during 2014 and also more information about greatplacetowork.in 

When I observed the list closely, I find most of the companies are either privately held or privately owned public limited companies, except two companies that are government owned. The latter in India are commonly called the Public Sector Undertakings (PSU). 

Having decades of experience in a PSU, it is not any thing surprising for me that many PSUs are not in the list. But as I have guessed rightly, I could find the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC) and the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) in the list, thought not in the first fifty. 

NTPC, though a PSU has been born with a work culture that is much different from other PSUs. Much of this work culture is because of the top leadership of this company right from its incorporation. This company was some how fortunate to get good top management team right from the beginning. For individuals and for corporate entities, good genes make lots of difference! Thus this PSU company was able to develop a good work culture and produce good leaders from within. Its present CMD, Dr Anup Roy Choudhury who has been leading this company for more than a decade now is an eminent technocrat who could maintain that work culture and improve it even under the severely constrained work environments that PSUs generally face. [You may also read: Why Indian Public Sector Undertakings Fail to Perform Now?]

When NTPC was founded way back in 1975 as a government of India owned, central PSU for setting up and managing large scale thermal power plants, the government handed over the small Badarpur thermal power station which was a poor performer and a small power producing utility to the management of NTPC. From less than 100 MW power production at Badarpur in 1975, NTPC now is a company with an installed capacity of over  43000 MW of coal based thermal power. With a workforce mostly drawn from other PSUs, this feat is some thing of a remarkable achievement and a fine example of exemplary work culture that this CPSU has been able to develop and sustain! There were many of my colleagues who preferred to shift to this company way back in the beginning of the 1980's. I do remember a senior colleague who shifted to this company calling me too join them giving due regards to my experience in thermal power chemical control and water treatment! Though I declined that offer due to personal reasons, I was a keen observer of the work culture of this PSU and the outstanding progress this company has been making as compared to other PSUs which could not emulate the NTPC work culture!

Let me narrate one or two examples of that work culture that I have personally experienced. Some time in the late 1990's the PSU where I worked, faced some serious problems with some of its captive thermal power plants. These problems were essentially related to poor management of the power station chemical control including its water management. These captive thermal power plants were my initial work place, but when this incident happened I was no more working in the power plant department. Yet some member in the top management of our company remembered me and called me to get my advice to overcome the problem.

I studied the problem and gave my suggestions. Our company could have gone ahead to implement the suggestions that I gave. But the work culture of our company had become too complex by then that the top management wanted me to undertake an all India tour to other thermal power stations to study those problems in a few other thermal plants and then give my technical study report for further actions.

So I visited a few large and small thermal power plants owned and managed by a few state electricity boards, some other private companies and also one super thermal power station at Ramagundam managed by NTPC. When I reached, Ramagundam by road from Vijayawada, after visiting the thermal power plant there, I was not knowing what to expect as I did not know any one there.

I did not have the opportunity to observe the NTPC culture till then. When I reached, the gate of the power station I found the security forces of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF)- the para military organization of India which is mandated to provide security to most government owned industrial establishments in India. Having experienced the attitudes of CISF jawans in some other places including the PSU where I worked, I was a bit apprehensive. The existing work culture of the place does affect these forces too and many a times people find it not so pleasant!

But to my surprise, I find the officer of CISF at NTPC-Ramagundam  very cordial and cooperative which was not what I was expecting. This officer helped me to get in to contact with the right officer of NTPC and talk to him over phone from the security gate. The response from the NTPC officer too was a pleasant surprise. This officer- who was junior to me by the PSU rank- instructed the CISF officer to make the entry pass for me and the CISF officer did that immediately. (In many other PSUs, this thing could be a harassment even for the company guests!) The NTPC officer told me to wait for a few minutes till he sent one company vehicle to pick me inside. That was another surprise because, the company where I worked, even the top executive might also find it difficult to do such a thing! 

The company vehicle arrived at the gate to pick me within a few minutes and I was taken to the officer whom I knew only just a few minutes, that too over the intercom of NTPC at the security gate. 

For the rest of the day, I had a rewarding professional experience. I got the opportunity to meet almost all the officers of the plant and interact and exchange our professional experiences. I could visit the plant with them and I was greatly impressed to know about their working style, a style that invariably reflected on the upkeep of the plant.

I was impressed by the office ambiance that my contact officer of NTPC had there, some thing many other private and government companies never bothered about. With all that atmosphere and authority that his company provided, I could feel the professional pride and satisfaction of my contact officer of NTPC. Obviously, such employees are going to make their company perform well! How the employee feels that way was obviously the distinct work culture of this CPSU which got developed due to the vision of its top management from the very beginning!

During the professional interactions, I found that NTPC Ramagundam was adopting a technique that was a bit more complex to manage a technical issue pertaining to its cooling water management. It was the same problem of our captive power plant too, for which I was sent by our management for detailed investigations. I gave my suggestions to the NTPC fellows too as I did to our top authorities. 

To cut the story short, within months, I learnt that NTPC Ramagundam implemented my suggestion where as my report eventually went to rest in my own organization with nothing happening. Later the situation in my organization with regard to the captive power production deteriorated further. Later, some of the captive thermal production facilities of our company were handed over to NTPC to be managed by an NTPC controlled joint venture. The power plant where I began my career too went under the management control of this new joint venture.

The first major change for these units under NTPC controlled management has been the drastic changes in the employee benefits and facilities. NTPC began their actual control of operation and management only after all the employee facilities had been created as per their own standards! And that is what makes NTPC different from other PSUs.

But that does not mean that NTPC or any other such organizations which find their name in the list of best companies for employees for 2014 would remain as such in the future too. They may change for better or worse in the future. And that all depend on the attitudes of the top management and the rest of the key authorities in their respective organizations who are responsible for making the people work earnestly, taking pride in their organization. 

If corporate history is any indication, there would be many companies that would compete in the future to find their names in the list that I mentioned above. That is a matter of prestige and some top corporate managers are too willing to do any short cuts for gaining such prestigious positions without honestly making any real cultural change within their organizations.

That is true with all management systems, be it of total quality  management (TQM), corporate social responsibility (CSR), Environment Management, Safety, etc., etc. 

In short, every thing ultimately boils down to people. If the organization is made of people having the 4 C's that I wrote some time ago, things would naturally follow a better path and the company would naturally be a great place to work. The more such people in the organization, the more it would be a better place to work! 

But there is a critical mass in this case too. When the numbers of the  4 C-people go down below a certain limit, the company or organization begins to collapse as it would not be easy for the company to make any positive changes by its own.

It would be an interesting study if any one ventures to study why only 2 PSU's were liked by their own employees! Of course, such studies and their findings would be of any use only when there is some one to examine those for positive actions!

Career Opportunities and Salaries in Post Liberalization Era in India!

India had been a country which followed the socialistic pattern of economy ever since it got independence way back in 1947 till its economy got partially Americanized some time in the Nineteen Nineties. The period before 1990's is called the pre-liberalization era and that afterwards till date could be called the confused era of liberalization.

In the pre-liberalization era of administered socialism, the salaries of all employed people in India were governed by certain limits mandated by governmental directives. No person in India was allowed to draw a salary more than what the President of India got in those days. Rs.10,000/- per month was that sacrosanct figure. In those days it was also mandatory for the government and the private sector companies to publicly announce the details of salaries that they paid to their respective employees.

All employment advertisements from the government and the private organizations routinely announced salient details of the salaries. It was easy for any one to actually know how much an employed person legitimately made as salary. What was not known to the general public was the legal income of businessmen and the illegal income of salaried people especially those employed by the governments.

One of the remarkable achievement of the government of India in the post liberalization period was the removal of the sacrosanct limit of salary for the private sector. I consider this event remarkable because this was done by the bureaucrats of India without raising much protest as their own salary remained lower and limited.

The liberalized government also allowed even loss making private company boards to fix limitless salaries for some of the key members of their own boards, a much liberal rule that allowed many small companies getting drained of their initial and working capitals too soon to become non-existential. 

Post the so-called Y2K digital confusion of year 2000, the software and IT enabled companies of India got enormous opportunities to get dollar remuneration from the USA due to the high IT-outsourcing trend that this country adopted. This enabled many Indian companies who earned their incomes from the dollar economies to pay higher salaries to their Indian employees. 

Then developed the age of private industry opportunism and favoritism in the guise of market forces. As the government did not enforce any thing with regard to the salaries of private sector employees, the initial euphoria of high salaries in private sector soon died out with the majority of private sector employees earning much less while a few of their top favorite managers earned incomes disproportionate to their real contributions. The Indian private sector has degraded as an organized system of exploited managers as many of the white collar private employees are designated as officers or managers without any collective bargaining power. Besides, the private sector pay have been becoming more and more secretive as the employees seldom realized the pay and perks of their colleagues and seniors. 

As such a few of the Indian private sector began to mimic the elite corporations of the USA and such other developed nations where salaries are determined by the educational elitism or educational branding of their managers rather than their actual worth and contribution to the company. Some board level and below board level managers got the opportunity to draw salaries unimaginable by many in the world while the majority of their employees slogged for their respective companies to keep them going without getting even a minor fraction of such high salaries. However, a good majority of Indian private sector in the manufacturing and production fields struggled hard to make income and to pay even some comfortable salaries to their employees and managers as they were all required to play in an uneven ground.

In the mean while, the government officers and those in the government got the opportunity to compare themselves with their elitist private sector companies. The consecutive pay commissions began to take some cue from the private sector average remunerations and began to fix the government officer's salaries. Since this was mostly on the basis of some average, the top government officials could not earn exorbitant salaries. However they have done many other things to compensate their so-called low salaries. Now many of them fly quite often to foreign lands, travel in chauffeur driven luxury cars, have government paid servants at home and office and have many comforts and facilities that their counterparts in private industry do not have. As they are the administrators, executors and interpreters of rules and policies, private industry big wigs often Que up to meet them which indirectly provide many benefits. 

Governments-both central and states- own many public sector companies. Some of them are large and key economic drivers and contribute significantly for the economic well being of the country. A few of such companies had been privatized in the past with the government selling of the majority stake. However, a large number still remains with government as the majority stake holder. Such companies have government nominated boards but are actually run by company officials and managers who are generally recruited by the concerned company. They are called the PSU officers and managers. The PSU officers are deemed public servants with all the responsibilities of public servants, but with hardly any defined authority. They have been a disadvantageous group with regard to their salaries and perks for the past many decades. Only in the recent past, their salary scales have become comparable to that of their counter parts in the government. However, excepting a few, the majority of them are never given any opportunity to prove their skills and professional competence. As their career advances, most of them degrade as 'frogs in the well' due to various reasons which could be a topic of research for any one interested to find the truths. However, the public sector had been the poaching ground for experienced professionals for the growing private sector initially.

As the governments could not take any decisions regarding the future of the public sector companies with regard to the question of they be privatized or not, the public sector companies of India suffered much with regard to their succession planning . As a result, there have been practically no recruitment of officers and workmen in the PSUs for the last several years. Many PSUs now have very senior officials drawing secretary level salaries waiting for their retirement in a couple of years and working too independently. They have no subordinates whatsoever under them. PSUs of yester years which used to simmer with many fold economic activities in the past with thousands of employees have closed down many of their activity centers and losing their collective experience and expertise. Many of them are just waiting to be closed down as their experienced people are getting reduced in numbers with time. When all around the world governments are trying hard to generate employment to their citizens, India with its highest unemployment levels, is undetermined about the future course of actions with regard to the huge industrial infrastructure it had created in the past in the public sector.

Now coming back to the salaries of officers and managers of India. It is difficult now to get clear idea about this. But with some research I am giving some idea about the salary and perks of officers and managers working in India in private sector, public sector and government (The salaries given are approx gross p.a) :

Category                Indian Private Sector     Indian Public Sector   Indian Central Govt 

                    

Entry Level Officer          Rs.0.2-0.6 Million      Rs.0.4-0.5 M         Rs.0.3-0.4 M    

(1-7 yrs)

Entry Level Mgt              Rs.0.5-1.5 Million          -Do-                         -Do-

(1-7 yrs)

Middle/Sr Mgt                         -Do-                 Rs.0.8-1.0 M        Rs.0.8-1.0 M

(7-12 yrs)

General Mgt                    Rs.1-5 Million            Rs.1.5-2.5 M        Rs.1.5-2.0 M

(12-25 yrs)

Top Mgt                        Rs.2.0-20 Million        Rs.2.5-3.5 M         Rs. 2.5-3.0 M

(15-35 Yrs)

The career growth in central government is smooth and steady with seniority playing the major factor. For top postings political patronage is essential. 

In the PSU's both seniority, luck and mentoring by seniors do the magic of career growth up to general management levels. Bureaucratic and political mentoring are important for CEO levels and board level postings. Salaries are a bit better for the officers and managers of large central PSUs. However, they have comparatively not much opportunities for proving their abilities. Their public image and status is also not very charming except for some top management positions.

The pay, perks and facilities of private sector officer and  management career depend on the type and size of industry coupled with the mindset of its management board or promoters. The variations are too high. While some get extremely high salaries and perks, a good majority are underpaid when compared to their work loads. The private sector job is secure only when it is doing well financially. The internal politics in some private companies are too high that people with a straight forward mind might find it too difficult to survive. Hence, most private companies have a high attrition rate. Since the government has not yet openly allowed the hire-and-fire policy, many companies resort to retrenchments in a clandestine manner. Indian private companies are yet to learn the benefits of retaining their managers! While a few managers of Indian private companies are able to get pay and perks many times more than their counter parts in the PSUs and government, there are also millions of them without ever enjoying such benefits. It is also common that the promoters appoint themselves to key positions with extremely high salaries which professional managers cannot even dream of.

Except for the civil services of the government, there is no regular intake of officers either for the Indian PSU and private sector. The recruitment in both private industry and the Indian PSUs are done with no long term vision or planning. At entry level, either they recruit in large numbers or refrain from it for years together. As a result, the career growth and experience opportunities in many private and PSU companies are not so motivating for many of their managers.

In the government, there is a periodic system called the Pay Commission to revise the salaries of the central government officers. In the Central PSU's such an arrangement may or may not be adopted. In the private sector such a thing is practically absent. Unlike the private sector, reservations play and important role for the selection and promotions in the government and PSU jobs.

Government and PSU jobs may not give much satisfaction to one's job due to many factors. High individual performance and competency may sometimes cause career shocks. However, in the private sector, individual performance and competency are mostly recognized and rewarded. 

In the overall analysis, as things stand now, private companies of good track record provide the best career options and job satisfaction. The least of it as of now could be in the PSUs.