Years back, when I asked one of the employees about his experience in the field, he mentioned how most weavers have an unfulfilled desire to travel. This conversation led to the birth of exposure visits where employees are brought on a trip to Jaipur for sightseeing and to visit our finishing center and head office.
The outcome?: The weavers feel their wishes are heard. The trips become a memorable experience for them and help them connect better with the organization. Moreover, they realize their mistakes as they witness the finishing process at the center and focus on not repeating them. This improves the quality of the carpets and decreases the cost spent in the finishing process.
As leaders, we often make the mistake of thinking that we know it all. We create policies based on our understanding of our employee’s needs. While living in the same house, we are sometimes unable to understand the needs of our family members until they share them with us. How can we expect to know what our employees need when we don’t even communicate with them individually, especially on a daily basis?
I won’t say that I haven’t made the mistake of doing this myself. I have. In fact, recently, during the pandemic, I made the mistake of thinking that sending ration kits to my weavers would take away at least some part of their pain. However, one of the weavers, Arti from Dhanota, opened my eyes when she shared her plight.
She expressed her concerns for her neighbors who lost the sole earner of their family. That day, I sent my team to identify each of such families in the villages we are functional in and distributed ration kits to all of them as well.
The respect that Arti got for voicing her thoughts became a motivating factor for her. Moreover, this act of kindness helped us grow the number of our beneficiaries in these villages. I understand that striking a balance between targets and compassion becomes difficult at some point.
However, it is not impossible to achieve. For instance, just a few days back, Mahesh Ji, our Accounts Head came to me and proposed that we release OPLI (a special incentive for achieving targets) because, though we took extremely aggressive targets, our dedicated employees were able to come very close to it.
More than the suggestion, the compassion in his voice made me happy. I instantly felt proud to have trickled down the same values in my managers. With my years of experience, one thing that I can say for sure is that a business that lacks compassion might take a leap but would never find its ground. Compassion is the fuel on which a business is sustained. It is not one of the ways, it is the only way.
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