What's in a Name?

Lots. Interesting designations keep staff motivated!

Title works and keeps employees in good humour. While the debate on monetary versus job satisfaction as an engagement tool rages on, India Inc, has discovered a novel way not just to keep its flock together, but happy too. Scores of companies are bringing a designation dimension to a corporate framework. Right from engaging top management in various key roles, to motivating and ‘exciting’ employees about the organisation’s charted vision, scores of companies are customising and coming up with offbeat designations to define roles with clarity. And give a notional sense of achievement to the employees in the process. Cisco India has a chief globalisation officer in Wim Elfrink and a senior manager, diversity & inclusion, Tracy Ann Curtis. This reflects Cisco’s global strategy of shifting from a geographical focus to a business management approach focused on skill sets and talents. Not to be left behind, IBM India has a work-life integration leader, Kalpana Veeraraghavan, a diversity leader besides a chief fun-officer. Similarly, Sapient has a director of people success in Binoo Wadhwa and designation like chief brand architect, chief privacy officer, chief competitive officer, to name a few. Some time back, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s becoming ‘chief mentor’ has expanded the scope of his role. If mentoring of Mr Murthy’s calibre is aimed at sustaining leadership, the designation that made news recently was ‘gardener’, when Mindtree chief Subroto Bagchi donned the new role to shape the aspirations of the workforce. Analysts see it as an apparent attempt to keep excitement alive. “Designations are all about ego massage,” says EMA partners International managing partner K Sudarshan. “After a point, the fatigue of designations begins to set in and one needs to be innovative to keep it at bay.” Besides, in young organisations where the workforce is energetic and full of life, these kind of initiatives help attract attention. Add to this is ever-diversifying companies and newer areas of operation, which calls for focused attention to people issues, like work-life balance, globalisation, diversity and privacy. A cross section of people say that designations are a motivational and exciting tool that can help employees to be in sync with the organisation’s vision and mission. “Exciting designations are fundamental to every organisation and mentoring or developing leadership is an internal challenge for companies if they want to sustain their vision,” says Take Solutions’ vision holder-cum-vice chairman H R Srinivasan. For over six years now, since the organisation came into being, Srinivasan has been the vision holder. The vice chairman designation was added against his name a year ago. But titles gain more relevance, especially at the lower levels within organisations. “Designations like chief impression officer (for a receptionist) or a car manager (instead of a driver), are ways of showing respect to the positions and functions,” says Blueshift chairman Sankaran P Raghunathan. “Such designations also act as motivators as roles like that of a receptionist are the ones that create the first and lasting impression for a company. Assigning designations like front leading officer or a chief impression officer will work much better and motivate employees, than fancy titles, as the jobs too get the required significance.” Two years ago, Chennai-based GRT hotel chain introduced the designation loss-prevention manager to lend more respectability and accountability to the security function.
- Article by Hemamalini Venkatraman & Shreya Biswas