When I was training in Italy to make socks, I was taken to a factory visit.
When we walked into the production floor, I saw long rows of machines but no human operators. The machines were all humming.
I was shocked.
In my father’s factory, one worker operated 4 machines. Here I could could count at least 50 machines running. Where were the workers?
Suddenly, a machine on my right stopped and the statutory red light light up. And lo and behold, from the far end of the room, a petite girl ON ROLLER SKATES came right up to the machine, fixed the twisted yarn, jammed the Green Start button and then smiled at me…
I asked her how many machines she operated.
“40” she said. “Both these rows of 20 machines are mine”.
I asked her her salary. “US$ 1000” she told me before gliding away to another machine.
My head was spinning. I did the math quickly. In my dad’s factory, each worker got Rs 4000 (this is 1994). 10 workers were required to operate 40 machines. That means a salary of Rs 40000.
This girl costs 1000$ = Rs 40,000 and this was Italy!! And this meant there was NO labor arbitrage between India and the ‘expensive’ west!
She was 10x more efficient than my father’s workers, did not shout anti management slogans and certainly had no life membership to the elitist club of the Shiv Sena.
She was the real worker.
Circa 2011
Games2win is 5 million monthly visitor site and we employ 50 people. We manage 350 games across 4 sites, and also an entire suite of iTunes games. We do everything ourselves, and the work day is quite challenging. Lots of people tell me that they can’t believe it considering that Zapak has some 200+ folks with less than 1.5 million in UU’s. However, each time I walk into Viacom’s addictinggames.com office in San Francisco, I am stunned. They are a 10 man team and serve and entertain 20mn Unique users a month!
I always wonder if we in India really understand productivity. It’s definitely not about slogging like a donkey for 10 hours in an office but really about getting things done efficiently. It’s the smallest things like keeping discussions pointed and agendas specific, about ticking off daily tasks and just USING common sense to do things.
One of the most common issues I have is when people don’t know how to do something and spend a whole day figuring it out rather than just asking for help.
Adding employee strength is the weakest strategy to getting things done. I think it’s all about getting your existing employees to do their best.
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Sateesh Chandra Pandiri
nice article Alok..cent % agree that just by increasing employee base u can’t always expect better productivity.
but I feel some points are debatable..coming from a s/w background (still an employee 🙁 🙂 ) i want to give my 2 cents here..
the main difference i feel between the west and us is the ‘work culture’. couple of examples are:
In west when a person joined a firm he/she would like to retire in the same company hence comes a sense of ownership towards their work/company. But in here we always (atleast many a time) strive for a better position/salary even if it requires us to change the company. So obviously the interest a person puts in work directly depends on amount on the pay-cheque.
The other thing i observed is the way we/they work. we would like to have a tea-break every 2 hours and a small chat with colleagues every now and then and a 1-hour lunch break. Though it all comes for a cost of stretching for 2 more hours at office to complete our work, we don’t mind. But in west I observed they give undivided attention for the 8 hours they work and leave the office even there is some work pending. they don’t allow their work-life balance to go for a toss — ofcourse there will be always exceptions.
But when it comes to expenses there are huge savings here at least in the s/w world. For example, avg. salary in India for a receptionist post is between 10000-15000 per month where as in US it is 2000-2500$ PM though both having same job responsibilities.
Though above is from a s/w industry perspective I think we see similar work culture in other industries as well.
So to get more productivity, one has to decide between setting the right culture vs getting a new member into a disorganized family …
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Thanks for a nice rounded view point!
Ps…I quit socks 12 years ago 🙂 and now make online games
Sateesh Chandra Pandiri said:
pankaj khandelwal
Yes ,i agree with you Alok,its much better to seek immediate help if one gets into difficulty than wasting time on it.Secondly less employees with maximum work output is much better than many workers .The more the working hands ,the more the tendency of shifting the responsibility to other shoulders. We try to do the same in our nursing home….but yes,we do much of the important work ourselves or under our guidance…..Its easy to oversee the working of few dedicated people .
Ajay Sanghani
Alok, The comparison may not be exactly accurate. The capex of 40 machines abroad may have been 10 to 20 times more than your factory machines.
Luckily these days in India people do get bank loans much easier to invest in top of the line automated machines.
My reading is that about 5 to 10% of the employees proactively invest in Process Improvement.
Tools like US Based OpenTeams.com where I had consulted or Yammer are really good productivity boosters in office environments. A good emerging Indian company in the space is Aikonlabs.com
In Factories, Kaizen , Six Sigma etc. are being used though I think only in a limited way. Manufacturing Companies could seek help from Productivity Development Council in Pune ( https://www.pdpcpune.com )
I am also helping a Theory of Constraints Consulting company and one another Six Sigma Training company if anyone wants to apply the benefits of productivity, quality and through put maximization.
Also in our panel we have a Trainer who leads amazing Creativity Boosting Workshops , and one Facilitaor who can help develop a culture of Intrapreneurship where people start owning up their projects.
Ajay Sanghani
Email : ajay@ceomag.in
Cell : 9922930618
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Ajay,
My comment was that she was 10x more efficient than my fathers workers … NOT that the business of making socks in that factory was more remunerative.
And to take your argument further, if the equipment was 12x more expensive than those in India, then so were the MRP prices of those socks!
So this was not about capital efficiency but rather to do with worker productivity.
Finally, even if I had exported 40 of my machines to the Italian factory and given it to the lady, she would have still operated them as one person…
Your counter?
Ajay Sanghani said:
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Ajay,
To drive home my point….if I had told my factory workers to wear roller skates (and operate just 8 machines…not 40)…they would have called in the Shiv Sena…
Ajay Sanghani
Undoubtedly Output per Person in India is very very low and there is a huge scope for Productivity Improvement. Skill development and Technology investment initiatives have only recently begun in companies, I know of some very good case studies of companies who have cared for and reduced the fatigue of workers in India ( inspite of initial resistance of change and union and political interference/threats ).
The investors and management at the top have to be wise, bold and generous enough to identify and initiate such programmes and engage workers.
Certainly Roller blades and more importantly Common Sense and Out of the Box Thinking is much needed.
Another good e.g. of how we work and how possibly we can work is put up nicely in a animated format on MaxOffice.biz , another Indian company dramatically improving the productivity of Indian and Global Corporates.
Every individual, organization and industry needs Out of the Box Thinking, Newer Perspectives.
Collective Intelligence Platforms like Rodinhood is also a good step to facilitate in bringing the change, so really well done.
For your creative industry, Some really brilliant thinking can be read at https://www.the99percent.com run by Behance.com ( amazing company if u haven’t come across yet ). Similarly 37signals.com is a good benchmark for software companies and they generously share their modus-operandi through their blogs and books.
My counter is that to improve anything it requires you giving up your current set patterns , constantly de-construct and construct your processes and have a child like curiosity. Not easy as people want to be more stable, mature and have a know-all attitude to life.
Glad you are doing 4x better with 1/4 the resource of Zapak.
Lets forget Shiv Sena, I and the Community will be keen to learn what culture makes you more productive than Zapak where they and others can learn from you and also if you can share why Viacom is operating at such high performance and what we can learn from them.
Ajay
Alok ‘Rodinhood’ Kejriwal said:
kinnari thacker dave
Even if an Indian is pushed to achieve higher levels of productivity … the girl / guy on roller skates would only roll in after at least 4/5 statutory red lights are up. The chalta hai attitude is genetic to Indians. I have been close to ready-made [dad’s business], steel processing unit [hubby’s stuff] & my own mobile world. What i have observed across the board is that a lot of time everyone is just discussing. Though everyone knows the conclusion … the discussion never seems to end. May be that’s the reason the telcos are making a lot of top lines…we Indians love talking on & on….
Nayana Somaratna
Westerners ‘Work hard and Play hard’. In our case, we mix work and play – which leads to both becoming inefficient.
It must be our culture – our people tend to be more laid back and to take things easy (which also is not a bad way of going through life – except it is not the best way to do business).
The only place where I’ve seen a different culture is in our hospitals. When you and one other doctor + 4 or 5 nurses are supposed to handle a ward with 150 patients, you tend to become efficient very quickly (or drop dead).
And given that there are almost no (avoidable) deaths, I guess that we must be responding to the ‘red signals’ the patients display quickly enough 🙂
Sandeep Das
Personal opinion from Central Europe:
In India
1. workers (on production lines or otherwise) are way smarter than their counterparts in the west
2. ‘Out of the Box’ thinking happens at all levels .. vs the west, where people are more used to following set procedures
3. Issues exist in terms of employee motivation … people upto a certain level may not get paid well, or rewards may not be linked to the right deliverables.
4. Certain behaviorial- cultural issues (like wasting time, working late, etc) gets into the way of efficiency
Net, the positives, in India, far outweigh the negatives in terms of employee contribution potential.
With the right motivation and culture setting (which is perhaps what u r doing at C2W) productivity and innovation in India can and does go through the roof vs the west .. and your employees can be on jet skis all the time !
Aloke Bajpai
Couldn’t agree more with you Alok.
In an industry where all online travel companies have 300-1000 ppl working for them, when we tell people we do ~ 1M UUs with less than 20 ppl, we are met with disbelief all the time. But it’s true that a lean, well-motivated team can do 10x more than what one thinks they are capable of achieving since each employee feels more responsible and doesn’t work with that cog-in-the-wheel feeling.
Nayana Somaratna
@Sandeep – this just my personal opinion, but is there really so much ‘out of the box’ thinking in our countries ? In Sri Lanka at least, most people tend to fall into a groove and can’t get out of it.
Most people blame our education system which tends to emphasize ‘rote memorization’ and continuous slogging through lessons (although I personally think that people should just blame themselves for acting like cattle).
Sandeep Das said:
Sandeep Das
Agree Nayana.
This is all relative really, in my experience, the differentiator that we Asians possess at the global level is the ‘ jugaad ability’ … in corpo parlance this may be described as ‘the ability to adapt to unstructured & hitherto unknown scenarios, and win thru out-of-the-box strategies’ !
An organisation however needs to ensure that they use this ability of ours to get positive results, cuz it can go either way (-;
Nayana Somaratna said:
Anushka Shroff
Hi Sanjay
The “Firangs” mostly are brain dead..or let me say…with less grey cells…hence they employ more “Indians”…
Indians work 5-6 or 7 hours a day…as they do smart working ..& deliver optimum results..meeting deadine………and then they surf facebook….which is also beneficial to business related information and research too…alongwith some personal stuff….
..I agree on personal calls..which needs to be restricted or banned….:)during work hours…..but not everyone is on personal calls since one is accountable ..those who are on long personal calls are wrong hires ..
Productivity is sure with super planning and focus and execution…and above all Indian’s are excellent at multitasking…which cant be compared with “australians” or “firangs’ 🙂
Regards
SANJAY DODRAJKA said:
Gaurang Bhatt
It is more of Socio-Political issue. I am not saying this just to be different but don’t you think it is quite laudable to provide 10 workers their livelihood instead of 1 considering population difference between Italy and India.
We have our own work ethics and culture. Rather than aping western work culture and ethics, we can fine tuned our working style.
Also MD of your socks factory probably knew all those 10 workers and their families by name, do you think owner of Italian factory owner knew that girl?
Our mixing of work and personal life stems from belief that it is not separate. Earlier people used to have shop in front and residence in back with a curtain separating them. Even now some old trading businesses in central and south mumbai have their employees work in office during day and sleep there during night. Owner provides not only employment but lodging and boarding too.I have seen this happening in ‘pedhi’ kind of environment.
So efficiency doesn’t come from number of employees an organization employs but how customer perceives it. Today if we are world’s call center (take it positively) because of manpower, educated, process driven as well ability to think out of box.
Ashwin C Parulkar
Productivity is huge issue, and salaries r too low so any buiness would prefer keeping cheap labour instead process improvements, skill dev. and tech improvement which wd cost huge investments, we share a same work culture like our political leadership (2g spectrum).
also the guyes in ur sock factory now they will not loose there jobs come wht may, the Girl knows it that she will if she did not put on her rollerskets!!!!
Alok ‘Rodinhood’ Kejriwal said:
Nilesh Gamit
Awesome post … “One of the most common issues I have is when people dont know how to do something and spend a whole day figuring it out rather than just asking for help. ” – I too have experienced this.
The main reason I see is, some people are afraid of asking help to higher management considering, it might look bad if they ask questions. Sometime it is because of ego. Sometime it’s because of ignorance. Sometime people think that “I can’ do wrong as I know everything”.
Nilesh Gamit
Sateesh.. Couldn’t agree more. We hardly see people feeling ownership towards their work/company.
Sabarish Sasidharan
I am a guy who likes to do it by himself. One reason is that if I set out to learn how to do Z, I end up learning X,Y on the way. But if spoon fed, even Z is quickly forgotten. The more we learn by ourselves, the quicker we start learning as we recognize patterns and start adapting to situations pretty fast. That’s my perspective anyway. There’s got to be a balance though, I do ask for help if I can’t make headway without affecting daily schedules.
On the other hand, people who always ask for help are a nuisance as well. They just keep pestering others without learning by themselves. There’s got to be a balance.
Ashish Shah
Having worked in India for close to 10 years and now working in UK, i completely agree..In Indian IT , a team of 10 people are allocated for a project ,which includes programmers/module lead/team lead/tech lead/project lead/project manager /program manager.
People would start trickling at around 10 a.m, go for breakfast, check mails,chit chat , go for tea/smoke break.The again chit chat ,go for extended lunch..They will start real work after 5 …The rule is NEVER leave office before 7/8 p.m because its considered “half day”..
If you are efficient (or just work for 8 hours ) and try to leave by 5 p.m, you are considered “kaam-chor” and you can expect a meeting with PM about lack of commitment..This is a rule for ANY Indian IT company..One of the reason is that “on-site” comes to work at 6/7 p.m IST..But some how late-sitting has become a culture and people don’t focus on value addition..It is critical to be in office and be seen ..
In West, no one bothers about staying back late as long as you finish your work..INFACT, if you are sitting till late, you are considered inefficient and people look down upon you.I can go on and on but you get the point..
–rent over 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
just remembering this still holds true 🙂