Avoiding square pegs in round holes

MANAGING: Marico finds a way of assigning employees roles that fit their personalities.

Why do employees slip into boredom? The answer: they don't seem to be enjoying the task at hand. And what can companies do to remove that feeling of drudgery? Reply: administer a psychological questionnaire to gauge employees' interests and give them assignments they would enjoy.

At least that's what Marico Industries claims to be doing by launching an initiative termed "Career Anchors". Career Anchors are certain statements on which employees have to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 6, where 1 means that the statement is never true while 6 means that the statement is always true.

For example, an employee has to rate himself on a statement like "I dream of being so good at what I do that my expert advice will be sought continually"; or for that matter, on things such as, "I would rather resign than be put into a job that would compromise my ability to pursue personal concerns"; and so forth.

The rationale of launching the tool? "It's all about telling the employees what kind of work will be enjoyable to them," says Pankaj Bhargava, Head of HR at Marico. But there are also advantage for the company too.

First, it will be able to get the full involvement of employees in their work. Secondly, it also helps in improving the performance of who may be under-performing due to a "lack of interest" in a role.

For instance, one employee who had been assigned a role that called for general management skills, where he had to lead and drive a team, was found to be under-performing. Through the Career Anchors initiative Marico discovered that he would perform well only as a standalone contributor. It therefore shifted him to such a role to enhance his performance.

Another advantage of Career Anchors, says Bhargava, is that an under-performer can also be told as to what kind of roles he will perform better in, were he to land a job in another organisation. One individual at Marico was managing a team. Through Career Anchors, the company found out and told him that he would perform better in a sales job.

The result: the new job that he found in another company is now aligned to his core strengths, say company officials. As for other employees, the company is able to give them roles in which their strengths are utilised to the fullest.

One manager who was into commodity buying was transferred to a business development role, since his innate interests lay in building and managing relationships.

To get a buy-in from the senior management, Marico administered the test on all senior management teams. Having realised the benefits for themselves, they let it trickle down the hierarchy.