Analyzing flight of talent from Government-owned Mining Companies in India - My Article in the Mining India magazine
Recently one of the newspapers carried an article regarding large scale exodus of management trainees from Coal India Limited (CIL). These were mostly the students picked on campuses of premier engineering and management institutes of the country who had joined CIL only a couple of years ago, largely during the global financial crisis years. During the time when most campuses witnessed sharp fall in number of usual companies visiting for recruitments, public sector enterprises like CIL saw an opportunity and made offers that attracted graduating students in scores. There is no denying that some of those students who chose to take these offers from government owned firms like CIL may have been looking for merely a job, and not remain un-placed after hard work to earn their degrees and diplomas. That they landed in these jobs, for whatever may have been the circumstances, would not the likes of CIL, the world’s largest coal mining company, desired to keep them for good. This trend of talent fleeing in short span is particularly true for mining companies, and it has been accentuated much in the last decade when career options widened for engineers, more particularly mining engineers.
If there is a study done for the mining engineers’ recruitment by NMDC Limited at Indian School of Mines campus for the last 10 years, the trend would become visible and almost shape up like a law. Executive trainees join NMDC and tend to leave in substantially large proportion within one or two years, several to information technology companies, some to pursue higher studies and a few of even other mining companies.
Reasons for talent flight
Some of the key reasons stated in various news reports and analyses of talent flight from mining companies in India are the following:
1) Salaries – it has been stated that for comparable skills and experiences, government owned mining companies do not provide comparable salaries. This may be particularly true when management graduates of premier institutes such as Indian Institutes of Management are considered. One or two years into their career, management graduates from IIMs in private sector tend to get higher salaries. Even for mining graduates from institutes like Indian School of Mines, private sector miners offer better salaries.
2) Over-management – Employees often complain about too many layers of management in mines of government owner miners. In a shift, there are junior managers, assistant managers, deputy managers, managers and senior managers to oversee operations. Such layers at workplaces do not foster employee empowerment, employee enablement, and broader spans of control by managers.
3) Favoritism – Each employee needs to be treated equally. Employees want fair treatment for policies, behavioral guidelines, time off, valued assignments, opportunities for development, frequent communication, and any other work related decisions. When there are several layers of management for small pieces of work, perception of favoritism is difficult to avoid.
4) Channelizing innovation and creativity – the new ideas from the management and engineering graduates are typically throttled and there is a great thrust on maintaining status quo in government owned mining companies, some of which may be technically justifiable but even for those the communication is not made appropriately. The positive energy that fresh graduates bring to the table is seldom tapped constructively, which leads to frustration and slowly the levels rise to an extent that employees tend to contemplate quitting.
These problems may be common for government owned companies in even other industries, but these are compounded in their manifestation in mining companies due to the work locations – which in most cases are remote which entails sacrifices on family fronts and also has lack of amenities that even smaller towns provide these days. Essentially, a group of youngsters located at mine sites that are graduates of premier engineering and management institutes begin to complain and their collective negative vibes make their individual enthusiasm wane faster, which eventually leads to exodus the moment an alternative opportunity presents itself.
Motivation
Analysis of motivational factors for fresh graduates in government owned mining companies on the well-known Maslow’s framework will help assess better. The framework of needs is presented as:
1) Biological and physiological needs such as those of food, shelter, water, clothing and others are met in the work places, although when compared with those in the cities, these will fall short of the standards expected by fresh graduates. Government owned mining companies do provide accommodation and sometimes canteen facilities for fresh graduates that join the ranks, but in some cases due to poorer maintenance and lax control on quality, the standards deteriorate. For example, in Donimalai iron ore mining project of NMDC where the executive trainee hostel is located by the main road that iron ore loaded trucks ply on, the rooms tend to have dust laden walls and floors and bed-sheets need to be washed everyday just for them to be fit to rest on. Even for food, the fresh graduates (typically bachelors and spinsters) find few options to their liking.
2) Safety needs are well met by the government owned mining companies through provision of security staff and maintaining law and order in mining townships. However, when it comes of coal mining projects in Naxal-infested areas, there have been raising concerns about safety. These tend to keep the families of graduates concerned which impact the motivation levels of the graduates too.
3) Belongingness and love needs are met to some extent. In mining townships, due to smaller societies the population feels connected. Graduates, for example, joining from the mining engineering streams of Indian School of Mines, IT BHU and IIT Kharagpur find several of their alumni in the organization living in the mining townships, many of whom connect well with the youngsters and partially substitute the family needs. The bonding tends be strong and even after the exodus, the memories of those days spend in mining townships tend to keep them connected.
4) Esteem needs although as defined by the framework comes in a little later in career but has high in priority list for those graduating from the premier institutes, the students join in with enthusiasm to prove themselves in the industry. The scope and span of work on the ground, however, does not permit incubation, experimentation and investment of time and effort in new ideas, leaving the enthusiasm transform into exasperation. The line managers in most government-owned mining companies tend to be totally focused on meeting their shift production targets which leaves little scope of looking at scope of process or performance improvements.
5) Self-actualization needs concern realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences, which are a step ahead of esteem needs. Needless to say that the work environment in government-owned mining companies in general tend to have little scope for meeting this need for a graduate. Learning and development typically are at the core for realizing personal potential, the employees that come from premier engineering and management institutes tend to have strong appetite for learning and applying the learnt concepts, which is encouraged in their campuses. The realities of the ground where production processes have remained unchanged, unchallenged and unquestioned sees the velocity of learning ceases to excite and comes to halt quite quickly, leaving the employees hungry and unhappy with their growth prospects.
Communication
Eric Berne developed his theories of Transactional Analysis. According to this theory verbal communication that is at the center of human social relationships happens through the transaction stimulus, which is responded through the transaction response. Berne also said that each person is made up of three ego states – parent, adult and child – and communication transactions happen through these ego states. It has been observed that parent ego state is defined by authority, absorbed experiences, conditioning and attitudes through learning. Child ego state is defined by feelings and emotions through internal reactions to an external event. Adult ego state is defined from the ability to think and determine actions based on logic and analysis.
Communication between ego states determines the success of communication, including building long term perceptions. It has been observed that adult ego state to adult ego state communications are suited best for organizational purposes, which keeps the balance. However, for the fresh graduates from the engineering and management streams joining a government-owned mining company the communication transactions are distorted. While the managers and supervisors tend to have parent ego state that requires obedience from a child ego state graduate trainee, the graduate trainee tends to have adult ego state that requires similar adult ego state in the manager and supervisor and requires treatment as an equal. This distortion leads to perceptions about the management being authoritarian and graduates being unresponsive and rebellion. As this pattern of communication continues the perceptional gap widens and there tends to disillusionment for the graduates who tend to be encouraged and nurtured to take the adult ego state in their engineering and management education. Disillusionment typically builds the discontentment and graduates tend to look out for options outside the organization for a new opportunity that promises among other things a better adult-to-adult states communication.
Communication also tends to happen at a greater frequency between the immediate supervisor and manager and hence, the responsibility of talent retention or flight may be ascribed largely to the people taking these roles for fresh engineering and management graduates. According to a study, more people leave their bosses than their organization. This may be also due to the mode of transactions in communication, and in government owned mining companies, the mode of transaction does not seem to help the cause of talent retention.
Other factors
Majority of engineering and management graduates think that mining as a career option is unattractive because of lack of social life, unattractive working conditions at mine and poor infrastructure facilities at mine townships. Brand value of government owned mining companies also tend be a concern, more for management graduates than mining engineering graduates, who look for a growth options in their fields of speciation in long term. While on job there are vacuums in mentoring and counselling that these graduates encounter, which is necessary to guide them on focusing on the real job content and career growth prospects. Several times just the presence of someone to listen to the professional and personal difficulties faced in the mining projects can turn the decision of a graduate to stay longer, but most often than not the organizations fail to provide appropriate conduits. Management and leadership appears distant and unresponsive, and sometimes plain indifferent, when the challenges that the graduates face can be easily resolved.
Conclusion
It is, therefore, easy to conclude that there are reasons for the flight of talent from the government owned mining companies in particular. Some of these can be addressed by the companies by preparing to adopt new blue blood on the block and being responsive. There are others for which the government owned companies need to make additional efforts. It may be well if the long term focus of the government owned mining companies is set on improvement of working conditions at mine site, improvement of infrastructure facilities of mining towns, revising salary structure and linking it to performance, incorporating job rotation policies and enriching jobs, and brand building and awareness programs. The flight of talent can be arrested provided there are changes in the way the leadership of the companies approach the issue. If they continue to see themselves as helpless due to government ownership, there does not seem to a way out of the talent crisis in the medium to long term for them.
If there is a study done for the mining engineers’ recruitment by NMDC Limited at Indian School of Mines campus for the last 10 years, the trend would become visible and almost shape up like a law. Executive trainees join NMDC and tend to leave in substantially large proportion within one or two years, several to information technology companies, some to pursue higher studies and a few of even other mining companies.
Reasons for talent flight
Some of the key reasons stated in various news reports and analyses of talent flight from mining companies in India are the following:
1) Salaries – it has been stated that for comparable skills and experiences, government owned mining companies do not provide comparable salaries. This may be particularly true when management graduates of premier institutes such as Indian Institutes of Management are considered. One or two years into their career, management graduates from IIMs in private sector tend to get higher salaries. Even for mining graduates from institutes like Indian School of Mines, private sector miners offer better salaries.
2) Over-management – Employees often complain about too many layers of management in mines of government owner miners. In a shift, there are junior managers, assistant managers, deputy managers, managers and senior managers to oversee operations. Such layers at workplaces do not foster employee empowerment, employee enablement, and broader spans of control by managers.
3) Favoritism – Each employee needs to be treated equally. Employees want fair treatment for policies, behavioral guidelines, time off, valued assignments, opportunities for development, frequent communication, and any other work related decisions. When there are several layers of management for small pieces of work, perception of favoritism is difficult to avoid.
4) Channelizing innovation and creativity – the new ideas from the management and engineering graduates are typically throttled and there is a great thrust on maintaining status quo in government owned mining companies, some of which may be technically justifiable but even for those the communication is not made appropriately. The positive energy that fresh graduates bring to the table is seldom tapped constructively, which leads to frustration and slowly the levels rise to an extent that employees tend to contemplate quitting.
These problems may be common for government owned companies in even other industries, but these are compounded in their manifestation in mining companies due to the work locations – which in most cases are remote which entails sacrifices on family fronts and also has lack of amenities that even smaller towns provide these days. Essentially, a group of youngsters located at mine sites that are graduates of premier engineering and management institutes begin to complain and their collective negative vibes make their individual enthusiasm wane faster, which eventually leads to exodus the moment an alternative opportunity presents itself.
Motivation
Analysis of motivational factors for fresh graduates in government owned mining companies on the well-known Maslow’s framework will help assess better. The framework of needs is presented as:
1) Biological and physiological needs such as those of food, shelter, water, clothing and others are met in the work places, although when compared with those in the cities, these will fall short of the standards expected by fresh graduates. Government owned mining companies do provide accommodation and sometimes canteen facilities for fresh graduates that join the ranks, but in some cases due to poorer maintenance and lax control on quality, the standards deteriorate. For example, in Donimalai iron ore mining project of NMDC where the executive trainee hostel is located by the main road that iron ore loaded trucks ply on, the rooms tend to have dust laden walls and floors and bed-sheets need to be washed everyday just for them to be fit to rest on. Even for food, the fresh graduates (typically bachelors and spinsters) find few options to their liking.
2) Safety needs are well met by the government owned mining companies through provision of security staff and maintaining law and order in mining townships. However, when it comes of coal mining projects in Naxal-infested areas, there have been raising concerns about safety. These tend to keep the families of graduates concerned which impact the motivation levels of the graduates too.
3) Belongingness and love needs are met to some extent. In mining townships, due to smaller societies the population feels connected. Graduates, for example, joining from the mining engineering streams of Indian School of Mines, IT BHU and IIT Kharagpur find several of their alumni in the organization living in the mining townships, many of whom connect well with the youngsters and partially substitute the family needs. The bonding tends be strong and even after the exodus, the memories of those days spend in mining townships tend to keep them connected.
4) Esteem needs although as defined by the framework comes in a little later in career but has high in priority list for those graduating from the premier institutes, the students join in with enthusiasm to prove themselves in the industry. The scope and span of work on the ground, however, does not permit incubation, experimentation and investment of time and effort in new ideas, leaving the enthusiasm transform into exasperation. The line managers in most government-owned mining companies tend to be totally focused on meeting their shift production targets which leaves little scope of looking at scope of process or performance improvements.
5) Self-actualization needs concern realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences, which are a step ahead of esteem needs. Needless to say that the work environment in government-owned mining companies in general tend to have little scope for meeting this need for a graduate. Learning and development typically are at the core for realizing personal potential, the employees that come from premier engineering and management institutes tend to have strong appetite for learning and applying the learnt concepts, which is encouraged in their campuses. The realities of the ground where production processes have remained unchanged, unchallenged and unquestioned sees the velocity of learning ceases to excite and comes to halt quite quickly, leaving the employees hungry and unhappy with their growth prospects.
Communication
Eric Berne developed his theories of Transactional Analysis. According to this theory verbal communication that is at the center of human social relationships happens through the transaction stimulus, which is responded through the transaction response. Berne also said that each person is made up of three ego states – parent, adult and child – and communication transactions happen through these ego states. It has been observed that parent ego state is defined by authority, absorbed experiences, conditioning and attitudes through learning. Child ego state is defined by feelings and emotions through internal reactions to an external event. Adult ego state is defined from the ability to think and determine actions based on logic and analysis.
Communication between ego states determines the success of communication, including building long term perceptions. It has been observed that adult ego state to adult ego state communications are suited best for organizational purposes, which keeps the balance. However, for the fresh graduates from the engineering and management streams joining a government-owned mining company the communication transactions are distorted. While the managers and supervisors tend to have parent ego state that requires obedience from a child ego state graduate trainee, the graduate trainee tends to have adult ego state that requires similar adult ego state in the manager and supervisor and requires treatment as an equal. This distortion leads to perceptions about the management being authoritarian and graduates being unresponsive and rebellion. As this pattern of communication continues the perceptional gap widens and there tends to disillusionment for the graduates who tend to be encouraged and nurtured to take the adult ego state in their engineering and management education. Disillusionment typically builds the discontentment and graduates tend to look out for options outside the organization for a new opportunity that promises among other things a better adult-to-adult states communication.
Communication also tends to happen at a greater frequency between the immediate supervisor and manager and hence, the responsibility of talent retention or flight may be ascribed largely to the people taking these roles for fresh engineering and management graduates. According to a study, more people leave their bosses than their organization. This may be also due to the mode of transactions in communication, and in government owned mining companies, the mode of transaction does not seem to help the cause of talent retention.
Other factors
Majority of engineering and management graduates think that mining as a career option is unattractive because of lack of social life, unattractive working conditions at mine and poor infrastructure facilities at mine townships. Brand value of government owned mining companies also tend be a concern, more for management graduates than mining engineering graduates, who look for a growth options in their fields of speciation in long term. While on job there are vacuums in mentoring and counselling that these graduates encounter, which is necessary to guide them on focusing on the real job content and career growth prospects. Several times just the presence of someone to listen to the professional and personal difficulties faced in the mining projects can turn the decision of a graduate to stay longer, but most often than not the organizations fail to provide appropriate conduits. Management and leadership appears distant and unresponsive, and sometimes plain indifferent, when the challenges that the graduates face can be easily resolved.
Conclusion
It is, therefore, easy to conclude that there are reasons for the flight of talent from the government owned mining companies in particular. Some of these can be addressed by the companies by preparing to adopt new blue blood on the block and being responsive. There are others for which the government owned companies need to make additional efforts. It may be well if the long term focus of the government owned mining companies is set on improvement of working conditions at mine site, improvement of infrastructure facilities of mining towns, revising salary structure and linking it to performance, incorporating job rotation policies and enriching jobs, and brand building and awareness programs. The flight of talent can be arrested provided there are changes in the way the leadership of the companies approach the issue. If they continue to see themselves as helpless due to government ownership, there does not seem to a way out of the talent crisis in the medium to long term for them.
posted by Dipesh Dipu @ 3:27 AM
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