Hypocrites exist in all shapes and sizes. Some of them become CEOs of companies, others rule entire nations, many reside right next to us in our own homes, while some super hypocrites live in places of worship. Since we are on LinkedIn, let’s talk about a specific kind of Hypocrisy, unique to Hiring Agencies, and Human Resources. Without much ado, I will sum it up with a single conversation.
If I, as an employer, want to let go of an employee, I ask the employee to leave immediately, firing on the spot. But, If the employee wants to leave, and I need him, I force him to stay for three full months and call it serving the notice period. I also use the three-month notice period as a restraint, because no company would wait for three months to hire an employee, as they want resources to work on the projects immediately.
This ensures that if an employee wants to find a new job, he has to quit the job without having any offer in hand and then take the risk of finding a job in the last one month or go for a few months without any salary
If I wish to hire an employee, I want him to be available immediately, but another company wants to hire my employees, then they will have to wait two/three-month notice periods.
CONSEQUENCES
A few LinkedIn posts from recruiters inspired me to write this article. I would like to post a snapshot of those discussions because they serve as exhibits of the hypocrisy in action and its repercussions.
IMMEDIATE JOINERS ONLY
This post explains why and how the Indian IT Industry has 90 day notice periods and why you see Job Requirements that only ask for Immediate Joiners in the Indian Job Market!
RACE TO THE BOTTOM FOR COMPANIES
The excerpt below shows how the market is now dictated by job seekers and not job providers. Job Seekers can now simply pit one company against the other because he has all the time in the world to pick a company. This race to the top for companies eventually results in inflated salaries for job seekers.
Charlie Munger in his work – Poor Charlies Almanac, warns buyers to keep away from any auction, both Charlie and Warren Buffet never attend an action, because it will definitely result in a loss for everyone bidding.
The shortsighted policies created by the industry resulted in a bidding war to purchase talent and inflating the costs to find talent.
ECONOMIC LOSSES TO THE JOB MARKET
These long notice periods aren’t merely injurious for employees, they are also injurious for the entire ecosystem of employers. This is a classic example of the Cobra Effect or the repercussions of trying to optimize only one variable in the system without paying any heed to the second and third-order effects. What started out as a policy to protect the interests of the employers in the short run by effectively reducing the attrition rates, has come back to bite them in the butt, as it becomes ever more difficult to find employees who can join immediately.
Business India estimates the hidden cost of the 3-month notice period to be around, Six Billion. This Draconian practice of holding employees hostage has to come to an end, before it destroys the entire corporate sector in India.
How does 90 days notice period incur financial losses to organization?
Misalignment of company vision
Spread of negativity
No more responsible for any work
Demotivated & Frustrated employees
Some of other expenses that involves team
1. Disturbance cost:
2. Context switching cost.
3. Negativity consuming cost.
4. Internet bandwidth consumption cost.
5. Cost of missed deadlines.
This article estimates the cost incurred by the organization to keep each misaligned person to stay in the organization for 90 whole days.
But many startups have understood how to bridge this gap by creating job boards that only source job seekers who are currently serving their notice periods, which only means that the demand for these candidates is going to rise and makes it impossible to close in on any job offer.
This issue will not be resolved by HRs anytime soon, nor the organizations. The epitome of hypocrisy is that they don’t and can’t realize their hypocrisy, thanks to the Dunning Kruger effect, it prevents a fool from realizing his foolishness. This policy will only be retained and taken as an industry-standard as startups follow suit.
