The Connexion

This piece of writing is incited by a constant, ever-growing problem of traffic congestion that we witness everyday while traveling to and from place of work. As Bangalore gears up to the challenge of meeting the growing needs of huge volume of traffic by initiatives like Blackberrys for cops, Bharti Airtel’s tie-up with local administration to provide sms alerts on traffic information and GPS installation in buses, we, the people, need to realize that common sense can also relieve us from our daily woes. Besides that, there are open discussions on radio and other media, which are constantly building up consensus on how to smoothen the traffic flow on city roads.

There is a big difference between “traffic jams” and heavy flow of traffic, both in the cause and its ripple effects. Interestingly, there was this news that Microsoft has introduced a tool called “Clearflow” which directs drivers with route plans in a situation. Microsoft researchers can get away with algorithms designed to serve residents of Seattle, but what about Bangalore?? Ehh...that would take further research on city planning and even more complicated algorithms. Nonetheless it is a good attempt by the software giant to utilize artificial intelligence.

Please follow the link to vote on ways to relieve traffic chaos in Bangalore: http://debanjannwrites.blogspot.com/

Let us come back to ground realities……on the streets of Bangalore. With more mobile penetration in the city population, consumer demands are increasing on traffic information, according to analysts. Thus it might be a feasible for service providers to integrate real-time traffic information into mobile devices (which apparently “Clearflow” does not possess). Anyways, let us see what the impacts of a typical congestion are:

• Fuel waste due to idling, accelerating and braking, which contributes to increased emissions leading to global warming
• Time delays – most of our potentially productive time is lost in the roads
• Personal losses due to mishaps
• Increase in stress levels of motorists

Now, aren’t these problems handful to spur us finding some solution? It is. I have listed some key points that need to be addressed at the administrative levels. And, organizations like ours can play a vital role in encouraging healthy practices of commute and ensure that we contribute our bit on this issue of traffic. Car-pooling, mass transport facilities are some of ways to mention.

Below are areas of concern, the sooner they are addressed by the concerned authorities, the better it is.

Road infrastructure

• Increasing lanes
• Improving secondary roads
• Identifying new routes
• Increasing road capacity
  

Parking improvements

• Multilevel parking
• Incentives and disincentives on parking
• Generating awareness
  

The unplanned nature of growth in the city resulted in massive traffic gridlocks that the municipality attempted to ease by constructing a flyover system and by imposing one-way traffic systems. Ahh…..there it goes again. Problem of one-ways….well, reversible lanes/ways/roads based on peak and non-peak hours of traffic is indeed an alternative. Overall, the responsibility lies on each of us. How soon we realize the menace and act against it will depend on initiatives at an individual level. Anyways, that’s all I could sum up as of now……will keep posting on latest traffic solutions soon.

Debanjan Chakraborty

THE INCENTIVE TO WORK

As a people’s organization (which we consider ours as one), a significant element that contributes to the productivity of the organization is the trend in “employee sentiments.” I would say that given the long-working hours and continuous evolution of our work process, we always tend to be on our toes and this creates a very good competitive environment. May be, that’s what spurs me to consider our daily time “deadlines” as “lifelines.” I feel that its time we realized the key to balance our work and life. I believe that as we take our work in a more enjoyable manner, we create the opportunity to satisfy ourselves, with minimum conscious efforts.

Here, I would like to quote Mr. Srinivas Rao Kandula, Head-Human Resources, iGate, “Today, the fear of the unknown has affected employee sentiment. They are less ready to move to unfamiliar environs amidst new people.” With this kind of paradigm shift, I feel we owe ourselves the duty to motivate the self and peers alike. Each employee is an asset to the organization and it becomes vital to maintain the satisfaction levels in work. Adding to this is the issue of maintaining consistency in performance and keeping the motivation levels high, despite the monotonous work.

Now it’s the turn of the HR

When an employee joins an organization, the greatest challenge the HR department faces in most organizations is on-boarding new joinees. I strongly believe that the new entrant needs to be made aware of the realistic situation from day-one itself, by keeping an eye on the motivation levels of the employee. Motivational training is still in its evolving phase, but we can always start it right where we work.

Creating the environment for knowledge-sharing activities

I feel there are some ways by which we can break monotony in work and fillip ourselves up:

1. We need to identify whether team members view knowledge as a public good belonging to the whole organization. Motivating employees to share knowledge on any domain they are comfortable with will foster a seamless transition.

2. One common constraint here is, when individuals give the highest priority to the interests of the organization, they tend to shy away from contributing knowledge for a variety of reasons. The reasons being:

• Fear of criticism
• Unsure of the significance of contribution thereby afraid of misleading the team members

3. To remove the identified barriers, there is a need for developing various types of trust, ranging from the knowledge-based to the institution-based trust.

The benefits of a motivated team:

• Motivated employees always look for better ways to do a job
• Motivated employees are more quality oriented
• Motivated workers are more productive

The aforesaid points can be collated to reach a conclusion, which justifies the need to spruce up ourselves and strike a balance between our work and life. For satisfaction in our profession highly complements our social well-being. The more we enjoy the daily responsibilities in office, keeping realistic targets and fulfilling our priorities, the better will be our holistic growth.