Kavitha Gupta's blog

  Firing employees for behaviour outside the office: What do HR policies and the law say? Recent incidents have proved that professional lives are impacted by the choices made in personal lives. This points to a larger resetting of the HR rulebook, which employees must keep in mind.   ABHISHEK SAHU   FEBRUARY 16, 2023  / 11:38 AM IST Law experts say a company’s ‘Code of Conduct’ and ‘Code of Ethics’ are embedded in the terms of employment and employees themselves agree to follow the same through their journey with it. American financial services company Wells Fargo recently sacked Shankar Mishra, its India Vice-President, after he allegedly urinated on a woman on an Air India flight. Max Life Insurance fired its deputy manager Manish Khattar, while PR firm Media Mantra gave Kamaljeet Kaur marching orders after both were arrested for allegedly torturing and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl who worked for them as a domestic help. These incidents show that people’...

The 6-D model of national culture Geert Hofstede, assisted by others, came up with six basic issues that society needs to come to term with in order to organize itself. These are called dimensions of culture. Each of them has been expressed on a scale that runs roughly from 0 to 100. Dimension maps of the world: Individualism Each dimension has been derived by comparing many, but not all, countries in the world. The findings can be summarized into six world maps of the distribution of that dimension. Of course, in reality there can be quite a bit of within-country variation; these maps should be seen as rough 'climate maps' of culture. Individualism Individualism is the extent to which people feel independent, as opposed to being interdependent as members of larger wholes. Individualism does not mean egoism. It means that individual choices and decisions are expected. Collectivism does not mean closeness. It means that one "knows one's place...

How to Mend a Work Relationship by  Brianna Barker Caza  ,  Mara Olekalns  and  Timothy J. Vogus February 14, 2020 Workplaces are communities, built around the relationships we have with our peers. When these relationships are strong, they can be a source of  energy ,  learning , and support. But when they fracture, even just temporarily, they become sources of frustration that  harm both people and organizations . Left unchecked, even a small conflict can  spiral  out of control, leading to anger and resentment. That’s why managers and employees need to be able to manage and rebound from these conflicts. We wanted to understand how relationships can be strengthened to avoid potential breakdowns, and the best ways to repair them when breakdowns occur. We reviewed about 300 studies, published in management and psychology in the last 15 years, focusing on workplace relationships, relationship transgressions, and relationship ...

How to Succeed When You Have Big Shoes to Fill Rebecca Zucker February 17, 2020 Starting any new job, whether it’s an internal promotion or a new opportunity at a different organization, can feel a bit nerve-wracking. It’s all that much more daunting when you have big shoes to fill. When Tim Cook took over for Steve Jobs in 2011, Apple employees — along with shareholders and the rest of the world — wondered if he could fill his larger-than-life predecessor’s shoes and maintain the company’s momentum. No pressure. While you likely won’t have the entire world watching you, taking over for someone who is highly regarded or has had a significant positive impact on the business — or likely, both — can be exciting and scary at the same time. The scary part is that, according to a  2018 McKinsey report , nearly half of all leadership transitions fail. The report also highlights that 74% of U.S. leaders and 83% of global leaders think they are unprepared for their new roles, a...