PERCEPTION OUT OF THE BOX…

In a metropolitan town retail store a man wearing a blazer, tie and sunglasses on carrying a laptop walks in. He gets all the attention of the salesmen thinking of a potential customer. Where as another man with a simple clothes also walks in who hardly gets any attention because of his overall projection. In reality the man with the blazer was killing his time by doing window-shopping because he was supposed to go for a movie after an hour with his friend. He was dressed such since he was coming directly from his office who had no intention of purchasing anything. Whereas the man with simple clothing had come with an intention to purchase for a wedding who unfortunately did not get any attention from the salesmen.

Often we come across such incidents knowingly or unknowingly. This is how we perceive or assume things. Perception is as simple or common as human thinking.

As human resource professionals we too come across such kind of perception many a times on a day-to-day basis.

Instance 1. An Employee who has changed their jobs frequently in the early stage.

Whenever we come across a resume where an employee has changed his jobs from several companies, we frame a picture of that person stating that he would do the same incase he is offered a job for the current position. It is rare that we take out some quality time & analyse the stage of the career at which the person has changed his/her jobs. When a person starts his career he wants to achieve his goal at the earliest. Hence in this rat race he gets misguided from different sources and jumps from one job to another. Generally this happens in the first three to fours years of an career. But at later stage after getting the experience, he faces the reality and develops the maturity to take his own decision firmly after which he tends to stabilize at the later companies where he has joins.

But the question arises that how many times do we meticulously understand the psychology behind such profiles we come across. We frame a perception in our mind.

Instance 2: An employee who has got a pink slip in his career.

An employee performing well in his division, but still getting a pink slip. Is it possible? We tend to draw our forehead lines giving a thought on this. There are many of them at the recession stage who had got the pink slips from their employers. When ever we come across any such candidature the first thing what strikes our mind is that the employee must be a poor performer. Have we ever thought to judge/test his capability from the interview, his past confirmation letters! He may be performing good in his division, but overall if the company performs poor and as a result manpower reduction had to be done which resulted his termination. For an instance even if we consider that he performance was bad in the previous company, then what about his performance in his earlier companies? Even Sachin Tendulkar had gone through a bad phase. Even he used to never score a century in all matches he played. Infact he can perform much better than an average employee. Then the question arises that why do we have a perception that employees who had got a pink slip must be a poor performer.

Instance 3: Employee Resigned from his job without another job in hand.

When we come across any candidate stating that he had resigned from his job due to some an avoidable situations without a job in hand, we generally perceive that he must have been terminated or he lacks in decision-making or he does not have a sense of responsibility. But the reality may be that due to unavoidable situations the employee had to take a decision at that stage of his career where he had to fulfill some responsibility on a priority. But we generally perceive in the different way. The person who had left the job might perform much better than the any other average current employee because he has gone through the pain of uncertainness. His condition is like a biker waiting for the green signal to go green whirling his accelerator to zoom. But the question arises why do we as HR Professional perceive in this way!!!

These were just few examples to mention. Similar to these we come across several instances on day-to-day basis where if we take a second and think out of the box we can give more productive talents to our organization.