The lack of productivity in India is not entirely due to all this rot about
LIC policies and such (and most large employers have inhouse concierge
services like les concierges if you dont want to do this stuff yourself).
It is the total lack of process and SOP, with bureaucracy substituting for
both, and a tendency to escalate tickets / send emails around to twenty
totally irrelevant people who then escalate elsewhere with even more
damnfool comments, rather than send them to the right place.
I've had the unique experience of seeing a ticket chain at a place (not a
current or former workplace) that follows the follow the sun model .. an
asian country handles the ticket during their work hours, hands off to
another country when it gets to the end of their shift etc etc and so on
down the time zones ..
If you've seen that kind of ticket especially in a long and complex enough
issue, you can graph and profile countries based on the stupidity, lack or
process or both in handling the ticket. In fact if you do that it might
make sense to stop sending a certain class of tickets to a country
altogether and reassign staff to working less complex issues.
[unobtrusively i hope and with an eye to the politics]
India is actually rather better (if only slightly) than Indonesia or
Thailand. Mainland china streets better than india (and far worse than hong
kong). Malaysia a bit worse than mainland china (and rather more laid back
where china and hk have a ferocious work ethic)
US well ahead of all these .. and Europe streets ahead of the US (and
particularly israel, eastern europe and russia - amazing tech skills and a
horrible lack of communication skills and soft skills). Places like
Singapore or Western Europe are probably the best from a productivity POV -
and horrifically expensive so you wouldnt want to base too many support
staff there at all.
Of course this is all wild generalizing and armchair theory. Confidently
look forward to IG and others pulling these apart and proving me wrong (and
I hope I am wrong, really).
srs
Suresh Ramasubramanian [01/06/09 20:15 +0530]:
Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote:
In my case, after that nightmare with the insurance agency, I dumped them
and switched to ICICI Lombard, which let me buy it online. ICICI also cost
some 30% more, but at that point I was very happy to pay the markup.
Try to claim from them I guess? Or from most of the TPAs out there? You'll soon
learn that rules are on paper and meant to be interpreted in weird and
wonderful ways. Even if you pay online.
The government owned banks / insurance providers screw you over far less than
the private ones do.
no dropbox. Have to pay your LIC premium? Why yes, they take online
payments, but first visit your branch and apply for permission. What's that,
Actually, for my LIC I just registered my policies online, and made a payment
or two online. Then after some time when I was passing by the area where the
LIC office was, I just handed them printouts from the licindia.com online
payment site - showing the policy registrations. And I think also the original
policies and some ID so they could crosscheck. Quite legitimate that.. ensures
that you didn’t screw up and enter someone else's policy there.
If this puts me in the category of those people who are mysteriously of
lower productivity when in India, so be it. The price of added productivity
is not worth it. I'd rather be unhurried and focus on doing something
meaningful.
Been working here (from home) for the past 8 years. And I think pulling a few
more work hours than you a week. Havent seen lost productivity yet. And I'm
paying stuff online (electricity and water utility bills, income tax, property
tax, etc) that I'd have to queue up for earlier. And I'm getting my renewed
passports sooner - and on time when they promise it, like a week after I apply
for them. Its getting better - possibly because I've seen worse.
srs
