The Reality Of The Distracted Employee

New research shows that seven out of 10 employees in India are insecure. This leads to anxiety, which in turn leads to unhappiness. Time for some hard questions

- HARISH BIJOOR

The 'new' four-letter word in our midst today is jobs. Those who have them are unhappy, and those who don't have them are equally unhappy. Those who are doing well in their jobs are insecure, and those who are doing badly even more so. Those who have good jobs are looking to do something else, and those who don't have those jobs are looking for those very same jobs. I am venturing out to say this based on a new piece of employee-exploration research.

I am just out of a skin-deep research exercise that covers 8,000-plus people all across India. This is an exercise carried out as a snap-poll across terrains of work that actually pay a monthly salary to an individual on their rolls. This is not about the gig worker. This is about anyone who has an appointment letter that makes them a 'permanent employee' (whatever that means). This research covers both physical and virtual spaces of work. It covers the IT worker as much as it covers those in manufacturing, telecom, pharma and nine other verticals of work that employ large numbers in India today.

The output is shocking. The one key element in the jobs marketplace of India is insecurity (71 percent). The second element is anxiety (59 percent) and the third in the pecking order is unhappiness (47 percent).

The headline output of this exploration—if it is to be believed—is that seven out of 10 employees in India are insecure. Insecurity can be good or bad. While insecurity is good to an extent to the employer, it is equally bad, as it makes the mind of the employee focused on job searching in the world outside that much more than focusing on the job at hand. The distracted employee is a reality at the workplace. And this leads to a lack of productivity.