Introduction
Anand Rathore, the HR manager in City Development Corporation (CDC) is sitting alone in his cabin with the personal file of Ms. Shiela Sen in front of him. He has just come out of Mr. Shyam Rathi, the new CEO’s cabin. Just 10 minutes back, Mr. Rathi asked him to fudge the personal file of Shiela, an erstwhile trainee officer, who has filed a complaint against the company and Mr. Rathi in the women’s commission for taking action against her for utilizing her maternal leave. Initially, Anand had thought that Mr. Rathi was joking, but Mr. Rathi had been quite blunt about it. An adverse judgment from the women’s commission would not only be fateful for Mr. Rathi, but would also hit CDC hard and this would not be a publicity which any company would exactly look forward to. Anand has always been an upright officer and even though in the past he has had to take actions, which he did not confirm to in the past, he has never actually done some deliberate act as tampering with someone’s file. This totally goes against his ethics and values, something he has inculcated since his college days and was definitely against the lessons he had gathered from his MBA in human resources. Hence, he is facing a huge dilemma in this unusual case all the more, because this one hits home.
The Case of Ms. Shiela Sen
Ms. Shiela Sen is an engineer who passed out from Maximillian University Engineering Department 3 years ago. Not only was she a brilliant student, but was also ambitious and a hard working. Due to her outstanding academics and research work, she got offers from the best companies in the country in her sector. However, she was supposed to get married just after passing out to her childhood friend and senior in college, Varun who was working as a junior executive in BSNL in Delhi. Hence, Shiela took up the offer from City Development Corporation (CDC), a company based out of Delhi. She was given the post of Trainee Officer, Design and Development and she would be absorbed as a permanent employee at the end of the 3 years training period, with a promotion.
City Development Corporation
The hierarchy of CDC has been that all engineers in CDC ultimately report to the CEO, who provides annual appraisal to all the engineers based on their past yearly performance. Every trainee officer has to serve a training period of 3 years and is eligible for a permanent posting and promotion if they get more than 5 in their ratings for 3 consecutive years. However, if they got a rating of 2 or less on any particular year, then they would be liable to be terminated from the service. In any given year, the reporting boss can give appraisal rating points from 1 to 6, 6 being ‘outstanding’ and 1 being ‘poor’. The reasons for a rating are not disclosed to the employee and only the CEO and the HR Manager are aware of the reasons for rating which are recorded in the employee’s personal file.
Shiela, being a consistent hard worker, had been getting a rating of 5 or 6 since the year she joined CDC, 3 years back. In the FY 2007-08, she got a rating of 5 and in 08-09 she got a rating of. However, in the FY 2007-08, she got a rating of 2.
Since, Shiela’s training period of 3 years had not got completed, she was liable to be terminated from the posting. The day on which the promotion for the trainee officers of Shiela’s batch was coming out, there was absolutely no tension on Shiela. She had been a diligent worker and had shown her capability as well as leadership skills. She had been articulate, hard-working and resolute and it made her a demanding team member but at the same time, an indispensable one. All the other Trainee Officers were confident that Shiela would definitely get promoted to the permanent post and they had even planned a party that evening. However, when the order came out regarding the promotion to permanent posting, Shiela was shocked to see that all the other Trainee Officers had been promoted and only her services had been terminated.
On enquiring from the HR department, and probing deeply, she came to know that the new CEO, Mr. Shyam Rathi, who had joined a few months back, had given her a poor appraisal rating in FY 2009-10, which had put paid to her chances of getting the regular promotion. On trying to figure, why she had got such poor appraisal on this particular year, she realized that this was the year when she had taken a maternal leave for six months, when her son, Sunil was born. She remembered that she did not take the leave out of compulsion and had attended office till the advanced stages of her pregnancy. She had even planned to take only 3 months of the scheduled maternity leave, but some complication during her pregnancy had upset her plans. Sunil had been born before his due date and was suffering from jaundice and the doctors had almost given up hope regarding his survival. Shiela and her husband took him to the best hospital in the country and after a struggle of 4 months, during which both the mother and the child had to remain hospitalized, Sunil finally recovered. The very next week, Shiela had joined office, in spite of being mentally and physically drained of the entire episode. And now, she realized that she was being penalized heavily for taking a maternity leave, which was in fact, a rightful leave provided to her according to the laws of the land. She remembered how much she had given for the company, the endless nights she had spent finalizing plans for big projects undertaken by CDC. Now, the company was not even ready to acknowledge her contribution and due to some bizarre reason, had taken things on her by terminating her service. There could not have been any other reason the poor ratings.
The Case of Mr. Shyam Rathi
Mr. Shyam Rathi was no doubt a competent CEO. Within a few months of his joining, he had almost doubled the business of CDC. However, he was a strict disciplinarian and considered that employees who took excess leave, did not take care in the affairs of the company. After joining as the CEO, when he found out that an officer, Shiela had taken six months of maternity leave, he immediately assumed that she was someone, who did not want to give her 100 % to the company. In order to teach her a lesson and also to set a precedent, he provided her poor appraisal ratings, which he knew would hamper her chances of getting a promotion.
Shiela’s plight
Shiela thought that this was a gross injustice meted out to her and she immediately decided not to take this blow lying down. Going through the proper grievance mechanism, she wrote to the company explaining the entire scenario, urging them to look into the case. However, she did not get any response from them. When she confronted the CEO, she was humiliated and turned out of his cabin, who told her that the company was not a place for free-riders. Shiela was almost reduced to tears and almost decided to quit the company. Her husband, Varun, who supported her throughout, then came up with a good plan. Listening to his advice, she decided to write to the women’s commission and filed an application with the RTI, demanding the criteria for giving rating points and how her appraisal points had been decided on the year, when she had got the poor ratings. It is to be noted that for a company taking action against a women employee for taking maternity leave is a grave offence and can attract huge penalty.
Within a few days, CDC received a summons from the women’s commission and a letter from RTI to share the documents with relation to appraisal of Shiela. Taking this as a personal insult, Mr. Rathi called Anand and asked him to tamper with Shiela’s personal files in order to create an impression that Shiela had not been a sincere worker and that her poor ratings were a reflection of her incompetence and not because of the issue of maternity leave as she had provided in her complaint. Anand knew that Shiela’s case was a genuine one and if proper investigation was made, then Mr. Rathi would be in trouble and it might even cost him his job. When Anand had been called in Mr. Rathi’s cabin, he made it clear that if Anand would co-operate in fudging the personal files, he would be awarded with a good bonus and a favourable appraisal. However, in case Anand did not heed to his words, then he would have to face the consequences. Since Anand was due for a promotion and thereby a raise, getting a good appraisal was important for him.
Anand’s Ethical Dilemma
As Anand sat in his cabin, pondering over the entire issue and looking at Shiela’s files, which had been sent to him for doctoring, he couldn’t help but think about his own scenario five years back. His wife, Ramya was working in a famous company, and even she had a complicated delivery when their second child, Sana was born. At that time, she needed to take a leave for almost one year, which was not allowed as per her company guidelines and they had thought that she would have to resign from her job and it really upset her. However, the HR manager of her company had come to their rescue and had run from pillar to post to get her leave sanctioned. Only because of his benevolence, Ramya could peacefully recover while taking rest for a year and had been back working in her company. And today, with a quirky twist of fate, the world had come full circle and Anand had to handle an exact scenario, where he was being made one of the perpetrators of injustice. Hadn’t time come that Anand returned the same favour to another female employee? The face of his two young daughters flashed before his eyes. A few years later, even they could be facing the same scenario. If he took part in this grave injustice being meted out to Shiela, would he be able to face his wife and daughters?
At the same time, Anand knew that Mr. Rathi was extremely important to the company and if he had to resign from the company due to this episode, it would affect the smooth growth of the company. In fact, if the charges got proven, the company would be hit so hard due to the negative publicity, that their revenue would definitely go down and may be they would have to compensate it by laying off other staff.
Thus, Anand is in the monumental dilemma at present. On one hand, a hard-working employee as well as his integrity was at stake, on the other hand, his as well as CDC’s future was on a razor thin edge. Anand wished fervently, that he did not have to exercise a choice, as he was sure that he would end up influencing the lives of others through his decision and did not want to be liable for any misfortune. Either decision would affect multiple parties and in a grave way and hence would have to be taken after giving a lot of thought. What should Anand do?
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