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- N. Raghuraman’s Column Do Not Differentiate Between Permanent And Contract Employees In Terms Of Training
7 hours ago
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N. Raghuraman, Management Guru
When I boarded Amravati Express 12112 at 11.30 pm on Saturday night, I decided to sleep comfortably till I reach Dadar station in Mumbai at 5.30 am. People were already sleeping on three of the four berths, I went inside quietly without turning on the light, spread the sheet and was going to sleep on my berth. Just then TC came and asked my name, I slid the door with one hand as I had a pillow in the other hand.
As soon as the light fell inside, I realized that the pillow cover was not clean. So I asked TC if he could send the first class coach attendant. He said yes and went away. There was a sound of knocking on the door of the attendant room behind that cabin, but the door did not open.
TC came back and apologized saying that the attendant might have gone somewhere and I will contact him later. He smiled and said good night and left. I liked his behavior and I kept waiting for the attendant, who never came. I covered the pillow with a towel and went to sleep.
Before coming to Mumbai’s neighboring district Thane, at exactly 4.30 in the morning, two passengers were loudly banging the door of the attendant room. This woke everyone up. Those passengers were not from the first class compartment. Since the passage from one class compartment to another in the train was open, passengers traveling in other classes had kept their suitcases in the attendant’s cabin for safety.
It was obvious that they had paid for it, which I later found out was that Rs 250 was given for each suitcase. It turned out that those passengers were going to USA and were carrying some valuables. They had big suitcases, so they feared that they might become victims of a robbery in the middle of the night.
People traveling to the US generally carry two suitcases of 23 kg each, as they are allowed to carry 46 kg in check-in and 7 kg in hand luggage.
Meanwhile, Thane station arrived and the train left from there too and the passengers were panicking because of their suitcases stuck in the attendant cabin. Now the train was moving towards Dadar station. Another 20 minutes went by in all this. When the door banging continued for another 7 minutes, the attendant came out of the cabin making a face like how dare you disturb me.
He did not even realize how his deep sleep had put two passengers in serious trouble and spoiled the sleep of the entire coach. This happened for the first time when I saw that the coach attendant was not coming out and asking for tips from the people, because except him, the people of the entire coach were awake and his secret was exposed. The train was really clean.
Armed policemen were constantly patrolling, so travelers were assured that they could sleep without any worries. The train was running almost on time. But all that good performance was overshadowed by that contractual employee. Railways outsource many services from food to laundry and they turn a deaf ear to complaints related to these outsourced employees.
Most of the time their closed service remains closed or is just a sham, but if a complainant continues his complaint vigorously, then I don’t know how these people somehow get the contract for another train in a different name. Companies that have permanent and contractual employees should make their standard operating procedure (SOP) so perfect that the person availing this service cannot differentiate between these two types of employees.
The bottom line is that Any service provider should plan a training program for its entire workforce, otherwise even the good work done by a few permanent employees can spoil the customer experience due to the substandard work done by a few contractual employees.
