Stretch Targets And The Hidden Dangers - Learning From The Wells Fargo Scandal

Stretch targets sometimes become strategic imperatives for organizations. But how is the culture of putting pressure on employees justified?

- AG Balasubramanian

Many organizations are coming out with draconian rules for managing their people. We are all familiar with the violent outburst of the shop-floor employees of the Maruti Udyog in their Manesar plant and the Hero Honda plant in the same neighborhood. Recently, there were reports in the newspapers about how retail employees are treated in Tony textile outlets in Kerala with unrealistic sales pressure. A set of reports also came out on how garment manufacturers were putting their women employees with excessive production targets and not even permitting them to have adequate bathroom breaks.

Such treatment of employees occasionally sees some employees protesting against it. However, this opposition is usually silenced the usual way — threats, dismissals and so on. Many employees do not also have permanent positions in these organizations and a fight back becomes too expensive for them. Since these employees are unable to change the circumstances in which they are working, they probably need to do things which make their lives a bit more bearable. What would they be doing?

Possibly not helping the customers adequately, or misleading customers to somehow buy a product so that they themselves could take a bathroom break. One can go on and on about instances like these. Selling pressure on insurance agents or those selling credit cards, and the consequent misselling, are known evils in India. People who are underinsured or who are sold due to the pressure on the employees to produce numbers is now a serious concern. The pressure that is put on these employees is so high that they are tempted to take short-cuts like shoddy work which would just pass muster of the QC guys. These short-cuts then end up in some situations as fraud like in the case of Wells Fargo Bank.