*I am Reliance Employee
Apr 2008(Last Year)
Time came to start my career with one of the best companies in India(Well that was what I believed before my association as an employee with this group)
The Selection:
I had gone through a tough Interview & a GroupDiscussion during my MBA, I was really very keen to start off with a Telecom Company as some horror stories of Sales in Insurance & Banking made me skeptical for pursuing a career in this sector, and in our college too these companies came in flock to pick up young fresh grads. But the moment result was announced I had considered myself to be the happiest man on this earth as I’d overcome my worst fears i.e. working in insurance/bank company. I got selected for a Managerial post in Reliance Communications(ADAG Group). My heart was filled with joy as I was selected for Marketing Profile, no door to door selling, phew.
Experience:
It all started off well, great deal of learning which involved great amount of enthusiasm as I was into the corporate world for the first time, observing the marketing aspects very closely a relief from theories of Kotler. But as the time passed and I was few months old in the system I started observing a complete mismanagement right from the top to the bottom. Suddenly a campaign would come and you had to work for hours, but many a times I had no work, so there was no consistency.
Work Culture:
I don’t have the words to explain, there was no work culture at all, no synchronization, no planning, no clarity of work & on the top of it you had the dirtiest of politics that involved egos of the bosses &their mindlessness. I found my KRA(Key responsibility Area) sometimes absolutely reverse to the work that I was actually doing. Some of my fellow colleagues were so worse off that they were selected as Business Analyst but were doing a work equivalent to that off a clerk & after that they were asked to leave because company had NO MONEY. Favourism was so much rampant in this group that if you come and sit on the desk & drink 20 cups of tea in a day doing no work will be awarded best performer or at least a safety from losing the job just because you have someone sitting at the Top very close orwell known to you.
PAISA PAISA HAI RE PAISA
Now Anil Ambani the person who boasts off being the best entrepreneur& the richest in India is sadly the owner of the most miser company on this earth, he has got some people in his commercial dept. who’s KRA includes only one line- SAVE MONEY, SAVE MONEY, SAVE MONEY, without taking care whether it’s genuine or not. Inthis manner lot of innocent channel partners, distributor & vendors saw their hard earned money spent on this company go in vain as a result many distributors stopped working, channel partners gave up their franchisee. Employees also didn’t remain untouched from this stupidity of company, we were asked to travel by bus since Jan 09(Earlier our traveling expenses were reduced from Car to Motorcycle but now it came to the Bus) our genuine claims of food & other miscellaneous expenses were also questioned time & again, and there was no guidance from HR such as when & how to fill up the necessary steps related to income tax, attendance, KRA form any delay in it resulted in paycut or at least a threat that you will not be paid. Now this was happening whencompany was earning a net profit of 1400 Cr.
HR ki dadagiri
They never use to inform any employee for necessary requisitions on time and when the deadline relating to any HR work came near they use to fire mails after mails in our inbox using threatening language.Moreover, there was no assistance for the employees(mainly sales guys) who use to work in villages, small towns etc. Those poor people use to send their claims of traveling & all other necessary expenses to the Circle head office but never got it back because sometimes it reached late & sometimes it never reached. You all will be shocked to know that many sales guys got their money stuck in the company ranging from Rs.2000 to Rs.20000 and never got it back. Some guys who created an uproar for it got it back, now you have tofight to get back your own money from your own company, isn’t it strange! But it happened in Reliance Communications. All in all HR so so ke jaagte the
Agony of Sales People
The Sales guys were not only the persons who were expected to bring business to the company, but they were also the customer care, delivery guys, network person & commercial for the channel & the customer as there was ZEROO support from the company in this regard, they virtually had to fight for their numbers from the back end every day. In short the pressures & targets were private but backend support was total SARKARI.
When GSM was about to launch then Top most people pressurized the distributors through sales guys to collect the Ids of customers, as a result many collected thousands of Ids, but when the SIMs came to themarket the lala company again showed its misery, many were allotted few hundred SIMs against the thousands of Ids which they had collected under the pressure of the company. Many times theratio of distribution was 200 SIMs to 10, 000 customer Ids. Result some sales manager had to lock themselves in their rooms for few days as there was angerin the public & channel partners regarding the uneven distribution of SIMs.
No value for the performer
There was cutting all around and reliance communications were not far from it, but the only difference was that, non-performers remained& performers were simply kicked out. Even some of the biggest of officerswere asked to leave within a day’s notice citing no reason. I’ve seen persons giving their heart out to the company facing termination just because the ‘highcommand in Mumbai’ doesn’t require this post.