Supervision to Super Vision
The changes technology has been bringing to our lives have been never imagined two decades back. Technology brought mostly good things and created huge job opportunities that never existed few decades back. In India, this translated into the IT and BPO jobs that gobbled up every graduate they could find to satisfy the ever increasing need for more and more IT professionals. The demand and supply glut helped create thousands of colleges and IT job became the fast track to prosperity . This sector also ended up pulling up thousands of underprivileged families to move up to middle class with sons and daughters of farmers, taxi drivers and even laborers finding their way into IT and BPO industry of India.
Most of us think that this dream run will continue for many more years for them to bother about any change. However the reality on the ground is that this change has already begun and have started challenging all of those who could easily get a job when the supply fell desperately short of demand. Those who did not deserve high salaries and good job opportunities ended up filling a lot of the open ranks when this balloon was still growing. Most of them have now become supervisors and end up contributing primarily in the people management aspect of IT industry.
In one of the conference in US, it was clear that the cost pressure on all the customer countries would impact on the IT supplier ranks hard. The first collateral damage in this cost pressure would be all those who do not show value but are a cost to the business. The “Supervisors” of today fall in this bracket easily. Most of the technology company supervisors are those who have no more than basic experience of creating technology outcomes and struggle to prove their value in the organizations yet to come up from the old model of steep organizational pyramid to a far more nimble and flatter organization.
Some Industry leaders are candid with the fact that employee productivity will increase at least by 150% to continue earning the same money they do now. To add to that, automation will eliminate a lot of jobs and will through unprecedented challenge to thousands of those who have grown up doing things that is no more being seen as a value.
This is a wake up call for all the “Supervisors” and managers to change from doing “Supervision” to creating a “Super Vision” for them. My own tips to all those who are hanging by such a thin thread and may have little value in this fast changing technology services landscape can be summarized in the following sentence.
Change your attitude. You have to learn, unlearn and relearn all the time to be relevant to business. If you choose not to do that, remember, someone is already working hard somewhere to eliminate your job.
