Have you ever underestimated the power of a designation, the sense of pride it brings as you sport the badge of honor? The good news for India Inc is that it is in its transition phase of doing away with the conventional designations and looking for new ways of designating employees to add an oomph factor to the young blood on board.
A host of unconventional yet quirky designations have chipped into the corporate realm of addressing a job profile holder. Terms such as cost kill analyst, social media evangelist, chief hacking officer, chief demonstration officer, diversity marketing manager, venture catalyst, mobile community creator and so on and so forth have emerged.
This unconventional way of fancy designations gives employees a feel-good factor and motivates them to perform better. It indirectly works for benefit of HRs to facilitate better retention of talented workforce. Also designations that sound elite and classy to employees, allure prospective new hires on board, irrespective of the job profile or the compensation offered.
Also with the advent of social media, the conventional designations in the digital business have been revised to create room for new ones such as chief tweeting officer, chief blogger, talent acquisition officer whose primary job entails recruitment. Such clear classification of job roles with appropriate designations helps human resource professionals operate and function better.
Bland positions such as front office executive could otherwise be called First Impression Makers, to add a touch of zing to the much mundane seen across job profile in the industry. Designation can turn out to be most effective tool used during recruitment to select the perfect hire if used diligently. It actually helps sharpen the recruitment framework within an organization and streamline processes.
Rephrasing designations testifies the fact that innovation is brewing right from the human resource cell to make its way to the top management and decision makers in the system. Such quirky designations are more evident in the KPOs, FMCG entities and sales and marketing segments of the industry. Such practices are followed to attract the right talent pool, especially at junior and mid-level management positions.
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Sudeep Sen, AVP of recruitment firm TeamLease Services told TimesJobs.com in an interview, “A lot of refining activity has happened on designations – to make them fancier and to cope with the changes in the market – and some have been earned by performers in the organisation. I’ve come across designations such as chief dreamer, which refers to one who does strategic thinking within the business.”
Sen added, “And then there are quirky designations such as hunterwala/wali who research about trends and acceptability of products and work on pull-push methodology. Another interesting designation is chief happiness officer, whose role entails conducting ‘lighter moment’ monthly programmes for employees such as fun games, talent hunt etc.”
Revising designations helps employees understand their role and contribution towards the bigger picture of an organization better. They can see for themselves and closely monitor how their acts make a world of difference to achieving the bigger vision of a company in meeting its sole objectives.
This culture of catchy designations also helps elevate the individual’s position to a stature of prominence within an organization and to the world at large, wherein status quo matters.
Creating an offbeat designation within a company does not mean, imply or intend to dilute the significance of the job on hand, as perceived by many. All it does is to offer light-hearted branding for the individual who has taken up serious responsibilities of the company.
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