Workplace Environment in India Has Changed Drastically

¶ … workplace environment in India has changed drastically over the past decade. The early 1990s was marked by a wave of globalization creating a lot of attention for developing a sound infrastructure for workplace and country. The focus was to create amenities in the workplace and make working environment pleasurable. On this front, the federal government had succeeded in initiating development of urban centers that provide sound infrastructure for employees (Sikri, 1992).

Business entities have come to realize that maintaining a well managed and highly efficient workplace environment is critical to success. New technologies, environmental consciousness, and health concerns are having a major impact on the need for facility management. The International Facility Management Association, (IFMA), has grouped workplace responsibilities into several major areas such as facility financial forecasting, real estate acquisition and disposal, work specifications, installation and space management, architectural and engineering planning and design, new construction and renovation, maintenance and operation management, telecommunications integration, security and general administrative services (Sikri, 1992). All of these issues are concerned with ergonomics and worker safety and comforts.

By allowing public participation at all decision-making levels, while granting or renewing environmental consent, the government has made it mandatory to report environment and safety management practices in a firm's annual report. The second step taken by Indian Government is that it is making workplace safety documents public with background information for setting standards. Right to information is being accompanied by a search engine, which guides a searcher quickly to the information s/he wants. The design of computerized and non-computerized search engines for monitoring the latest workplace data are gaining common acceptance in the Indian Government Agencies. In case of the use of technology, workplace environment has become more informative, and where information is not easily forthcoming, people are taking the initiative to collect it.

The recent agenda that companies in India are taking is making the workplace a better facility by transforming the workplace through more-friendly technological systems, with the details of every step worked through to the limits of our current knowledge and wisdom (Sinha and Kanungo, 1996).

Question 2.

The Indian Economy, which had been inward-looking for nearly half a century, now making good use of human resources. Companies in India are beginning to reward and recognize the employees that are contributing to the growing economic boon (Misra and Kanungo, 1994).

Much of the job training in Indian companies occurs when the new incumbents work closely with their superiors and peers thus getting to know how work is organized and executed. With growing competition from the global companies, the Indian companies are becoming quite flexible by providing employees the responsibilities and empowerment to do their best and also making their salary structure so that they could perform to their optimum potentials. The latest model that Indian companies are adopting is based on human capital, structural capital and customer capital. This model recognizes the importance of employees and rewards them through monetary gains.