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Mumbai. McKinsey and Company, the global leaders in management consultancy services, have proposed a new framework for companies dealing with employee unrest arising out of unfriendly and unpopular business decisions. The framework, published in the visitor edition of The McKinsey Quarterly, advocates a four-pronged strategy called FART to deal with the dissatisfaction among employees if and when they fail to appreciate prudent business decisions like cost-cutting measures.

FART stands for Feed, Affect, Relegate, and Terminate – four different approaches that a company should take based on mix of two parameters – existing ‘Employee Mindset’ and the ‘Cash Status’ of the company. The McKinsey Quarterly report elaborates each of these four approaches of the FART framework with several exhibits to back up the study.

The visual representation of the framework has been called McFart, but this could potentially cause a legal battle over copyright between McKinsey and McDonalds

“If the company has a bit of cash and the employees’ mindset is still to turn hostile, the company should ‘feed’ the employees to stop them from turning hostile. The best way to ‘feed’ is to give some freebies like season gifts, personalized cakes on birthdays, shopping coupons, free pizzas during working hours, etc.” the report explained the ‘feed’ approach of the FART framework.

In case employees’ mood has turned a bit hostile and some of them are demanding explanations about issues such as scrapping of bonuses and other benefits, the FART framework suggests ‘affect’ approach for companies with surplus cash. ‘Affect’ approach requires the company to affect i.e. pretend taking some proactive steps for employee welfare.

“The company could initiate a pretentious performance appraisal process to quell the employee unrest. Other steps could involve sending the employees a feedback form, or inviting employees for a one-to-one interview with HR executives, etc. Such steps mollify the hostile mood of the employees, giving them a hope about future, but these steps should be taken only when the company has some cash to meet the expenses associated with these affected steps.” the report elaborated.

If a company doesn’t enjoy the luxury of surplus cash and is running into losses, the FART framework advocates ‘relegate’ approach, but only if the employees are in a friendly mindset, which is rare in normal course. The approach involves taking steps like lowering the compensation packages and demoting the employees. The report describes the ‘relegate’ approach as being a transient approach as it usually ends up changing the employee mindset from friendly to hostile, leaving the company to adopt the forth and the final approach – terminate.

“If the company is running into losses and employees have turned hostile, the best approach is to ‘terminate’ i.e. fire the employees.” the report concluded the FART framework, which has been well received by various HR professionals across companies.

New Delhi. Amidst demand by many politicians cutting across party lines, the Congress party announced on Thursday that it planned to introduce a special symbol to denote corruption in the next few weeks. The introduction of the new Rupee Symbol had reportedly created a huge problem for the ruling party as several mails asking for introduction of a Corruption Symbol reached them today.

“Yes, there have been several queries asking if the rupee symbol was applicable to black money also. The politicians, who have been taking money through international accounts, feel that instead of having different symbols, all their black wealth should be incorporated under one symbol, making the transactions easier.” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewary.

Ambika Soni, Minister for Information and Broadcasting completely agrees. “The new symbol for corruption will show the world that India is a force to be reckoned with. This will make Indian economy comparable to the whole European economy. The new Rupee Symbol could act as the Euro symbol, while this proposed Corruption Symbol could be akin to a European country’s original domestic currency symbol, to be phased out in due time.” she said.

An NGO called 5th Pillar had introduced zero-rupee note as the symbol for corruption, but it failed to get official recognition from the government

But the statement by Ms. Soni could trigger demands by various regional parties to introduce special symbols in their respective states as the new rupee symbol has “ra” in Hindi i.e. devanagari script. MNS and Shiv Sena are already reported to be asking for Marathi symbols, something that has worried the UPA government.

Sources within the government have informed us that the Prime Minister was still clueless about the whole issue and was waiting to be briefed by Sonia Gandhi before taking any decision. It is also rumored that a Group of Ministers could be formed to discuss the issue further.

But the civil society has received the proposal enthusiastically with “Corruption Symbol” trending worldwide on Twitter and everyone coming up with ideas and suggestions for the government. Serial commentator Suhel Seth too joined the debate and suggested a symbol for the same.

“I think it is a great step for India” he said, further tweeting “the symbol for corruption can be an Open Palm holding a Lotus, signifying the unity and participation of all parties in this matter.”, which was immediately re-tweeted by his friends Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya.

“Why waste the valuable time of the hard working IITians? Let’s adopt this symbol!” he added.

Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated development, fresh violence was reported in the Naxal hit areas due to the inability of the Congress to include the Maoists in the ongoing discussion on the Corruption Symbol.

News

California, USA. Concerned over the growing popularity of Paul the Octopus for accurately resolving people’s doubts, something for which a lot of people have relied upon Google search results, Google is reported to be developing its own Octopus, tentatively named “Google 8”. The Google Octopus could be launched anytime later this year and would be distributed and sold through retail stores unlike other google products that were distributed and sold through online downloads. “It would look like a real blood and flesh octopus and would be available in a small aquarium of 3x3x3 feet cubic size. But it would actually be an android running on Google’s complex search engine algorithm, improvised to resolve specific questions like which team could win a match or whether a person would get a job.” informed a popular tech blogger, even though Google declined to comment on the reports. Google 8, the Google Octopus, is ready to answer all your questions that ever bothered you Experts believe that Google was indeed worried over the popularity of Paul, the psychic octopus, who could correctly predict the results of all the FIFA world cup matches that Germany played. Earlier, Google was the one stop solution for a person in doubt, a position that now threatens to go to octopuses. “People would ask all kinds of questions to Google when something bothered them – Will I ever get married? When will I die? Is my neighbor a sex offender? Will Argentina win the 2010 world cup? Will Germany be a Muslim state by 2050? – but soon they could start flocking to octopuses for such queries and google could lose a considerable traffic.” explained an internet expert. Earlier Google had felt threat from the growing popularity of facebook and was believed to be working on development of “Google Me”, but it’s not clear if the internet giant could shelve the development of “Google Me” to launch “Google 8” in time. “I believe they would be wise to work on the Google Octopus at this moment as it threatens their primary business – the search engine market. Also, we have specific information that China is planning to flood global markets with smaller and cheaper octopuses that people could buy and keep in their homes to resolve their queries.” another expert opined. Faking News sources in China confirm that preparations are afoot to market tiny octopuses in smaller aquariums and brand them iPaul, something that hurts Google as well as Apple, two American corporate giants. The Chinese iPaul octopuses would be real alive octopuses and would be projected as having psychic powers similar to Paul the Octopus. Back in India, domestic babas too are concerned over the latest developments and are planning to protest the entry of iPaul and Google 8 into the Indian markets.