A TWENTY-DAY STINT WITH G-CUBE
In March 2016, I received an email from the HR of G-Cube announcing their requirement for ID Managers and Reviewers. I responded to the email with my resume, intending to avail the opportunity. In response to my email, Priya, from the HR department of G-Cube sent me an ID Skill Test paper. I informed her that I was travelling and helping a friend with his training content development work, so, I would take more than the designated time to complete the test. I took the test and emailed my answer document to her. Within a week she called and said, I was selected to work in a Reviewer’s capacity for G-Cube and I could work from home as I am residing in Belgaum and it would not be financially viable for me to relocate to Delhi-NCR. She asked me whether I had my own computer or laptop and an internet connection to do the work from home. I informed her that in spite of my having a laptop and internet connection, I would be challenged by slow internet speed and intermittent electric outage (load-shedding). She asked me if I could arrange for an inverter or a mini generator and insisted on my working from home. I replied, I did not have the means, yet I would try to arrange for one. I needed employment. So, I agreed to work with G-Cube on a three-month work contract.
After a couple of days, Priya called me to inform me, my reporting head, the project manager, Ms Shefali Sharma was on leave as her brother had met with an accident. Ms Guglani of the HR department would induct me to the organisation. She then connected me to Ms Guglani, who merely asked me to fill up an employee information form she would email me and had the IT Helpdesk remotely access my computer to install the official email, HR and Project Work portal connection on it. Before I could be oriented to G-Cube’s work culture and environment, Ms Bhattacharya and Ms Jain of Genpact project contacted me to review e-training content development work-in-progress. They provided me with a few project design and development documents that did not give adequate information about the project, especially, design strategy based on the learners’ profile and the purpose of the project. They asked me not to be a stickler to the process and procedures as we had a deadline to meet with. Ms Kaur, The Manager of the project patched us with Sameep, a technical trainer and SME for the project from Genpact, who was also the client’s POC. I had requested Ms Jain to make a list of queries and information gaps that we were to discuss with the SME. During the conference call, I explained to the SME the purpose of the discussion was to save effort, time and iterations in the content development process. The SME, replied, he did not mind reviewing the content as many times we asked him to. We then shared our queries and doubts with him. He could not and did not respond to quite a few of the reasons that he did not want to waste time explaining them and would share a few more data and documents, again in the form of his training materials viz. PowerPoint presentations to bridge information gaps. I wondered where the learner is. Is the SME the learner?
I regularly contacted the HR department about my reporting head, Ms Sharma and my contract papers. Instead, I had at least three project managers simultaneously contact me and asking me to instructional design and develop content for their projects. One of them was Ms Pandey from New York, USA, who would contact me daily, as a supervisor would with a daily wager working at a construction site. Ironically, all three of them asked me to develop content instead of reviewing the content development work-in-progress. While I was developing content for a Project Leader of the Philips Soft Skills Knowledge Management project, Ms Pandey asked me to help Ms Aditi prepare the Instructor manuals for Amway training. I once again faced the same challenge of inadequate information regarding the project. No proper Project Design and Strategy documents. The source data was only in the form of PowerPoint presentations and existing manuals with information gaps and errors. When I pointed all this to Aditi, she said she was not G-Cube’s POC with the client. The project was on fire as G-Cube had missed the deadline, so we had to somehow develop the manuals and send them to the client for review with our fundamental queries, irrespective of the gaps in the source documents. When I insisted on getting them cleared, she reiterated, we were fire fighting and we had lost the time to go back to Amway for clarification of the source content and information. I did as she bid me to. I asked her to review the manuals I had sent her before she would send it for language review. She ignored my request and sent it for language review. The inevitable happened: The reviewer refused to review the manual pointing out to ambiguity due to information gaps. I refused to do the language review fixes and had Ms Pandey invite me on a conference call with Aditi. When I asked Ms Pandey whether she had seen the source documents viz. the PPT, I had emailed a couple of days ago highlighting the errors and gaps that needed the client’s immediate attention. Ms Pandey replied she is supposed to manage the project and not spend her time on the trifles like any ID’s work details like the source content document, etc. Moreover, she could not read my email since she was on leave the previous day. She had already committed to the client to deliver the manuals within the scheduled deadline. She kept insisting I complete the language review fixes and hand over the manuals to Aditi. She completely ignored the fact that the language review pointed out the information gaps and errors in the source content. I replied that I respected myself and my integrity.
The following day, Ms Guglani called me and asked me to narrate my conversation with Aditi and Ms Pandey. She asked me to email my work schedule document with the details of the work I had done for the six projects I was assigned to by four different project managers. I prepared and emailed the document to her. Ms Guglani acknowledged receiving my email and asked me to wait till I heard from her again. After a couple of days, I received an email from Ms Guglani informing me I was relieved from my contract service with G-Cube because I remained off work (I was absent or absconding, was clear from the email message) for an indefinite period of time and had refused to do the work assigned to me. In response to her email, I thanked her and asked her what was GCube’s locus-standi in sending me such email communication when they had not even given me the contract documents as a formal agreement between G-Cube and me on contract employment.
During my twenty-day stint with G-Cube as a Reviewer, I reviewed only two projects and developed content for the remaining four projects.
(Please Note: The real names of the resources of G-Cube have not been used in this write-up)
A Case Study on my stint with Century Rayon: http://ourworld-sunips.blogspot.com/2017/04/empathy3-truth.html
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