The Changing Perception of Time

"I am an old timer. I have been working in this company for a long time." How long do you think this person could have worked with that employer? Your spontaneous response to this question represents the "cultural generation" that matches your way of thinking about time. A cultural generation represents all those who share a common world view. On the other hand, we have the popular definition of generation which defines an offspring and the parents as different generations. In societies where changes are slower to happen, the familial generations and cultural generations overlap. Hence the rules and assumptions that are used to govern one generation are also valid for governing the progeny. The rapid and constant changes in the environment have made even siblings separated by a few years belong to different cultural generations with different drivers and behaviors. Our response to an event depends on the way we perceive the information.Our behavior is shaped by our underlying values. Values are the basis of our notions of right and wrong and the choices we make. The environment in which we spend our formative years has a very significant impact on the values we learn. This environment is made up of our parents, teachers, peer-group and even the media we are exposed to influences the values we develop. These values become the drivers of our behavior. Our values today are influenced far more deeply by the media we have access to. Popular cinema contributes to fashion trends as significantly as it does to what is an acceptable social more. From the time when we had Doordarshan as our only television channel in India and the government run All India Radio as the sole source of our news and entertainment, we are now a nation where we have hundreds of options to get our news and opinions from.Cable television now places global images, information and norms of behavior that only the well traveled rich had access to even a few years back. The mobile phone is driving global content into the remotest corners of the country. This exposure to diverse influences changes behaviors that would have otherwise remained stable over decades.Social behavior and norms of behavior are shaped by how we view time. Societies differ on what is the acceptable age to get a drivers license, cast a vote, get married, drink alcohol or even take up arms to defend the country. Interestingly in most countries each of these permissions is granted at a different age. From time to time the societies even review these perceptions of time and what may follow is a change in law. In India the voting age was reduced from 21 years to 18 a few years back. (Interesting: Minimum Driving Ages in Different Countries click here; Legal Age to Drink Alcohol by Country click here). When some sections of the citizens view time differently from the way the law defines it, it raises interesting situations. For example even though in India the minimum age to get married is 18 for girls and 21 for boys, there are unwritten rules that will tell the couple whether they married a bit too early or late.Technology changes our perception of time. The arrival of email has made its users learn to use a keyboard. Before the arrival of email, we communicated with friends and family through letters. There was a gap of many days between the mailing of a letter and receiving the response to it. A 'prompt' response still took a few days. Today the postal system is referred to as snail mail. That is a reflection of how our perception of time has changed. Technology is now designed to give instantaneous feedback about the outcome. From video games to digital cameras, we have all got used to finding out instantaneously the effect of our actions. Technology has been changing at a rapid pace. The computing power of a smartphone that so many teens carry in their pocket has more computing power than the early versions of the mainframe computer. Every time something in our environment changes, we have to retrain ourselves to adapt to it. When we need to continuously adapt our behavior, we progressively devote less time to each such change before we move to adapt to the new change that is replacing the current one. Even as we are getting used to the previous change, there is another shift and then yet another. This continuous shifting has now irreversibly altered how we view time. People who find it hard to adapt to constant changes in technology give up and have to reconcile to being left behind. This has shrunk the perception of time. Each shortlived change has modified how long we need to wait before we get impatient.

When our perception of time changes, organizations are the first to feel its impact.

Challenge No 1: Making Policies That Are Based on TenureOrganizations create policies to reflect how tenure will get rewarded or recognized by organizations. This gets reflected in the way they reward employees who have spent more time working in the same firm than the new hires. Some organizations give people different colored identity cards or badges to distinguish people who have spent many years in the same organization. In some cases the new hire is put on probation for a few months before the organization accepts the person as the right hire. In some firms, employees who have worked for the longest number of years get additional vacation time or designated parking space or larger office cubicles. In India even the law governing employment has the provision to reward tenure greater than five years in the same organization. The businesses that are employing employees who are in their early twenties are being forced to view tenure differently. In the BPOs, the employers are happy to celebrate even six months of employment. That is because so many employees who are in their early twenties, define long term employment in months rather than years. If the same organization employs people who view time differently, there will be a challenge in creating rules and policies that distinguish on the basis of time. It is hard for the organization to reward loyalty among employees when the perception of time is so very different among the multiple cultural generations in the workplace. Compensation experts try to encourage loyalty among employees by deferring some elements in favor of a greater payoff in future. For such a policy to work effectively, all employees must have a common perception of time. Yet if the majority of the entrants to the workforce do not view future payoffs as motivators, how should organizations encourage such people to stay longer?Challenge No 2: Deciding How Long It Takes To Learn a JobThe changing perception of time changes the way we define tenure while learning. That has also shrunk. Ask people of different cultural generations how long does they need to do the same job before it is acceptable to ask for a role change? That answer will tell you if the job rotation is making people happy or unhappy. Today most organizations expect the employee to spend anywhere from 12-24 months doing the same job before they can apply for another role within the same company. In some industries job rotation plans kick in even after six months to a year. The training industry has also changed to go beyond e-learning to offer Rapid E-Learning.Challenge No 3: Defining What is The Right Time to Do WhatToday most entrants to the workforce buy their own vehicle and start planning to buy their own apartment much earlier than what used to be. These are not decisions that are left to the last few months before retirement. This shrinking perception of time needs to be acknowledged proactively by employers.The policy makers in organizations have been used to addressing employees who share their perceptions of time. The rapid and all pervasive changes have made it easy for us to get our information and opinions from many sources. There is no single view of the world any more. The effect of several cultural generations in the workplace makes policy making far more complex because one size does not fit all any longer.---------------------Originally written for Economic Times dated April 28, 2011. This version has been slightly modified and illustrated. To read the original version Click here