Do you hire ‘Platypus employees’? – A HR message

Many leaders in the corporate aspire to employ platypus ‘people’ with a vision that they would lead and guide the corporate to great heights of success. Mostly, the single man driven corporate is the one that loves to employ the ‘platypus’ people as they generally lack vision and simultaneously are caught up in fallacy. In general, the employees in single men corporate are largely ‘talented sycophants’ than ‘visionaries’ as survival employees are possible in such organizations only by flattering the entrepreneur and or his close associates.

What is so interesting about a Platypus? Platypus requires enormous food to eat per day. It is estimated that a Platypus daily eats food almost equal to its body weight. To gather the food, they continuously forage in the same freshwater ecosystem where it lives.

Some senior level leaders in many MNC’s are like Platypus as they get a salary which is unimaginably high. To the extent, the salary they receive, do they really contributes to the corporate is beyond the scope of this article and hence are not discussed.

Many single men drove corporate keenly watch those who draw ‘huge’ salary in the MNC’s with the belief that such employee is extraordinary visionaries and leaders and hence worth hiring. They consider the ‘huge salary’ of people as an index of a contribution of such employees. The single man’s corporate, without knowing own resource capabilities and business turnover would like to hire such people at high price hoping that such people would bring a miracle.

The newly joined Platypus employees quickly siphon out the entire resource of the corporate and in return may not have contributed anything effectively due to many reasons and excuses that can be genuine or manufactured.

If a Platypus is placed in a small pond, in hours, the animal will eat all the small creatures like crustaceans, fishes, insects etc., in the pond. In hour’s time, the Platypus may end up with food scarcity and starvation. Total destruction of the pond ecosystem and food chain would happen as a consequence.

Having or attempting to rear a Platypus in a small pond is dangerous both to the animal and to the pond. If feeds are provided regularly and not letting the Platypus relay on the resources that are available in the pond, it may survive.

Without much understanding, many corporate leaders hire people at a high cost and then end up destroying the corporate resource. Before hiring Platypus employee, study their requirements and reconcile with the possibility of the available resources in the organization.

Ambition require strong roots to stay and then grow, otherwise, it would cause nothing other than sorrow and frustrations. Let the food requirements of the Platypus be a reminder to your intellect while recruiting people.

Dr S Ranganathan