HR wisdom from Dalton’s law

Dalton’s law is not just a law in chemistry refers to the mixture of gases and its total and partial pressure but it also makes lot of sense and meaning to the corporate world as well with reference to the total impact of any organization vis-à-vis its employees collectively and individually.

Dalton’s law states that the total pressure of mixture of gases is equal to the partial pressures of different (individual) non reactive gases in the mixture or that constitutes the mixture of gases. It means, every individual gas in the mixture contributes their share to the total pressure of the mixture of the gases.

P total = p1+p2+p3…………..

Similarly every individual employee contributes individually to the total impact of the corporate. The total impact/success of the organization therefore comes definitely from the roles and responsibilities of every employee barring their hierarchy/position, designation or the educational qualifications. In most instances, the top management never treats the people at the lower level as important and valuable for decision making and their role is largely limited to doing the assigned/defined job. Further, top leaders in most corporate strongly believe that ‘evolving an intelligent strategy’, ‘planning’, ‘forecasting’ etc., are possible only to them and others does not either have the caliber or competency.

A very neat and clean organization creates long lasting impact upon visitors. The credit for such job must be given to the house-keeping function. The house keeping function may not even be in the payroll of most organization. But they too play a pivotal and significant role in the image and impact of the organization at the first glance.

In the mixture of gases, the gas that is present in larger proportion never dilute/suppress the pressure of any other gas in the mixture however small quantity the said gas may be present. That is the reason why the total pressure of mixture of gases always will be equal to the partial pressure of every individual gas in the mixture. Dalton has proved the above. If the Daltons law is not understood from the management perspective and not wisely extrapolated to the corporate situation, the HR function and the top leaders in the corporate may not ever know the importance every employee in the organization.

The successful organization will certainly pool the talents, expertise, competency and finally the contributions of every individual employee and that is how several such organizations have become so successful. Only through cross functional learning and integration of the efforts of every individual, the HR function can create the art and science of people management. Dalton’s law in a subtle way also tells to the corporate that every employee matters and hence respect every one in the organization sincerely.

Dr S Ranganathan