Posts

Showing posts from July, 2016

Welcome the baby girl

A private hospital in Ahmedabad, India has announced that it will waive the medical fees involved in childbirth at their hospital if the newborn is a girl. WOW! Great move. Hospital authorities say that they have seen families wait expectantly and rejoice at the birth of a male child, while the birth of a baby girl is met with stoic acceptance. (Common scenario in India). They wanted to encourage people to celebrate the birth of a female child. What better way to do so than give a financial sop for the same. It took a private hospital to come up with such an innovative idea, while the government gives lip service to the cause of female empowerment. Why can't all government owned hospitals across the country do the same? This would be a spur to change the skewed ratio between men and women in most Indian states. Of course, female empowerment is happening by bits and pieces in India. One encouraging step is the doing away of the provision of a father's name in the passport o

Handling Overwork

One of the fall-outs of an increasingly uncertain business scenario and 24/7 global connectivity at the workplace is the pressure to overwork on employees, to stretch work hours beyond the normal schedule . Companies are actually guilty of encouraging the culture of overwork, as somewhere along the way, working more has been confused with working well . Executives willingly stretch their workdays and work well into midnight, assuming they are building their careers with the hard work they are putting in. Actually, they are messing up their health and social lives, while putting everything else, except work, on the back-burner. Working long hours damages our health, productivity, and family life . Overwork has been found to be the number one cause for work-related health disorders like stress, fatigue and exhaustion. Lack of sleep and relaxation has led many to develop psychiatric problems like anxiety, depression, sleep disorders as well. At the individual level it causes eno

Online shopping: Better expectations

Online shopping has become the preferred mode of shopping for most urban folk today. People prefer to shop at various e-sites owing to the convenience and range of products these offer. Most e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart, who are top of the game, deliver on their promises and provide prompt and efficient service. But what about the lesser known players? They advertise products and service aggressively, but leave a large gap as far as delivery and quality are concerned. One of the main benefits of online shopping is the sense of eagerness, of expectation of receiving the product within a reasonable time. If the time stretches to an inordinate long period, the sense of eagerness is replaced slowly by frustration and disgust. Shoppers tend to lose patience and curse the site for not meeting their expectations. Online shopping sites must keep this in mind while promising the earth to shoppers. On-time prompt delivery is a MUST, and not an optional benefit they offer. Yes, they