Grassroots innovation. "Bai"Chara

I just returned from a meeting entitled "Orbit shift". It was about innovation. They passed out fortune cookies with very different thought provoking piece of writing. So the guy next to me took two cookies  to gain more wisdom, I presume. When he broke open the cookies, he found time tested wisdom. This I surmised from the fact that both the cookies had identical wordings . I don't remember the earth shaking advice at the present moment.  Now that I have done the traditional bit by starting with an anecdote, let me come to the meat.

We were all asked about the one innovative thing we had done. If I had sent this into the featured speakers, I would have got lots of publicity and a footnote in a book authored by SOMEBODY ELSE. So folks, you  got to help an Aam Aurat like me by publicising this blog entry of mine .

My innovation started with a path breaking thought. House hold help called "Bai" in Mumbai can be hard working, trusting and intelligent to understand business models. This post has nothing to do with any "Bhai" although it does include male household help henceforth called "Baiya".Together they form "Bailog" 

My revolutionary idea was to pay the inhabitants of "Bailog" daily wages. It worked something like this.

My Bai asks for 2500 Rupees. I bargain and beat her down to 2000 actually satisfying both since she expected to get 1800. I now add a 10% amount to this. This is then converted to a daily wage assuming a 30 day month. This way, she gets 2200 if she come on all days. If she (or he) is absent for 3 days, she still gets 2000. So there is a 3 day leave inbuilt. As expected, there is resistance. However, when at the end of the month, they get more for not being absent, I am the last one they ditch. of course February is a  month which brings its share of heartburn.  There are certain other things as well. When they don't turn up, they don't get paid. However, they still have to call in to inform. If this happens once too often, then they are put on notice. All fair for me, right? Wrong.

They get paid their full salary for all those days when they can't work because my house is locked. 

And I have 15 years of experience to convince me that this works. What is more, my "Bai"s have become arithmetically very savvy. And attrition because of lack of employee engagement is next to nil. 

PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME IN INDIA.