Ever wonder why Japanese companies in India seem to be facing a lot of worker resistance these days? There was the turmoil at the Honda Motors unit near Delhi, which ended in violent clashes with the police. Now there is the strike and lockout at the Toyota Kirloskar plant in Bangalore.

The clashes on the streets are a reflection of the clashes in culture; Japanese managers simply don’t understand Indians and India. Many Indian managers are equally clueless when it comes to handling their employees properly.

It doesn’t make headlines unless there is blood on the shopfloor. But HR professionals sometimes prefer that things come to the boil rather than simmer. Keeping the lid on is a recipe for employee alienation.

There are easier ways to tackle alienation, of course. A standard method is the stock option. Employees are given “ownership” of the organisation by giving them shares of the company at concessional rates. In the Indian context, it has not worked. True, you hear of crorepatis in places like Infosys. But equally true are the stories of employees selling their shares to more canny operators amongst the staff. Additionally, with the markets gyrating and share values dropping, options can often cause dissonance. There is even a word for it: stock options are said to have gone ‘underwater’ when the market price falls below the concessional issue price. Microsoft has had to buy back its options from employees when they went underwater.

Some HR professionals feel that one way to motivate employees is through bonuses and awards. “But that’s counterproductive,” says an expert. “See how employees have come to regard the annual bonus as a natural right.” He adds that awards like the best employee or the most valuable suggestion ? which, many companies say, are so effective ? do more harm than good. “When people get the feeling they have to be bribed to do their jobs, they get more alienated from the organisation.”

The ideal solution, of course, is to build the appropriate corporate culture. But that’s easier said than done. Harvey A. Hornstein, the author of The Haves and the Have Nots: The Abuse of Power and Privilege in the Workplace, says that what is required is the employees’ identification with the organisation. “Organisational identification alters employees’ personal job definitions. Those with stronger ties of identification define their jobs more broadly than those with weaker ones. As a result, they become more responsible, conscientious organisational citizens. Successful organisational functioning depends on employees behaving like active citizens of the work community in ways that go beyond the narrow rigidities of formal job descriptions.”

So what’s the problem? This method means that you must give employees more freedom. And both in India and internationally, that’s unacceptable to most managers.

Is alienation really that big a problem? Yes, though Indian managements may not have realised it. Take a study in the UK. “Employee alienation, combined with its siblings ‘sickness’, ‘absenteeism’ and ‘poor attendance’, is a major problem in UK industry, costing billions of pounds every year,” says a survey by management consultants Magus.

And the problem is growing. According to a Cornell University study: “In the new globalised economy and its high-commitment organisations, alienation is supposed to be a psychological relic of the past. Our analysis, however, highlights that alienation remains a serious problem for blue-collar workers and their employing organisations and that, under modern theories of managerial control, alienation at work has only become worse.”

It’s time to listen to the wake-up call.

POSERS FOR THE UNDERPRIVILEGED

The five statements used to measure the Harris Alienation Index**

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

What you think doesn’t count very much any more.

People with power try to take advantage of people like yourself.

The people running the country don't really care what happens to you.

You're left out of things going on around you.

** The Index for the US for 2005 was 55, up five points since 2004. This index is also modified and used by some organisations to measure internal alienation.