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How to make a good impression at work

You don’t need to suck up to the boss. Healthy work habits, promptness and good manners will get you far.
by Reyna Mathur

Shashwati Agarwal (33) vividly remembers her first job at a magazine office in Bangalore. “As an editorial assistant, I had to ensure that all functions in the office happened smoothly, nobody’s work got held up due to scheduling mistakes, all advertisement dummies came in at the right time. I was also in charge of ensuring smooth production.” She says the biggest compliment came from her boss, who called her when Shashwati was on a month-long break owing to an illness. “My boss said, ‘We can’t handle this without you. Please come back soon!’” she laughs.

All of us crave for approval and confirmation that we are doing our jobs so right that the office will suffer if we are not there. But the practical reality is that nobody is indispensable at the workplace – if you quit today, the office will simply replace you and work will go on as before. However, there are always a few employees who are so impressive at the office that when they decide to quit, the management normally tries to talk them out of it. Contrast this with other employees, whose resignations are accepted at once. This means that the former are doing something that the latter are not.

Here’s how you can come close to being indispensable at the office:

Always be ahead of schedule. If you are in charge of a certain task which has to be completed in a week, start on it the moment the assignment is given to you. People make the mistake of starting work at the last minute and then handing in shoddy work. If you give yourself enough time to work out your assignment, your focus will be greater and the quality will be top notch – a sure way to get noticed. If you are in charge of a regular task, ensure that you are ready with the final product before deadline.

Cultivate good manners. Always be ready with a smile and a genuine compliment for colleagues and your immediate seniors. Your composure will be tested in times of stressful high-pressure situations, so handle yourself with dignity and calmness. If you find a colleague panicking over an issue, try to calm them down and offer assistance. If you see your boss looking tired or stressed, tell him or her in a polite, non-intrusive way that you have noticed them looking worried, and that they should let you know if you can help in any way. Extending a helping hand always works, but be genuine in your interactions.

Display initiative. If you have a solution to a problem, don’t be afraid to offer it. Many employees don’t offer solutions fearing that others will think they are showing off, or that it will annoy the boss if they speak out of turn. Unless you are being brash and arrogant about it, there is no harm in revealing that you have something to say. Make your point and don’t gloat if your suggestions are taken on board, and don’t sulk if they are not. You are not there to display one-upmanship; you are there to work with a team. Don’t try to stand out in a group and never claim credit for the group’s success even if it was your hard work and ideas that won them the success.

Be organised. Understand how the office operates on projects, and follow that system religiously. If necessary, add your own tips and tricks to the system to optimise it further. If you are left to work out your own system, start by making progress charts of an ongoing project, and if necessary, tack them on to the soft board at your work station. This brings a semblance of order to the job, especially if it helps you to keep track of all deadlines and summarise the project satisfactorily. Your seniors might adopt this system and you will be credited with introducing it to the office.

Don’t badmouth anyone in the office. Even if your immediate colleague is highly irritating or your boss is irrational, refrain from speaking ill about anybody in the office. Since everybody gossips, the person who doesn’t immediately sticks out and gets noticed by the seniors. Your office management will understand that you are discreet, mature and capable of not giving in to the temptation to gossip.

(Picture courtesy www.morganmckinley.com. Images used for representational purpose only)

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Mumbai gets registry of organ donors

IMA Kalyan ties up with LH Hiranandani Hospital to compile data about voluntary organ donors and also record their consent letters.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

This one’s a great initiative to increase the numbers of organ donors in the city.

Indian Medical Association (IMA), Kalyan has come up with a plan with LH Hiranandani Hospital to create a voluntary registry of organ donors with details of people who are willing to donate their organs and their consent letters. The registry will contain the consent letters of those willing to donate their organs and their health status along with other details.

At the moment, about 7 kidney donations happen every month, and about 4 liver donations. These numbers need to be much higher – for this, more awareness is essential. During a recent programme at the hospital, around 350 doctors and more than 500 people came forward from various walks of life to give their consent letters to join the registry, said Dr Anjum Syed, President, IMA Kalyan and gynaecologist attached with various hospitals in the region.

Traffic police, volunteers and others signed up to donate organs for the initiative

Heart Transplant surgeon Dr Anvay Mule said “There are thousands of patients who are waiting with hope. Such activities are required to create awareness and increase organ donation.”

Elaborating on the organ donation scenario in India, Dr Syed, said, “Figures show that India’s current organ donation is 0.05 per million populations (about 50 cadaver donors per year). The number of transplants per year is in the range of 3,000 to 3,500 with barely 5% coming from brain dead patients. The annual requirement is about 1, 50,000 donations. However, if we can improve it even to 1 per million donations, we could take care of some of the organ shortages in India. At 1 per million donation rate, we would have 1,100 organ donors which could take care of almost all current demands for organs in India.”

“The rate of renal transplants in our country is actually quite dismal, as more than 1,00,000 patients are waiting for renal transplants, and less than 5,000 happen every year. It is much worse for cadaver transplants as less than 1,000 happen per year. In comparison, Mumbai city does less than 300 renal transplants every year, of which only 30 to 40 will be cadaver donations. So the people requiring dialysis has steadily gone up, putting a lot of strain on the infrastructure to accommodate all these patients,” added Dr Syed.

ORGAN DONATION KIDNEY LIVER LUNGS CORNEA HEART
LIVE ORGAN DONATIONS FROM 1995-2015 8,061 202 – – NA
CADAVERIC (FROM BRAIN DEAD PATIENT) 546 150 2 19,285 (from June 2006 to June 2015 3

 Requirement in Mumbai and Thane

KIDNEY LIVER LUNGS CORNEA HEART
2800 210 – – 10

Source: Maha Arogya Seva Mandal, Thane

“Aiming at increasing the number of donors by creating awareness on organ donation is required. From increasing the current 5,000 to lakhs and more, IMA Kalyan has joined hands with many private hospitals to spread awareness on importance of organ donation. This is the first step to reach among the educative society,” says Dr Syed.

Dr Pravin Shingare, ZTCC committee member, added, “Our aim is to remove misunderstandings among public regarding organ donation.”

(Featured image courtesy zeenews.india.com)

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Luv Thy Farmer: The Ek Glass Mosambi Juice Challenge

Mumbai’s Ranjit Pawar initiated the ‘Luv Thy Farmer’ movement under which an Aurangabad mosambi farmer reaches his produce directly to consumers.
by Shubha Khandekar

Weekends are no longer a breather for Ranjit Pawar from a hectic 10 hour job with a reputed multi-national corporation, where he works as a business manager. Rather, it’s a break for frenzied phone calls to volunteers, customers and transport operators who are pouring into his rapidly expanding loop of the Luv Thy Farmer initiative, launched to help Aurangabad’s mosambi producer Shivaji Gaikwad get respectable returns on his produce, against the backdrop of the farmers’ dismal plight in Marathwada.

“I have known Shivaji Gaikwad from before,” says Ranjit, whose father owns a farm in Satara district. “I’ve grown up on a farm and spent every vacation on one. Hence it was easy for me to feel his pain; he was being offered no more than Rs 15 per kilo by traders, which sells for anything from Rs 30 onwards in Mumbai. He can’t even break even on these terms.”

Having worked earlier in a mobile info system for farmers, Ranjit realised that the e-commerce platform for B2C transactions is available to a producer of every commodity, except to a farmer. The result is that both the producer and the consumer are being left out of the benefits of the e-commerce platform. He thought of tapping the Internet and the social media to address the issue. In less than a month, over two tonnes of mosambis have already been delivered in Mumbai and its suburbs and in Pune, purely through voluntary efforts of well-wishers who needed no persuasion to pitch in.

kids_mosambi“That’s all it takes,” he laughs. “Just the click of a mouse can place a farmer directly on a global e-commerce pathway, and open up unlimited vistas for marketing his produce.  Along with other volunteers I have merely acted as a facilitator and enabler,” he says, after having delivered some 1,500 orders to total strangers!

Ranjit found willing takers for his idea. He trusted Gaikwad for the quality of the produce while Gaikwad too was convinced of Ranjit’s intentions. Volunteers came forward and on September 6, he flashed the ‘Luv Thy Farmer’ page on Facebook, followed by the website of the same name created overnight by a volunteer from Germany. Prof Kurush Dalal in Kharghar, Anuradha Pawar in Prabhadevi, Varuna Rao in Thane, and Vaishali Narkar in Chembur kept their doors open for 24 hours as pick up points for the stocks rolling in every day.

“It’s a highly scalable, replicable model and volunteers can help without leaving their homes,” says Ranjit, who now has support from diverse quarters. “It’s not too expensive either, even though Gaikwad has arranged to pack the mosambis in 5 kg bags, and pays for the farm to city transportation. Hence, of the Rs 60 that the end consumer is paying for a kilo of mosambi, nearly Rs 30 to Rs 40 goes to the farmer, and transportation and labour costs take up the rest. Logistics players have come forward to help out and they are ready to work on a no-profit-no-loss basis. We are working on streamlining the transportation, using vans, bikes and even public transport, so as to further improve the farmer’s profit,” he says.

The ripple effect of Luv Thy Farmer has created beneficiaries in unexpected quarters. Hence, while one person in the US made an online purchase for donation to an old age home in Mumbai, a senior marketing manager at a pharma company donated a bulk purchase to a hospice for children in Mumbai.

Ranjit proposes to make the facility available to growers of strawberries, bananas, pomegranates, rice, organic jaggery, wild honey, tur dal and many other agro-products who are approaching him every day.

“The next challenge is to make Luv Thy Farmer self-sustainable,” he says.  “I wish to explore such options as angel funds and crowd funding for projects that many farmers cannot implement. This could give a boost to entrepreneurship in the agro sector, so that the farmer can thrive without depending upon a single market.”

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Worship, immerse and protect the seas

City based environmentalist Anand Pendharkar’s Ganesh idols stuffed with vegetable fish food are finding many takers in the State and country, too.
by Ravi Shet

Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the largest festivals celebrated in our city. But the festival creates havoc in our seas – the post visarjan (immersion) of Ganesh idols made of Plaster of Paris (POP) pollute the water significantly and also impact the marine environment badly. Nothing changes year after year – huge Ganesh POP idols are immersed in the seas, jeopardising the marine life at an alarming rate.

The answer, then, is to make eco-friendly idols. Thus, the Sprouts Environmental Trust and the good folks at Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) came together to create Ganesh idols made from corn and vegetable powder. These can be consumed by fish and other marine organisms. Anand Pendharkar, founder of Sprouts, has completed his M. Sc in Wildlife Science from Dehradun, and tells us that he has been cleaning the beaches in Mumbai post-Ganesh visarjan for the past 12 years. “Girgaon chowpatty has been on our radar, since huge idols mostly come there. People also flock to Juhu beach because celebrities come there,” he says.

The corn and vegetable Ganesh idol

For the past 6 years, Sprouts has been preparing Ganesh idols from clay and papier mache as a healthy alternative to the usual POP idols. However, when O&M’s team (comprising Elizabeth Dias, Srreram Athray, Calvin Austin, Kunal Dangarwala and Farid Bawa) joined hands with Anand, the concept of stuffing vegetarian fish food along with clay for preparation of Ganesh idols was discussed. “The idols dissolve in water within 4 to 5 hours. The journey was full of learning and we went through a lot of research and testing,” Anand says.

The team created a standard size of 9-inch Ganesh idols priced at Rs 900, which are coloured using natural materials such as Fuller’s Earth, geru, kumkum and turmeric. It takes around 3 days to complete an idol and their target is to prepare 200 idols for this year. As of now, 8 artisans on a part-time basis are working in Mumbai with Anand, while some more are working in Nagpur.

Anand recently conducted a workshop for Margam (a programme of NGO Vidya), a self-help group for women in Powai, and taught them how to make this unique Ganesh idol. He says, “People who normally get Ganesh home or in pandals every years have purchased our 9-inch idol this year.” He further adds that his family has been a huge support for his journey.

(Pics by Anand Pendharkar and Ravi Shet)

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Let your eyes be part of the 1 million pledge

Campaign to raise awareness about eye donation kicks off all over India; will be held for a year from now.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Vision Sankara Eye Care Hospital has an ambitious plan: it has launched a year-long campaign, ‘Sign4Sight – Year of Million Miracles’, to mark a fortnight observing eye donation from August 25 to September 8. The eye care hospital aims to raise awareness about eye donation through its year-long campaign, and wants 1 million pledges at the end of it.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), corneal disease is the chief cause for vision loss and blindness. The National Programme for control of Blindness estimates that India has 20% of the global blind population. With about 1,20,000 blind people in the country, the yearly addition of 25,000 to 30,000 cases further tips the scale.

Dr Ashish Bacchav, Vision Sankara says, “In most cases, loss of sight can be corrected by eye donation through a surgical procedure of corneal transplantation. A person can gain vision only when a donor donates a healthy cornea. The corneal transplantation has high success rates of around 95%. Every pledge will give back the boon of eyesight to two individuals.”

Corneal blindness is an affliction due to a damage in the tissue covering the front of the eye, called cornea. The corneas should be removed preferably within an hour of death, but can be removed up to a maximum of 6 to 8 hours.

Mohammed P, a retired serviceman, had his zest for life replenished after his vision was restored post his corneal transplant surgery at the Sankara hospital in Coimbatore. He said, “I have nothing but blessings in my heart for the soul that has given me a second lease on life. As a serviceman I have always been very self reliant and optimistic, with my eyesight restored I can now begin to enjoy playing with my grandchildren and revel in the beauty that life has to offer.”

(Picture courtesy www.zeenews.com)

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Lessons in oral cancer at Kumbh Mela

Indian Dental Association is trying to spread awareness about oral cancer through free camps, check-ups for pilgrims thronging the Kumbh Mela.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Indian Dental Association (IDA), as part of their endeavour to create awareness about oral health and hygiene and Oral Cancer amongst the masses, are participating in the Jana Swasthya Abhiyan, an initiative of Department of Public Health, Government of Maharashtra.

Today, India has undesirably come to be known as the oral cancer capital of the world. People across the country are addicted to various tobacco products. Such habits can lead to oral cancer. The Kumbh Mela, being a meeting point of masses from diverse parts of the country, proves to be an ideal platform for IDA to provide oral care education and awareness.

Health centre at NashikAs part of the Jana Swasthya Abhiyan, IDA will conduct free oral health check-up camps for 15 days in 4 different phases during the ongoing Mahakumbh in Nasik and Trimbakeswar, starting from August 26, 2015. The aim of the campaign is to create awareness about oral health and hygiene and oral cancer amongst thousands of pilgrims who will be converging at Maha Kumbh from across the country.

According to Dr Ashok Dhoble, Hon’ble Secretary General, Indian Dental Association,“We are aiming to influence thousands of lives by creating awareness about oral health and hygiene and Oral Cancer amongst them. Through this initiative, we will be moving closer to IDA’s vision of improving oral health and quality of life, achieving ‘optimal national oral health for all’ by 2020.”

IDA will be present at 10 locations at Nasik and Trimbakeswar Maha Kumbh to conduct free oral health check-up camps in association with Karmaveer Bhausaheb Hiray Dental College and Hospital, Nashik.

(Pictures courtesy www.bms.co.in, IDA)

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