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Have you felt over-whelmed by the different types of job titles being thrown around in a company or the job market? I certainly have and have always felt that it is a lot to do with “dressing” up things. The Economist carries this interesting article about inflation in job titles.

When it comes to job titles, we live in an age of rampant inflation. Everybody you come across seems to be a chief or president of some variety. Title inflation is producing its own vocabulary: “uptitling” and “title-fluffing”.

And, it appears that title-inflation is particularly acute for titles which are a subset of  “president” (vice president, assistant vice president etc.) as compared to “chief”. Here is an outstanding piece of statistics:

The number of members of LinkedIn, a professional network, with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. The inflation rate for presidents was 312% and for chiefs a mere 275%.

So, what’s happening? What are the reasons?

What is going on here? The most immediate explanation is the economic downturn: bosses are doling out ever fancier titles as a substitute for pay raises and bonuses. But there are also structural reasons for the trend. The most basic is the growing complexity of businesses. Many not only have presidents and vice-presidents for this or that product line, but also presidents and vice-presidents for various regions. Put the two together and you have a recipe for ever-longer business cards: vice-president for photocopiers Asia-Pacific, for example.

The cult of flexibility is also inflationary. The fashion for flattening hierarchies has had the paradoxical effect of multiplying meaningless job titles. Workers crave important-sounding titles to give them the illusion of ascending the ranks. Managers who no longer have anyone to manage are fobbed off with inflated titles.

Leadership in title inflation, as in so much else, is passing to the developing world, particularly India and China. Both countries have a longstanding obsession with hierarchy (fancy job titles can be the key to getting a bride as well as the admiration of your friends). They also have tight labour markets. The result is an explosion of titles. Companies have taken to creating baffling jobs such as “outbound specialist”. They have also taken to staging public celebrations of promotions from, say, assistant deputy director to principal assistant deputy director.

And, what are some of the possible implications of title inflation:

The snag is that the familiar problems of monetary inflation apply to job-title inflation as well. The benefits of giving people a fancy new title are usually short-lived. The harm is long-lasting. People become cynical about their monikers (particularly when they are given in lieu of pay rises). Organisations become more Ruritanian. The job market becomes more opaque…

And, far from providing people with more security, fancy titles can often make them more expendable. Companies might hesitate before sacking an IT adviser. But what about a chief scrum master? The essence of inflation, after all, is that it devalues everything that it touches.

What do you think are the implications of title-inflation? Is it worth it?

Clay Shirky throws an astounding number in his TedTalk – Collectively, humans have over 1 Trillion hours of free time per year! 1 Trillion. And what are we going to do about that? How could this large “cognitive surplus” be used? Or as an organization or a leader or a manager, how would you get your employees to invest more of their discretionary time for the organization?

Enjoy the Talk.

Update: Here is a quick review of Clay Shirky’s latest book on the subject of Cognitive Surplus.

Gary Hamel and others have come up with this great initiative and set up the Management Innovation Exchange (MIX). It is an open innovation project, aiming to bring about a revolution in management. The project is asking individuals to identify barriers, submit stories and suggest “hacks” or bold ideas for tackling management challenges.

I have proposed a hack – let’s look at sharing the cost of attrition between the HR and the individual manager, in order to build accountability for people management and engagement. Unless, people’s “P&Ls” are not affected directly, no one takes notice! Typically, HR bears the costs of attrition (training, recruitment etc.) from its own budget. But, isn’t the individual manager responsible for it too?

You can click on the screenshots below to directly go to my hack on the MIX website. And, please, if you like it, do rate it. And, in any case, I need your comments and inputs to build up this hack.

I mostly keep my writings focused on HR, Management, People and Technology, but from time to time I have the urge to write about larger issues – ways in which we can make a difference.

Some of you might have heard about Kiva – an organization founded by a passionate couple which allows people to lend money via the internet to fund microfinance institutions in developing countries, which in turn lend money to people in need of funds for small businesses. I simply loved the idea, but was a bit disappointed that they have not yet been able to develop this model strongly for India.

In comes Rang De, which makes a bold attempt to recreate the model in the Indian context. Here is a quick link from their website on what really is micro-credit. So, the concept is dead simple. Rang De puts up profiles of needy people on their site with details about the business they want to start. The business plans are simple – tea-kiosk, grocery store, weaving business, cattle rearing etc. Next, people like you & me review these profiles and provide the funds for these businesses. You can start with as low as Rs. 100 (USD 2). The micro-credit agencies collect all the funds and disburse them to the people, who then pay the money back to you in equal monthly installments (current repayment rate is 99% !!!). And yes, you earn a nominal 2% interest on your social investment.  So, this is no donation, it is an investment. This is our opportunity to become social investors and earn much more than interest on our investments – an opportunity to change lives.

And, it’s all doable at the click of a button, without paperwork. So, whatever the occasion, rise up to it in a meaningful way – whether its birthdays, anniversaries, pay days, celebration of victory, festivals or simply a day when you feel passionate about doing something good. Support someone and let’s share better.

And finally! Finally, the year is coming to an end. It has been a long, tough year for many of us. And, it’s the time for me to reflect back.

Overall, this has been a great year for this blog, as I got more and more readers and was featured on Alltop as one of the top bloggers on HR. I thought it will be a good idea to put together a list of the most interesting and popular posts for 2009.

• So, you have an employee engagement program. But have you looked at the key ingredients of a successful engagement program?

• We all intuitively understand motivation. But, let’s get the basics straight and evaluate all motivational initiatives against these simple criteria.

• Are performance appraisals any good? Find out.

• Should your employee engagement program focus on workgroups or enterprise level factors? My 2 cents.

• Still. Still, hard-nosed executives don’t buy into the concept of employee engagement. Here are some data to make your point.

• The economic climate took us all through a journey like no other. Here are some thoughts on managing through it

• It is super critical to understand what drives employee engagement. Remember, your organization has its own set of unique drivers.

• “We are not ready for something like engagement” – is the statement you hear several executives making, especially when they are not so confident of internal HR processes. But, it does not matter. You need to focus on employee engagement.

• One of the toughest bits about employee engagement initiatives is “accountability”. Here is an example of how a company did it very well.

• And another potential framework for moving from insights to action.

• Yes, I can hear that – “We need a better HR team“! And maybe, this team should even have an “HR Blog”!

• If you are a people manager, please try to remain accessible by following these simple tips. It means a lot to your people.

• Have you thought about crossing the concepts of employee engagement and employee well-being? Who knows, your engagement strategy may be unsustainable!

I hope you enjoy reading this blog and I will endeavour to create meaningful content going forward into 2010. You can subscribe to this blog by grabbing the feed or even by getting fresh posts delivered to your email instantly. It’s dead simple!

Finally, you could always connect with me across different social media websites (like Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) by going to this page.

Happy holidays! And have a great 2010!