From ‘All About Me’ forms to ‘Adobe’ Forms

As new joinees wait near the Main Gate, one or two HR representatives would arrive there around 9 a.m. After a brief introduction to parents and candidates, they guide everyone to the Canteen. As you cross the security guards in uniform, green lawn sprinkled with water, young staff moving around the work entry complex in green overcoat, every scene is new and unseen to you. When you walk down the stairs towards canteen, the sprawling half-white buildings suddenly introduce you to the spread of the factory with surprise.

Those were the days when mass recruitment was in full swing. If am right, 40 candidates joined 15 days before our date of joining. I vaguely remember 23 candidates joined with me. I remember on 3rd Oct 1989, 60 candidates joined.

Once you reach that large 800 seater canteen, you will be signing several forms as part of joining formalities. After that, you will be given a pre-printed A3 size form called ‘All About Me’. You would be prompted to self introduce by filling the boxes that essentially works like an ice-breaker amongst the group. Though some of the new joinees would wonder what to fill, they might copy the contents from others. I have noticed this based on the information pattern that exists in several forms of employees who joined on the same date. You will see the display of such forms in Notice Board or Manithuligal (the famous titan wall paper). Many new joinees used to mention ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ or ‘Mother Teresa’ as their favorite person. For favorite hobbies, most would mention ‘Poem writing, essay writing’ as their hobby. Any one who wrote his hobby as ‘Poem writing’ is sure to receive a phone call from R.Balaji, inviting contributions for Manithuligal.

I am sure you might have ego searched in the internet several times (searching your own name in Google). Similarly, those days many of us were keen to see our ‘All About Me’ form in the Notice Board. Introducing new joinees in an informal manner but making it interesting and vivid was one of the successful and innovative practices of HR. Even today, in many organizations, such practices are quite unheard of.

In later days, when I worked in Wipro, a colleague who was close to me as coffee time companion, never shared that next day was his last day at work. That incident made me feel that only few organizations can successfully bond their employees and Titan is one of them.

Those teens who filled ‘All About Me’ forms are the ones implementing the latest solutions like SAP Adobe Forms in many organizations across the globe.

How did that happen and what’s the role of Titan as an Organization in such (r)evolution?

… to be continued