A friend sent me a WhatsApp message this morning that genuinely surprised me.
It was about an employee of Tata Steel who had passed away unexpectedly. The message said that the company had made significant financial provisions for his family and would continue to support them until the age at which he would have retired.
At first, I thought it might simply be one of those WhatsApp messages that gets forwarded without verification.
So I did something I always prefer to do.
I checked.
And what I found surprised me even more.
Tata Steel has, under certain employee-benefit schemes, provided financial protection to the families of employees who die while in service. Historical Tata Steel records describe a provision under which the nominee could receive a monthly amount linked to the employee's last drawn salary until the employee reached the normal retirement age.
That made me stop and think.
We normally look at a company as an organisation that pays an employee for the work he or she performs.
The employee works.
The company pays a salary.
One day, employment ends.
But what happens when an employee dies unexpectedly, leaving behind a spouse, children and a family that depended upon that income?
Most companies may provide insurance, gratuity, provident-fund benefits or some form of death compensation.
Those are valuable.
But there is something profoundly different about a company saying, in effect:
“The employee may no longer be with us, but his family should not suddenly lose the financial security that his employment provided.”
That is not merely a financial benefit.
It is a philosophy.
It reflects an understanding that an employee is not just an employee number on a payroll.
There is a family behind that employee.
There are children whose education may depend on that salary.
There may be a spouse who has built an entire life around that income.
And when that income disappears overnight because of an unexpected death, the emotional loss is already enormous. If the financial security disappears at the same moment, the family suffers twice.
This is why I find the philosophy behind such a policy so admirable.
And it also makes me think of Ratan Tata, whose leadership came to represent a very different idea of corporate success.
Ratan Tata reminded the corporate world that true leadership is not only about creating wealth, but also about caring for the people who helped create it.
Behind such a humane corporate philosophy, one cannot help but admire a leadership vision that recognises that a company can be measured not only by the wealth it creates, but also by the lives it cares for.
I am not writing this as an advertisement for Tata.
I am writing this because good things deserve to be recognised.
In a world where companies are often judged by revenue, profit, market capitalisation and shareholder returns, I believe we should also ask another question:
How does a company treat its people when they are at their most vulnerable?
That may tell us something far more important about the character of an organisation.
As far as my knowledge goes, I have not come across another private company anywhere in the world with a clearly documented policy quite like Tata Steel's approach of protecting a deceased employee's family through retirement age based on the employee's last drawn salary.
But I would genuinely be happy to be proved wrong.
If you know of another private company anywhere in the world that has a comparable policy, I would love to know about it.
Because this is not a competition between companies.
It is an appreciation of humanity in business.
Good companies should be recognised.
Good policies should be known.
And when a corporation chooses to protect the family of a person who can no longer contribute to the organisation, perhaps we should pause for a moment and say:
“That is what responsible business can look like.”
-Yozen Balki
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