Difference in Working Styles Between India, US and Europe

The working styles between India, US and Europe differ widely. Many Indian corporates and multinational companies are wooing Indians settled abroad in the US and Europe to return to India and work for them. With a multitude of highly paid jobs up for grabs for the experienced professionals, many Indian expatriates are thinking of returning home to take up these jobs.

These Indians in USA and Europe would be exposed to the American and European style of work culture, which is very different from the working style in India. With many multinationals setting up branches in India, they are trying their best to incorporate the western working style in their Indian offices too. Earlier in Indian companies and corporate set ups, constructive criticism, training programs for employees, motivational meetings, teleconferences; employee bonding etc were unheard of and were considered alien and set aside for the American working style.

With the advent of multinationals, the tremendous growth of the IT sector and its allied BPO and Outsourcing services sectors, the American working style is fast being implemented in many of the offices here. But alas these are confined only to the large corporates and multinationals. Smaller and mediocre firms are still following the Indian working style.

Time management does not rank high on the priority list of Indian working styles unlike their American and European counterparts who are sticklers for punctuality and time management. Americans value their time and are keen that the employees are punctual at work and this permeates into their working environment too. In India, if an employee is late he or she always has a good convincing reason. It is common place event to find business meeting rescheduled or rather delayed by an hour or two in Indian companies.

The working style in India requires employees to be dressed in semi formals unlike their western counterparts who are all dressed in formals like blazers and suits. Here the weather does not permit such dressing. In the Indian work environment, everyone addresses each other as Sir or Madam, but addressing bosses by their first name is fast catching up in India, which is so commonly found in USA and Europe where everyone addresses one another by their first names. Indians are inquisitive about others and so take a lot of interest in gossiping about others, some will even try to pry into others lives and offer unsolicited advice. Certainly, this is not found in the American work environment where everyone at the office will keep to their selves and do the work they are allotted diligently.

Those who have worked in companies and firms in the US and Europe will find coming back to work in Indian companies and Indian working conditions really different from what they were previously used to. It will present a challenging task to those Indians in USA [http://www.imrti.com/] who are seeking job opportunities in Indian companies whether they are corporate business houses or multinationals.

Tag Line or USP – What’s the Difference?

There’s a lot of confusing rhetoric in the market as to what is a ‘Tag Line’ and what is a ‘Unique Selling Proposition’. The point of this post is to clarify both and the major difference between them. Unfortunately even amongst the ranks of ‘Marketing Professionals’ there are those who don’t understand that difference and as a consequence they miss out on what could be pure marketing gold for their clients.

Let’s start with the USP, in an earlier article of mine I described a USP for a cafe and gave an example of how the USP could be arrived at, essentially it is a process of researching your competition, listing what it is that they offer the market and uncovering what it is that they don’t do.

The ‘don’t do’ items represent the gap and the opportunity that exists for you and your business, you have discovered USPs based on your competitive research. In fact, in that earlier post we listed a number of USPs that we identified as a result of the work we did.

The whole basis of a USP is that it is something that others don’t, won’t or can’t do and you can only uncover your USPs as a result of research.

Now for the ‘Tag Line’, think of this as the words that you wrap around your USPs, if, for example, you own a souvenir shop in a special location overlooking the Blue Mountains. You do the research and you find that yours is in fact the only souvenir shop that has the clear mountain and valley views, those are unique to your shop.

Now lets look at the USP associated with your research, you have amazing views and no other souvenir shop has them. Your task is to associate the views to what you sell and importantly what it is that your customer takes away with them.

Here’s one suggested Tag line for this Souvenir business:

Unmatched Views… Unmatched memories…

The USP is the location, the stunning views over the Blue Mountains, we have associated it strongly by comparison with the occasion that the customer visits the shop and makes a purchase, they actually bought a ‘memory’ of their visit to the Blue Mountains, both of which are unmatched by your competition.

That particular tag line has 4 words, that’s acceptable and it looks and sounds quite good. Another tag line that you could use has just two words and very fewer words hold more power and can be more memorable:

‘Incomparable memories’

In the image at the top of this post on my blog, Larry Nelson has done his research, he knows that people looking for his kind of services are tired of agents offering to move the world but not delivering. By default they wanted results and they did not want excuses. Larry capitalised on that knowledge very effectively.

To simply create a tag line without research and clearly identified unique aspects of your business demonstrates a shallowness and a wasted opportunity. The ‘Tag Line’ is as important to your business or marketing plan as the USPs that you uncover and can only come from them. Both will show a potential lender or investor that you have done the research and you have thought about how you can present your business to your customers on the best possible way.

There are other techniques that you can use to help create your Tag line and that will be the subject of another article.

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