Tej Kohli Business Blog

On May Day, when people all over the world celebrated ‘work culture’, Punjab government employees holidayed on Thursday even as their counterparts in neighbouring Haryana attended offices, enhancing the state’s productivity.

If that does not explain Punjab’s slipping position on the national growth chart, then this simple back-of-the-envelope calculation would - on an average, a Punjab government employee is entitled to enjoy nearly 200 off days in a year, including 104 Saturdays and Sundays, 31 gazetted holidays, two restricted holidays out of the 17 offered days, 20 earned leaves, 10-20 casual leaves and another 20 medical leaves. Add another six-and-a-half days on account of nagar kirtans, and the number tots up to 200 holidays, out of 365 days in a year.

This effectively means that for every one working day, a Punjab government employee can enjoy almost 1.8 days as holidays!

Haryana, too, is liberal with holidays, but not as much as Punjab, as its employees get 28 gazetted holidays and two out of nine restricted holidays, 10 medical leaves (with full pay) or 20 (with half-pay), one to 20 CLs and 22 ELs. There are no half days. So, while Punjab has slipped from number one to seven on the national development scene, Haryana is steadily building up its position.

”On an average, we have 160-180 working days in a year whereas European countries maintain 220 government work days in a year, which should explain why we don’t have a work culture,” observes a senior Punjab government official, who has worked with organizations like UN and World Bank.

Notably, the previous Congress government had tried to correct the position by bringing down the gazetted holidays to just about 17.

Additional resources by Tej Kohli

Tej Kohli business blog brings some amusing business facts, the kinds of which you have not heard before.

Do you know?

• Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of the shoe company Nike, got his first shoe idea after staring at a waffle iron. This gave him the idea of using squared spikes to make the shoes lighter.
• Bill Gates house was partially designed using a Macintosh computer.
• In the late 1960’s, Mountain Dew bottles featured a hillbilly on them. These are now collector items worth five to ten dollars.
• In 1949 UNICEF produced the first charity Christmas card. The picture shown on the card was painted by a seven year old girl.
• 18% of an Americans income is spent on transportation.
• 7-Eleven is the largest retail chain in the world.
• According to research, the most productive workday is Tuesday and the least productive is Friday.
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class.
• Americans write approximately 50 billion checks a year making it the second most frequent payment method used after cash.
• Americans write approximately 50 billion checks a year making it the second most frequent payment method used after cash.
• Approximately 7.5% of all office documents get lost.
• Bill Gates began programming computers at age 13.
• Bill Gates donated close to $100 million to fight AIDS in India. As a percent of his total wealth, this would be comparable to him donating ten cents if he only had $60.
• Coupons were introduced in 1894 when Asa Candler bought the Coca-Cola formula for $2,300 and gave people coupons that he had written out to receive a free glass of coke.
• Duracell, the battery-maker, built parts of its new international headquarters using materials from its own waste.

This strip was awarded the best dilbert joke. I didn’t find it that funny so tell me your opinion on it.

What do you think??? 

Tej Kohli business blog raise concern on the threatening security risks, likely to drill the internet. Tej Kohli found this interesting report posted online on the internet security fragility.

Internet security is a big question that is likely to raise eyebrows in the near future. According to a recent report by security company Symantec, the tipping point in internet security is closer than we think. The report highlighted some alarming facts.
By the end of 2007, the number of unique identified threats stood at 1,122,311. Of this disturbing total, 711,912 of the threats were identified in 2007, representing a 468 per cent increase on the previous year.
Such distressing numbers are enough to startle any company CIO or IT manager, who holds charge of ensuring security of systems, vital to the day-to-day running of their organization.
In actual fact, the number of malicious code threats is rising so quickly that Symantec’s experts believe the world may be rapidly heading for a security “tipping point”. This point will be reached when the number of legitimate programs in the world is outnumbered by the malicious or illegitimate ones.
When this happens, the traditional method of blacklisting known malicious code loses some of its effectiveness and appeal. The effort and expense of maintain a list of known bad code continues to increase to the point where it becomes a significant burden on both security companies and their customers.
Instead, a white listing system will have to be implemented. This list will be a comprehensive summary of all legitimate programs that should be allowed to exist on a corporate network. If a particular batch of code doesn’t appear on this list, it must be deemed malicious.
To back its prediction, Symantec pointed to research conducted for the report that looked at the adoption of new applications on Windows-based PCs. The researchers found that, of some 54,000 unique applications deployed on Microsoft Windows PCs, 65 per cent were malicious.
It’s a trend that is not going to slow anytime soon. For organisations to have any hope of maintaining security, a white list system may be the only choice. Any alternative is going to become too expensive and cumbersome to maintain.

Tej Kohli business blog compiles some humorous business episodes, so that you go laughing all the way to office. Tej Kohli an entrepreneur himself tells a joke on a young businessman shooting his mouth off.

A young businessman had just started his own firm. He rented a beautiful office and had it furnished with antiques.

Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Wishing to appear the hot shot, the businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he had a big deal working.

He threw huge figures around and made giant commitments. Finally he hung up and asked the visitor, “Can I help you?”

The man said, “Yeah, I’ve come to activate your phone lines.”

Internet marketing business is high and flourishing. Keeping the current scenario in mind, I, Tej Kohli take an opportunity to present the gen-next internet marketing trends that will rule the industry for the next decade.

Telemarketing hits back: PPC (pay-per-click) will be a passé. Direct interaction with customer will make a larger impact, increasing the sale prospects by almost 10 percent.

Feed marketing catch pace: With the ever-increasing use of RSS, the day is not too far off when the podcasts may employ the sponsorship model, or subscription, or do it plainly for the coolness factor, customer retention, or PR pop that you’ll get if you do it early enough.

E-mail marketing lives on: Unlike today, the future e-mail marketing scenario will be free of spam. Methods like paid e-mail postage may come into picture, but still it will remain the most popular means of marketing.

More sophisticated Agent software: State-of-the-art agent software will ease off lot of pressure from screening out relevant online information. This software will track down your surfing habits and will ask your preferences from time to time. Hence, your agent bringing you both B2B and B2C offerings will become a reality of today.

Audio/Video blogging: this trend has already begun to catch pace. Many popular blogs have included audio and video content features. This drift will mark a new epoch in the journalism and retail business sector too.