I took up an early retirement from the army and retired as a major. During over fifteen years in the armed forces, one comes across persons, belonging to different areas, cultures, and language or dialects. I had a habit, of calling all individuals under my command for personal/confidential interviews. This interaction accorded me valuable insights in the personality and thinking of men.

While serving in the armed forces the civilian life seem pretty cushy and halcyon. One is not bound to undergo the tough routines of army. But when I said ciao to the uniform, I was almost taken aback with the hard road ahead. However, I had learnt a lot regarding administration, human resource management, protocol, security, and man- management etc from the services. The best part of this experience was acquiring people skills and interacting with people from diverse backgrounds.

Back in the civilian life,  I did various jobs and gained further experience in handling customers, government and civic agencies. Due to inexplicable circumstances I could not stick to a job for a longer period. Ultimately, I landed up in a textile mill, where I was appointed as the Administration and Human Resource Manager. I am still serving here since over eight years.

It was my first exposure to an industrial environment.

The textile industry in Pakistan has a unique culture. There is an extraordinary high manpower turnover of production personnel. Every day workers are leaving and arriving in teams under their “Supervisor” (leader). These leaders exercise extreme control over their personnel. Another salient feature of this culture is rumor mongering. My CEO had briefed me on these aspects prior to my arrival at the factory. He also tasked me to eradicate this peculiarity from our mill.

A covert study on the high turnover was carried out in terms of Exit Interviews, the problem was resolved and we reduced the turn-over.

The biggest problem which I faced was the immunization of personnel against “Hepatitis B”. We spent a lot of amount in getting teams from different agencies to carry out a survey and guide us on the issue. Ultimately, a team was selected for the purpose. They had to carry out screening tests. The team put up a big camp in the mills. The matter was publicized in the form of banners, stickers etc all over the premises.

Every one was happy that we are doing a big service for our workers, who otherwise could not have afforded this in their normal lives.