HR leaders must learn Dalton’s law in chemistry

Dalton’s law is not just a law in chemistry refers to the mixture of gases and its total and partial pressure but it also make lots of sense and meaning to the corporate world as well with reference to the total impact of any organization vis-à-vis the collective and individual efforts of employees.

Dalton’s law states that the total pressure of a mixture of gases is equal to the partial pressures of different (individual) non reactive gases in the mixture or that constitutes the mixture of gases. It means, every individual gas in the mixture contributes their share to the total pressure of the mixture of all gases.

P total = p1+p2+p3…………..

Similarly every individual employee contributes individually to the overall growth of the corporate. The total impact/success of the organization therefore comes definitely from the roles and responsibilities of every employee barring their hierarchy/position, designation or the educational qualifications. In most instances, the top management would never treat the people at the lower level as important and valuable in decision making process and their role is largely limited or reduced to doing the assigned/defined job. Further, the top leaders in most corporate would strongly believe that ‘evolving an intelligent strategy’, ‘planning’, ‘forecasting’ etc., are possible only to the top leaders and others does not either have the caliber or competency.

A very neat and clean organization can easily create a long lasting impact upon visitors. The credit for such job goes to the house-keeping function. The house keeping function may not even be in the payroll of most organization. But they too play a pivotal and significant role in the image and impact building process of the organization.

In the mixture of gases, the gas that is present in larger proportion never dilute/suppress the pressure of any other gas in the mixture however small quantity the said gas may be present. That is the reason why the total pressure of mixture of gases always be equal to the partial pressure of every individual gas in the mixture. Dalton has proved the above. If the Daltons law is not understood from the management perspective and not wisely extrapolated to the corporate situation, the HR function and the top leaders in the corporate may not learn the importance every employee in the organization.

The successful organization will certainly pool the talents, expertise, competency and finally the contributions of every individual employee and that is how several such organizations have become so successful. Only through cross functional learning and integration of the efforts of every individual employee in the organization, the HR function can create the art and science of people management.

Dalton’s law in a subtle way also tells to the corporate that every employee is therefore important and hence the organization must respect every one in the organization sincerely and must be duly rewarded.