Millennials changing dynamics of workplace at India Inc

PTI | Jun 04, 2017, 10.42 AM IST

MUMBAI: With millennials slowly taking over and likely to soon dominate the leadership roles, organisations are rapidly changing their working environment to suit the younger generation, according to industry experts.

"The collective working environment is changing rapidly because of millennials. This younger generation is already taking over and will soon dominate leadership roles. The earlier communication practices are getting replaced by telecommuting," CIEL HR Services CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra told PTI.

He said, the day-to-day work schedule is no more like a clock-work of a time office and rather is based on completion of tasks, projects and deliverables.

"If someone has an assignment to finish, the closing hours of the business do not matter," he added.

As millennials typically feel valued when there is open conversation and feedback frequently, more and more organisations are revamping performance management processes and retraining their people in supervisory roles to manage achievements in a new way, he said.

He said mostly services sector are witnessing these changes as they have been attracting a lot more young people including IT, outsourcing, hospitality and technology sectors.

Echoing the view, IKYA Human Capital Solutions, a division of Quess Corp, Business Head Staffing Lohit Bhatia said that firms are creating an environment where the millennials are constantly challenged by giving new territories, new projects, new clients or simply newer departments.

"Job roles are constantly changing unlike in the past where subject matter experts were created across decades of learning. Today the constant is 'change' and that change allows people to move and interact with newer colleagues, newer markets and newer clients," he added.

Companies are also adopting policies like flexi hours and flexi working without compromising on work, he said.

"This flexibility allows employees to have a comfortable work life balance while continuing their task at work and accomplishing results in todays challenging world," he added.

GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel said millennials approach is more aggressive and innovative, which has succeeded 70-80 per cent time and companies are willing to risk themselves to accommodate these new age leaders.

Companies are extensively using new age recruiting tools, such as social platforms as millennials do review company culture, feedback about organisation to make a decision before joining, he said.

Millennials need an engaging workplace so many companies have already began devising new engagement and retention programmes like flexible work hours, remote working, collaborative workspaces, he said.

Organisations are slowly doing away with formal office attire to a semi-formal or smart work formals, using crowd sourcing, enabling technology use in every sphere of work, reverse mentoring programmes, he said.

"Companies are coming up with programmes where they can provide these workforce with an experience rather than a job," he added.