Recently a post on social media platform went viral in which a person who identifies himself as a 24 years old software professional working in big tech organization shared his personnel trauma questioning the concept of happiness despite having a handsome salary package.
This post has been widely discussed by the netizens across platforms and people expressed their opinions about the value of happiness in life. Though the issue belongs to IT industry but given the present demographic setup, every industry will face or may be facing the issue of how to manage employee.
The NextGen workforce is highly educated and exposed to the best global practices regarding work culture of the industry. This leads to rise in expectations of the young employees from the organization. The workforce prefers QUALITY of work over QUANTIY of work. Rather than having a fancy corner office in the Headquarter, this generation prefers remote location because they believe this enable them to deliver better results. And of course, this point is widely validated during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic across the globe.
India at present is the most populous country in the world leaving China behind. The young population with age below 25 years constitutes 50% of the total population and 65% below age of 35 years. In December 2022, NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) published one report title- “Gen Z and Millennials- Reshaping the Future of Workforce”. The report was published in partnership with Indeed (India’s leading job portal) focused on the aspirations of young workforce in time to come. For better understanding, Millennials are born between the year 1981-96 and Gen Z are the ones who born between 1997-2012.
In the report, it was found that the Millennials and Gen Z commonly prefer below points-
- Brand Value
- Financial Benefits
- Culture and Ethics
- Learning and Growth
- CSR Charter
It is evident from the above points, that the next-gen workforce is not just want to do a job, rather they want an association with the organization. And this is where the organizations are facing a big challenge. If we carefully analyze the points, all these are very dynamic in nature and in the competitive world, it is very much difficult to sustain all the above points by any organization.
Now, it is upto the Top Management of the organization, to deal with workforce issue. The issue is more challenging for the legacy organization as the scope for dynamic changes is costlier as compared to new age companies or Startups. Across the industry, there are many HR practitioners who deployed successful employee engagement programs for the organization to ensure high retention low attrition. But the main point here is that the Top Leadership must accept this young workforce with open arms and without prejudices. This behavioral shift is very much required to achieve the objective. In a typical family, the generation gap is visible and same is reflecting in the organization also. So, at first the Top Leadership need to embrace the shift and acknowledge the energy and thought process of the next gen workforce. Let us try to understand from the example of Mr. Mukesh Ambani Chairman of Reliance Group. When Reliance began their Jio journey, they implemented open door office at their Jio headquarters in Navi Mumbai. Even, Mr. Ambani didn’t have a corner office cabin and it is believed that the next gen technology requires open environment. Every executive of the Jio has open cubical and easy access to all team members. This exhibits the open work culture and transparency among the team members.
Also as mentioned above,in the NASSCOM report, many organizations in the tech industry adopted hybrid work model, where employees need to attend the office for a specific period and rest, they can do work from home. In fact, TCS (TATA Consulting Services) established OOZ (Occasional Operating Zones) and hot desks, which enable employees to work from any office across the country and quickly connect to the global workforce.
The conclusion point for the Top Management is that, there are many ways to deal with the Next Gen Workforce, but first we need to embrace and acknowledge them.