The end of the quarter saw the All Things Talent community back in the National Capital Region, with the leaders and audience discussing the subject “ Decoding the Talent Strategy for Millennials.”
The Saturday morning saw a great turnout, an excited audience, coupled with experienced panelists. The event commenced with a crisp introduction of All Things Talent as a Community exclusively for HR Professionals and quickly shifting focus to the topic of discussion – “Millennials.”
“Millennials” are one of the most researched on subjects. While millennials comprise of the latest buzz in HR, the event saw the best practices by the leaders in their respective organizations, which was followed by a panel discussion and some questions from the audience.
The leaders at the event were:
- Bhrigu Joshi – Director, Human Resources at MakeMyTrip Group
- Smriti Handa – Head, Human Resources at Philips Healthcare & Emerging Businesses
- Diwakar Puri – Head Human Resources Business Partner at Hero Motocorp
- Madhup Agrawal – National Head, Human Resources (Now Head – Business Excellence) at IndiaMART InterMESH Limited
- Ashish Mishra – Global Head – Talent Acquisition at GreyOrange India (P) Ltd
Smriti Handa was first to take the stage.
“Adapting to the changing times is important to us, but what is more important is to amalgamate the four generations that work together.”
A strong believer of positioning values for the internal customers, her notion on millennials is that they would not stick around only if it means money is getting transferred to their bank accounts. “Millennials enjoy what they do and thus want quick results and more from their lives.”
Further, she talked about some of the best practices at Philips.
- Flexi-benefits: Flexible-benefits
Millennials love choices, creating a culture of flexible benefits would ensure value addition.
- Gig-Culture:
The face of the gig economy needs to be changed. As HR, the accountability to create a gig economy and making the work available and allowing the talent to move on from one project to another, in an agile way, so that their desire of wanting to move on and learn something new continues.
- Intrapreneurship
Creating an environment internally where they bring on ideas that can be turned into revenue streams.
Diwakar Puri followed Smriti Handa.
“ Our communication has to be simple. Attracting experienced people because you require the right kind of skill and knowledge is important, but we also need to attract the young talent. How do we attract that talent?”
-On attracting and acquiring young talent.
According to Diwakar, authenticity while working is the most essential element. The jobs need to be structured in order for the organization to sustain in the changing time.
“We have structured ourselves in the changing times. AACE: Attract, Analyze, Cultivate and Evolve.”
Whilst discussing about the millennials, Diwakar focussed on the best practices at Hero Motocorp and his experiences of working in the same.
Bhrigu Joshi was the nest to take the stage.
According to Bhrigu, unlike the era of Baby Boomers and Generation X, Millennials were born and raised in an era where there were a lot of choices for them, which was completely in sync with Smriti Handa’s ideas of Millennials liking choices.
“Millennials want to engage with their leaders in a two-way interactive conversation. They expect their managers to give a regular feedback.” comments Bhrigu.
He elucidated on the idea of personalization of work and micro-specialization. “Millennials want their work to be valuable. Micro-specialisation doesn’t make work become meaningful. Organizations might have to relook their structures in order to make the work more meaningful for the employees. By giving the employees genuine problems to solve, the work all the more becomes more valuable to them.”
He is a firm believer that as HR, they need to be mindful that they don’t over-generalise conversations. Because at the end of the day they are dealing with people and it is best to deal with people as individuals and not as generational stereotypes.
Madhup Agarwal took the conversation forward.
With nearly three decades of experience across diverse industries and roles, Madhup Agrawal has spent nearly 15 years at IndiaMART.
“The continuous challenge is to attract them, to get them to join you and then you show them the path.”
He is of the opinion that millennials need to be given opportunities in order for them to move away from what they are doing, to try different things and at the same time they have the expectation of you to skill them to do different things.
“While millennials have more access to technology, they have good access to information, but they also do not want to get tied. Money is not everything for them. They are in a hurry, they want to run fast. That’s what we need to cater to.”
Following Madhup, Ashish Mishra concluded the discussion on Millennials. “Millennials don’t just want to listen. They want to add, contribute and bring an impact to the organization.”
While millennials are clear about their expectations of whom they want as a talent leader, Ashish believes that the right talent needs to be attracted and the expectations must be met.
Their expectations include well trained and knowledgeable interviewers, the millennials have some striking yet relevant expectations from their leaders. Having an empowering context to bring forth innovation and change in their organizations, a crisp & a tough interview, a reverse informal interaction coupled with experiencing the product live, by an engrossing day in the organization, would enable and give an insight to them with regards to the organization and work culture.
Adding to the aforementioned aspects, millennials are open towards working on a contractual or a freelancing basis, ensuring that their creativity remains intact.
The best practices were followed by a panel discussion, where the audience cleared some of their queries regarding millennials.
The event was concluded by acknowledging the panelists with a token of appreciation, networking and connecting with fellow HR Professionals across diverse fields and a luncheon.
