Remember Coca-Cola's 'Come home on Deepawali' ad three years ago? The campaign— students wanting to get back home for the festival—was largely the work of a management trainee. "He was the one who ended up creating the concept and even the advertisement for the brand," says Sameer Wadhawan, vice-president of human resources.
Like Coca-Cola and its agency, McCann Erickson, companies are increasingly recognising that engaging younger employees — Generation Y that succeeded Gen X — doesn't mean merely making the workplace 'fun', but is about inclusivity, participation, empowerment and career progression. It also makes sound business sense.
Coca Cola, Accenture, Marico, Mahindra & Mahindra, Axis Bank, Mindtree, Myntra and SAP are among companies pursuing this through technology, cross-functional exposure, challenging roles, global experience, mentoring and reverse mentoring, and social engagement initiatives. "Earlier… fun at work was one of the basic ingredients of engagement.
However, that model has now transformed into how a person looks at engagement at work," says Manoj Biswas, managing director, human resources, Accenture. "From an Accenture perspective, we have engagement woven into the kind of work, roles and exposure we give to the young workforce and how we create a career progression model for them."
Being an IT company, Accenture makes extensive use of technology to get feedback from young employees and incorporate this into policies. It gathers data from social networking sites and the company intranet to understand what younger staff are saying about the work environment, rewards, recognition, leadership and culture. It also encourages reverse mentoring to make sure leaders are engaged with younger staff. "The younger workforce is very open with working with the older generation. It is the older generation that needs to break their mental barriers. Today, GenY wants a much more participative workforce and leaders have to realise how to make it so," says Biswas.
The company is also piloting a mobile app that will provide employee feedback on policy, infrastructure, facilities, work environment, etc. "We will do this for a couple of quarters and see the result," says Biswas.
Coca-Cola uses message boards as tools to convey messages and assimilate employee feedback. It has an open door policy and associates across hierarchies have access to senior managers. It also has open forum breakfast meetings hosted by the company's president at regular intervals for junior managers.
Mindtree has based its engagement programme on perceptions regarding the younger staff, says chief people officer Ravi Shankar. "There are three major differences between employees of GenX and GenY. GenY gets bored much more easily, wants to move up faster, and sees itself being placed higher in the value chain, and wants to be more socially engaged," he says.
A year-and-a-half ago, Mindtree felt the youngest employees didn't seem to be emotionally invested enough. "They saw it mostly as a job that paid a salary, and left it at that," says Shankar. The company set up an HR team to look at ways of improving this, coming up with an initiative called K2Y, which connects the youth to CEO KK Natarajan through Facebook. The company also has a C2C programme (campus to CEO), which helps recruits chart their career progression from campus fresher to the top post.
Mahindra & Mahindra is also mindful about what young employees prize. "The primary engagement drivers for young employees in Mahindra are work-life balance, career progression, diverse learning opportunities and empowerment," says Rajeev Dubey, president, group HR, corporate services and after market.
Mahindra Group initiatives include shadow boards for employees below 35 years, involving groups taking up business challenges in consultation with company leaders. Young Mahindra is a platform for younger employees to engage with each other and the leadership in the automotive and farm equipment division, with the aim of empowering GenY to develop entrepreneurial and innovation capability.
Online fashion retail site Myntra also believes that empowerment is the best way to engage young talent by offering opportunities for new ideas.
Companies such as Marico have seen a significant shift in the generation diversity ratio, with the number of GenY employees rising 10 times in the last three years. "We have adopted a multipronged approach," says Ashutosh Telang, executive vice-president and global head of HR at Marico. "This includes delivering on our talent value proposition by providing challenging, enriching and fulfilling roles, conducting annual career discussions, facilitating leadership interactions and leveraging technology to build social meetings hosted by the company's president at regular intervals for junior managers.
Mindtree has based its engagement programme on perceptions regarding the younger staff, says chief people officer Ravi Shankar. "There are three major differences between employees of GenX and GenY. GenY gets bored much more easily, wants to move up faster, and sees itself being placed higher in the value chain, and wants to be more socially engaged," he says.
A year-and-a-half ago, Mindtree felt the youngest employees didn't seem to be emotionally invested enough. "They saw it mostly as a job that paid a salary, and left it at that," says Shankar. The company set up an HR team to look at ways of improving this, coming up with an initiative called K2Y, which connects the youth to CEO KK Natarajan through Facebook. The company also has a C2C programme (campus to CEO), which helps recruits chart their career progression from campus fresher to the top post.
Mahindra & Mahindra is also mindful about what young employees prize. "The primary engagement drivers for young employees in Mahindra are work-life balance, career progression, diverse learning opportunities and empowerment," says Rajeev Dubey, president, group HR, corporate services and after market.
Mahindra Group initiatives include shadow boards for employees below 35 years, involving groups taking up business challenges in consultation with company leaders. Young Mahindra is a platform for younger employees to engage with each other and the leadership in the automotive and farm equipment division, with the aim of empowering GenY to develop entrepreneurial and innovation capability.
Online fashion retail site Myntra also believes that empowerment is the best way to engage young talent by offering connect and recognition." Career discussions take place as part of a personal development plan. It promotes the interaction of summer and management trainees with Marico leaders. Company platforms such as online social recognition programme 'Maricognize' are used to reach out to young talent.
Companies are also responding to the desire of younger workers to contribute to social causes, such as through the Axis Bank Foundation. Employees can do volunteer work for various NGOs that the bank supports.
Among the biggest shifts is the earlier expectation of rewards and recognition, SAP has found.
"Earlier, people would typically stay in a role for three to four years, before looking for new roles and responsibilities. Now, however, that is not the case. What we do, beyond monetary rewards and citations, etc, is give them an opportunity to go and work in locations across the globe, if they are one of the top performers," says Shivaram T, HR business partner at SAP.
One such employee will be working for three to six months in the US.
