Indian millennials lack critical skills: HBR Ascend survey
PROBLEMS ON THE JOB Respondents cite excessive workload, office politics as two of the primary factors impacting their performance at workplaces
Indian millennials are not equipped with the skills they need to be successful in the careers of tomorrow, according to a survey conducted by HBR Ascend, an online learning companion for millennials. The survey ‘Skills and challenges faced by millennials today’ was conducted on the occasion of World Youth Skills Day on July 15 and aimed to understand the challenges faced by the young Indian workforce and the key skills they need to excel in today’s dynamic workplace
Approximately 1,700 responses from people between 18 -34 years were representative of various industries in India.
According to the survey, 40.33% of respondents said that their biggest barrier to performing more effectively at the workplace is “excessive workload.” The second biggest barrier cited was “office politics,” according to 39.17% respondents.
Speaking about the findings of this survey, Vivek Chachra, Country Manager (India), Harvard Business Publishing, said: “The aim of the survey was to gain a better understanding of how millennials view the workplace and what factors companies must consider while on boarding a millennial workforce. Burnout is a pressing concern for people of this segment. While the top two challenges remain constant across age groups, the more tenured group (aged between 25-34) felt that excessive workload is their top barrier (42.92%), while the younger millennials (18-24 years) identified office politics (42.39% ) as the main pain point.”
When the results were further segregated by gender, there was a difference in what women and men perceive as barriers to work: office politics was cited as the top barrier for women (43.24% ), whereas excessive workload was the top barrier for men (42.20% ).
While millennials appear to be quite confident of the technical skills needed to carry out their jobs, softer skills such as stress management, negotiation or persuasion that are needed to deal with excessive workload and office politics is not something you learn in school or while doing your higher education.
The survey highlights the lack of four skills in millennials today, that are critical skills to dealing with vulnerabilities at the workplace – emotional intelligence, stress management, persuasion and analytical thinking.
To cope with a difficult work environment, it is essential for individuals involved to develop resilience, but only 13% of respondents felt that emotional intelligence was an area of strength for them.
The survey also indicated that a meagre 4.5% respondents agreed that they had the persuasion skills needed to be successful at the workplace. Only 8.5% respondents felt that analytical thinking is an area of strength for them.
Amit Aggarwal, SVP, Learning and Development, Genpact, stated, “The four critical skills this survey highlights are spot on. Soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence and persuasion will be even more critical as workspaces become more dynamic and machine-human interplay rapidly evolves. Individuals need to work hard on learning these and companies too need to think about how they will integrate more of these into their development efforts.” Increased access to team members resulting through these open plan offices give pathway to better ideation platforms, apart from the other cost efficiencies they bring out in terms of facilities and infrastructure. However, many research studies have shown that these open plan offices don’t really foster collaboration. Studies have proven that open offices lead to noise distractions, lack of privacy as well increased spread of communicable diseases further leading to higher absenteeism levels.
As long as the culture of the organisation promotes collaboration, trust and transparency, open plan offices are not actually a requirement in all set ups.