Training and Development Policies and Practices for Generation Y Workforce

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND PRACTICES FOR GENERATION Y WORKFORCE

This research is undertaken to explore the role of corporate in shaping new millennial generation for future leadership. The current workforce in India consists three generations Baby boomers, generation X and generation Y. Every generation has different set of attitudes, values, expectations and behavior. It is difficult task for corporate to keep pace with generation Y which is more technosavvy, websavvy , confident, having great communication skill and endowed with intrapreneural qualities. They were brought up with an 'empowered' parenting style and therefore they are independent and their level of independence, at times even treading on the line of arrogance. In spite of the technical knowledge and other strengths, they are lacking in basic competencies required for job.

This generation is just entering into corporate world and will be in higher posts by 2020. A major challenge for today's corporate world is how to develop young people into tomorrow's business leaders under a totally new set of rules. Hence, corporate has greater responsibility to prepare this workforce to handle higher posts and positions in the corporate.

With the help of literature review, case studies, secondary data and my own opinions on this subject, I tried to answer the questions like; Is corporate world ready for facing all these challenges? Do they have any arrangement for channelizing energy, creativity and passion of new generation? Are organizations capable enough to take competitive advantage of 'Demographic Dividend' of India? What would be the training and development strategies for building competitive leadership in future? Is there any need to devise special training and development programmes for new generation workforce? If Yes then what type of training and development is needed?

Generation Y is technosavvy generation and keenly interested in leadership hence, most preferable training method is online and professional training. Along with that discussion training, peer learning, case studies, management games, role playing, experiential learning and somewhat shadowing and mentoring are suitable training and development methods for generation Y. Organizations should keep in mind that organization becomes great due to great people. Great people are not born great; they can be made through proper training and development. This research may help to the corporate world to change their attitude towards generation Y and training and development will not remain just a trend but it will become legacy of the organization.

Key words: Generation Y, Demographic dividend, training and development, competitive advantage.

INTRODUCTION

India Inc is facing serious problem of shortage of intellectual human capital. Not only India but many corporate across the world are also facing the same problem and yet few are taking heed. Peter Drucker rightly said, "The dominant factor in the next two decades is not going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics." India can take advantage of its 'Demographic Dividend' but some extra efforts are needed by our government and corporate world to translate a high potential in youths into the next leadership. India faces this problem at two distinct levels firstly, the talented and experienced generation X leaders is going to be retired by 2020 and new dynamic generation is not ready to stick up at one place hence the problem is how to find out successors for holding higher cadre managerial positions in future. Secondly, new generation is reluctant to existing Training and Development (T&D) programmes. They feel T&D activities are an annual rituals or festive traditions of the corporate.

Arriving the workforce by storm is a new wave of intrapreneurs, Generation Y (Gen Y), who are born after 1985, (no consensus on birth years of different generations) bring distinct attitudes, values, expectations and behaviours and foster the Human Resource (HR) Practitioners to think on strategic proposition of integrating them into the workplace and turn them into positive change agents to get competitive advantage in steadily dwindling labour market.

While designing effective training policy for Gen Y which is already empowered, independent, innovative and having intrapreneural qualities the HR Practitioners should know about diversity of learning styles among generations, organizational needs, core competencies required, future HR requirement, individual needs and their (Gen Y) professional and career aspirations. In nutshell, training should help them to change their attitude, assumptions and behaviours and to embed discipline, organization culture and creativity in them. This will build much needed intellectual workforce which is key to sustainable competitive advantage of an organization.

The purpose of this paper is to, 1) To find out benefits of India's demographic dividend to global corporate world 2) To map out Corporate responsibility in building intelligent human capital 3) Present results from a study on needs and expectations of Gen Y workforce 4) To reveal innovative T&D practices to integrate Gen Y at workplace and transform their engagement into high performance leadership. 5) To discuss implications for T& D practices

It is expected that this paper will interest to institutes imparting leadership training and corporate world for designing their own T&D Programmes and inspire them for enduring research in developing T&D policies for Gen Y leaders and by going ahead for Gen Z leaders.

Demographic Dividend and Corporate responsibility in building intelligent Human Capital

Purposely I have included this aspect in my research paper because this is an imperative for India Inc. India's 'Demographic dividend' of a younger population compared to developed countries is as much an opportunity as it is a challenge. By 2020, dividend will show up average age of Indian 29 years as compared to China's 37 years, Japan's 48 years and Europe's 49 years. No country is better poise to take advantage of the demographic dividend than India.1 Even though we have large army of youngsters, not all are 'employment ready' therefore their talents are in short supply.2 According to NSDC3, India needs to re-skill or upgrade skills in 500 million individuals by 2022. Now the question is what will be the role of corporate world in training and developing this huge workforce? As Harish Manwani, Chairman HUL opined in AGM, that in future enormous employment opportunities are opened at higher cadre management, corporate should introduce