Younger workforce will not respect age, they respect relevance and impact: Shiv Shivakumar

Veteran industry leader Shiv Shivakumar says the younger workforce will be impatient and non-hierarchical.

Amid growing demand for freshers and young professionals, veteran industry leader Shiv Shivakumar says that the younger workforce will be impatient and non-hierarchical and they will go for impact and relevance.

“I think younger workforce will not respect age, they will respect relevance and impact,” Shivakumar told Moneycontrol.

“The younger workforce will be impatient and non-hierarchical. They will expect a lot more from companies in terms of learning, development etc. They will build their own personal brands on social media,” added Shivakumar, group executive president, corporate strategy, at the Aditya Birla Group.

Shivakumar, who was formerly the chairperson of PepsiCo Holdings in India and CEO of emerging markets at Nokia, said Gen Z need to give a company they join three to four years, contribute and learn the ropes. He said such an approach can never go wrong.

“Give the company at least three to four years, contribute, work for the good of the company. These cannot go wrong in any company,” he explained.

Talking about key skills that will help navigate the changing dynamics at work, Shivakumar, who has recently wriiten a book on career and management, said learning, communication, collaboration, complex problem solving skills, creativity and critical thinking skills will be important.

The comments assume significance as companies are increasingly looking at freshers in 2022 and several sectors including the much-talked-about IT sector have openly spoken about freshers hiring. Caught in the middle of a talent crunch, high attrition, and escalating cost of hiring, companies are tapping freshers from tier 2 and tier 3 cities to curtail the effects of the Great Resignation.

Human resource managers argue that along with cost, this move aids in cutting down attrition, and promotes the idea of building over buying of capabilities. Corporates also believe that with exposure and a larger talent funnel, freshers hiring will help manage the great reshuffle phenomenon a bit better.

Shivakumar said business schools (B-schools) need to change as per the changing economic environment while churning out budding managers. “Professors in any discipline are the slowest to change. B-schools must start doing a lot more research. B-schools should teach what’s important tomorrow and not what was in a textbook 10 years ago,” he said.

He said B-schools need to understand that the “markets are different and behave differently, that consumers are different and behave differently, a real connect with what’s happening, the application of concepts and not the memorisation of concepts” will be important.

Touching upon the work from home and work from office debate, Shivakumar said many industries will see hybrid working as a permanent working model at least in parts.

“We have had hybrid working in sectors like the airline industry, where the pilot and crew never go to an office – they have a roster and they land up. Hybrid work will reduce the need for office space in every company, reduce the need for parking slots, reduce traffic, hopefully,” he said but warned that work from home will be tough on women because they traditionally do many roles but from different locations.

“With work from home, they will do their multiple roles from home and that can be a challenge without help,” he explained.