In conversation with Ruchika Bhaskar Sethi, Head of Human Resources, EY Global Delivery Network — India. Ruchika shares her perspectives on the mix of generations and the workplace of the future.
From early on in her life, Ruchika’s strengths and values were developed by trying to understand different perspectives, and why people behave the way they behave or react the way they react in certain situations. This was in part possible due to her upbringing in the armed forces environment, where she learned to adapt to different situations — new schools, new houses and new sets of peers — with ease. As she says “Obviously, when you are growing up, you don’t think that it is going to form any sort of a natural advantage as an adult. However, when you reflect as a mature adult, you think to yourself: this has helped me in good stead and been an integral part of growing up and has helped me adapt very quickly. I don’t need the comfort of familiarity, change doesn’t threaten me and in fact, it’s a way of life.”
Interestingly, Ruchika is surrounded by HR professionals — professionally and personally — and HR is what she attributes her ability to think of people dynamics. She says “HR is and has always been an early influence in my life. My two older siblings pursued HR studies, and I met my husband in college who is also from the HR field and so is his older sibling. Ruchika is also a certified coach from the International Coach Federation and her goal is to introduce and cascade coaching into the organization to truly help people achieve their potential. Heading HR for a very young organization where the average age is 26 can be both interesting and challenging. Here she pens her views on the different generations that constitute the typical workplace of today.
Ruchika’s views on millennials
They comprise the largest group in the workforce currently. Millennials are born after the 1990s and by the year 2025, they will constitute 70% of the global workforce. The characteristic trait of this generation is the high level of commitment to their beliefs. Millennials are born in a “privileged era” and enjoy benefits their parents or grandparents didn’t have. The salaries that some draw at 21 years of age is perhaps what their parents were getting at the mid stages of their career. A typical 25-year-old is expected to do more with less today, which includes managing his or her own career and a team of five or six direct reports and all this while managing the critical relationship with his or her supervisors.
The three attributes of this generation are:
- Being far more aware and ahead of the prior generations. There’s more information at hand, and they attempt to do more with less in just about in every sphere of their lives, personally and professionally.
- Unwillingness to fit into the conventional hierarchy and past stereotypes. This is a generation of maximizers and they want it all.
- Inclination to take more risks than any other generation (judging by the recent start-up boom)
This is also a generation that’s probably going to get burnt out and stressed sooner than their predecessors as they largely tend to be a bit impatient. Ruchika says: “So my first advice to this generation would be to ‘wait’. Everything comes in its own good time!.”
The challenges that they face are as follows:
1) Instant gratification, which perhaps stems from impatience. This is the norm — whether it is in terms of promotions, pay-hikes, opportunities or relocations; or new projects, experiences and skillsets. Ruchika says, “While they seem to be lacking in patience, it could be an advantage of sorts too because they constantly want to stretch (though sometimes at the cost of burning themselves out), to pursue new opportunities, acquire newer skillsets experiment and take on risks and gain the benefits too that accompany such accelerated learning and risks.”
2) Low on emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not a skill that everyone has; it is acquired through a series of life experiences. It comes when you’ve been in certain situations and then you grow up a little bit and reflect on that situation and ask yourself how you might have dealt with it differently. It could be growing up through fluconazole online uk experiences around personal or professional relationships or simply a difficult situation such as a challenging scenarios at school etc. Ruchika says, “Somewhere, I believe that this generation, because they’re in such a hurry, is not really waiting to absorb all of those experiences. Meaningful things like deep conversations and connects perhaps happen over social media and through cellular phones.
Views on other generations
The biggest challenge that other generations grapple within the workforce is flexing their style and learning how they might lead the current workforce, and demonstrating agility to understand, to appreciate and to value differences. To add to this, the Millennials are years ahead in terms of being tech savvy!
Ruchika recollects: “I see the level of frustration some leaders often face with a certain set of employees who ‘just don’t get it’, who are reactive, who are overly dependent on their families for every professional decision that needs to be made. The ask of the millennial is ‘give me the flexibility that I need, don’t keep a close eye on me and empower me, just focus on my work and the results and not how I get there.’ Since all of the focus is on how you manage the millennials, the challenge is to also be inclusive and think about a multi-generational workforce working and co existing in harmony at the work place.”
Ruchika talks about the jobs of the future
- Coaching: This is the future — life coaching, executive coaching, career coaching, leadership coaching, and transition coaching as well as behavioral coaching. This is an untapped area with huge potential and supporting people to realize their best capabilities.
- Data analytics: while data is so easily available, the need for the future is to make sense of that data. So data analytics and how we interpret it to make critical business decisions is the future amongst many other aspect
On diversity and inclusion
Ruchika is quite an optimist and feels that by 2025 there would be a lot more awareness and acceptance of a diverse workforce. Her visual imprint of a diverse workforce is where everyone is working flexibly and perhaps even virtually. A workforce with half of the population comprising women, wider acceptance of gender, as well as people with different orientations and equal opportunities for the differently-abled all
She outlines the steps to building an inclusive organization:
- Designing the core principles of inclusiveness and then embedding them in all processes across the entire organization so that D&I is part of everything that we do.
- Identifying needs and building the skills of all people, so that they can team and lead inclusively
- Building an organization-wide culture where everyone is openly expressing their differences
- Creating awareness on the organization’s core processes, such as performance management
- Tracking diversity and the analytics behind it
- Communication and leaders walking the talk
- Having an agenda and holding people accountable
She says: “So, the first stage is, you create awareness. You educate people and you support them through that journey. You also hold them accountable and measure what gets accomplished. One of the best things that we did was at the diversity council when we started two years ago, was we invited our toughest stake holders to become a part of the council and made them in charge of the agenda. That worked really well for us.”
Best practice at EY in preparation for the future
The inter-generation survey and workshop helps to understand the generations, to sit down, do a little bit of research and talk to them
- How to manage the millennials
- Speaking to people to understand the impact of tweaking some of the policies which haven’t changed in years and how it will impact the end audience
- Understanding the multiple generations working in the organizations
The survey is unique as they are covering all India-based locations. The older generations answer questions about the younger generations and vice versa. The organization will then come out with the guiding principles and the culture of the future.
Characteristics of a worker of future in Ruchika’s opinion is “someone who is self-aware and who can master the art of doing more with less.” She closes by saying: “Being agile — that’s the word that comes to my mind and that will define the worker of the future.”
