It is an old saying that the change is the only constant thing! What has really changed in fortune 500 organizations and great institutions of academic excellence having been part of these organizations and institutions starting from operational level to senior leadership level with more than 35 years of learning experience is interesting to share with professionals, academicians, students and leaders. Being an author of several management books and articles focused on application of these concepts brought more clarity of missing links in these so called great institutions and organizations. I have been teaching the subjects and case studies including Harvard and case centers of both US and UK and my view is except technological changes which primarily drove all changes in the last two decades hardly big changes occurred in the mindsets and human resource management.
The pertinent question will be do people really change in middle and higher level management is a debatable one. Many PhDs across institutions have not adapted to changing scenarios and many top level leadership positions are still filled with stinking dirty politics of convenience. The real growth of organizations, institutions are possible only when people are recognized for their core competence, talent, and allow them to climb the ladder of the organizations without any age bar or seniority. It is has to be purely based on work output, ability to innovate, agility with cross functional work, capability to build organizations, and finally to work with and manage teams.
- Current Generation & Stress Management
- Leadership & Organizational Politics
- Talent Management
- AI, ML, NLP
- Work Life Management – an outdated concept
- Freelancing & Gigging
- What is in store for Organizations and individuals in workplace?
- Gen Z & Stress
When we talk about Gen Z and the young adults across the world face the threat of stress and poor management of stress due to sedentary life style and excessive usage of electronic gadgets, addiction to habits and sleep deprivation and goals beyond reach professionally and in career advancement. In some geographies we notice increasing trends of gun violence, extremism, high profile sexual assaults etc., and causing mental issues not only for the people who are involved but also the community in and around. Gen Z is also significantly more likely to seek professional help for mental health. Providing training to help young adults to do their jobs better is an important way to reduce stress. Role clarity, senior management support to allocate projects and departments where individuals can contribute better and chase their passion or focus on their core competence is another way of building a growing organization. Freedom to share, speak up, encourage exercise, take time for friends or a significant after work to pursue employees passion, sports to mention a few. These are a few ways Gen Z can manage stress and organization have crucial role to play to retain talents and reduce attrition rates.
- Leadership & Organization Politics
Plethora of surveys conducted across the world reflect the same story employees getting stressed out due to stretch goals, and unrealistic expectations from the employers to deliver and unrealistic expectations from the employees to grow faster. The recent pandemic added fears of falling sick, feeling isolated working remotely without enough social quotient ratio to optimally perform. When there is a need to develop skills to reduce stress, the internal politics within the organizations results in more damage than good. While we are all aware, that no organization is free from politics especially in the middle and top level management. It involves employees engaging in activities intended to advance their own interests above the good of the company. This dynamic is more prevalent within larger organizations, MNCs and some institutions even in academic world. It is the most challenging as well as enjoyable aspect of Leadership. It is also a critical factor for the success of a leader to be well respected by your colleagues and other peer group in organizations and retain the core talent management. It may not be wrong to say that participating in workplace politics may be necessary to get ahead. In stressed times like this, it is very challenging for the young adults to manage and balance the same to be productive and get ahead. Some of the organizations are immune to this dynamic of politics. A typical challenge for modern managers is to keep a tab and check on this to ensure no negative atmosphere resulting in overly competitive and toxic work environment which will erode the morale results in poor retention of employees.
- Talent Management
Talent management is normally HR Manager’s primary responsibility. IIt involves various things including how employees are recruited, building a performing workforce that is productive and staying longer in an organization while contributing significantly for the organizational growth. When these things are linked with organization strategy, it will result in excellent growth and work satisfaction of employees. Now, it is no more HR responsibility alone but a combined effort of both HR Managers and individual employees. Young adults must learn the tricks for political engagement by asking questions even if they know the answer to ensure that they don’t fall behind. Making an effort to ask, observe, step back, and assess the climate to negotiate career path promotions. It is all about timing, and using influential resources to make things happen for you at various levels. Maintaining a cordial relationship cross-functional and influencing leaders is strategically important for high potential employees in an organization. Therefore, the new talent management involves combined effort of both HR Managers and individual employees to make it happen. Young adults and professionals must learn these balancing tricks to stay ahead.
- AI, ML & NLP
Modern organizations cannot grow without the power of AI. A small handful of responsibilities which are repetitive in nature are handled by a hub lead by chief analytics which may involve data governance. Even structure of organizations will be driven by AI. This may include hiring plan, practices, performance management which are totally data driven. Data is critical part of modern businesses. Even the culture will be driven by AI data engineering, data science, Machine Learning. Analytics basically gives and drives insights. It helps democratizing reporting through dashboards. There is a constant nudging to make decision based on data analytics and AI. ML further supports with models to deploy in batch and real time. Data science finally connects with AI solutions to generate value to the stakeholders. Therefore, when the organizations are operating both horizontally and vertically data pipelines become common thread to scale it up and multiply. Marketing Models focus on knowing the customers their choices, offering products and services and channel optimization. When the young adults are working in this environment which are both complicated and fast, stress is inevitable to stretch goals to achieve driven by all the three factors. Therefore, managing such workplace demand, balancing the stress, keeping good mental health are important factors for young adults as the expectations to deliver is high from middle to top management and the entire organization for that matter. NLP which is a Natural Language Processing in organizations may help to improve the approach to a problem, making an individual stress free, building routine and habits, inoculating stressors, amplifying feel good anchors, future pacing. NLP is an integral part of Talent management especially in those, where AI and ML are frequently used.
- Is work life balance an outdated Concept?
Work Life Balance is self- management process of prioritization. Of late, this concept is more focused to market courses in HR fraternity and professionals. The major driver for overselling this concept is increased responsibilities, unrealistic targets set by employers and greedy and aggressive career advancement plans chalked by professionals to be in fast track. It is as simple as Career Vs personal life priorities. I am not saying it is a myth. It has been around for a lot longer than the Gen Z or even millennial generation. The late 80’s of Women’s Liberation movement brought this concept to accommodate women in work force, flexi working hours, maternity leave etc., slowly expanded to other genders to champion the concept when unrealistic growth and productivity targets were set or accepted by employees to be in the fast track growth. When the organizations are praising employees working for longer working hours, working from home, being on pagers on calls 24X7 without certainty of switching off from office to personal life is it possible to find equilibrium? Therefore, it is clear that even the Maslow’s theory of hierarchy will be questioned as employees will move to higher levels faster as their burnout due to higher desires will push towards self- realization and material detachment faster. It is quite evident with faster changes and artificial intelligence will make it challenging to maintain a balance due to contradictory goals. The power to make it happen is in individual’s hand. You need to decide to step back when stressed out. No amount of training and inputs will be sufficient till you make a conscious call on this matter.
- Freelancing & Gigging
Gig work is simply work on demand work, a matching between individuals (providers and customers) for any service. Freelancing is engagement in a job for a specific time period or consultation job at a mutual and convenient time for a pre-agreed compensation. Both the concepts are frequently used to maximize work life balance. Means, more time for family and personal passion instead of locking one to a permanent positions in organizations. Both are gaining momentum in a stressed out world to maintain the so called work life balance. But a point to be noted is that there is a lot of uncertainty on both in terms of assurance of fixed income or even inadequate income for financial security. But you need to give up something to gain something as health itself is a wealth in modern world. Good mental and physical health may save millions even if you don’t earn in millions. When we scrutinize gig working it could be patchy in some cases. But in my view these concepts are here to stay. Being a management professor for the last two decades many of my MBA students took the risk of gig work and freelancing and turned out to be successful entrepreneurs maintaining a work-life balance though there were some initial hiccups.
- What is in store for Organizations and individuals in workplace?
The class-blinkered mainstream work-life balance agenda is becoming more redundant in the face of increased desires, wants and greed. Money and material wants surely matter to achieve the work-life balance agenda in the world. I am not suggesting that individuals should work without planning the growth in their career or business. Simply it has to be realistic when it comes to growth prospects and prioritizing the goals with an agility to shift when required. Willing to step back when stressed out. Promoting a good quality of “Life” means reducing luxury but ensuring adequate diet, good physical and mental health to go through normal life cycle. Promoting financial security is important but limit to what is required instead of accumulating wealth beyond requirement and looking beyond literatures of work-life balance and practicing it genuinely addressing above issues. The virtual world will provide opportunities for a flexible work-time and improved time-autonomy for sure. In this ever-changing world driven by AI, Automation, ML and NLP times work hard for a period of time and relax for a period and comeback re-charged. Individuals must be careful not to refuse work at a short-notice which may result in future offer refusals. We need to be cautious about the fact own work-life balance should not negatively impact family members. The future workforce post pandemic will embrace remote and hybrid models driven mostly by technologies at the same time prioritization of employee well-being. We would also notice talent shortages and greater amount of reskilling within organizations. It will not be jobs but skills will be the requirement, therefore, even leaders have to recognize the need for up-skilling and better career plans for employees, a whole new set of tools to identify individual skills sets including soft skills. Move away from traditional grading mechanism and measure the skill data for career advancements.
Dr. C.N.Narayana:
Author of this article is a renowned management professor, writer and a corporate leader with more than 35 years of experience. He has contributed immensely for the corporate world across the globe and held leadership positions in leading management Institutes in India. He is also the Founder & Director of MBA Pulse Visit: www.mba-pulse.com
