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A frog in the bottle
4 Dec, 2007,
0600 hrs IST,Mansi Tiwari,
TNN
It’s become a
fact of life. Just face it. Diversity in the workplace is here to
stay. Diversity not only in terms of culture, ethnicity, race and
gender, but also in terms of professional experience .
For a while, key drivers in global
organisations seemed to be domain knowledge, and three key words...
specialise, specialise, and specialise. For sure, everyone still wants
expertise . Only a new word has been added - multi-disciplinary . “A
global organisation can only said to be ‘truly global’ if it can
accommodate different cultural, social and professional mindsets
within the same work sphere without being biased or influenced by any
one. This task is easier said than done though,” says Shiv Agrawal,
CEO of ABC Consultants
A clear reflection
of this trend is in the new hiring. Though scooping talent from other
industry isn’t a recent phenom, with liberalisation the hiring
patterns across industries have seen changes, with an increase in
cross-domain recruitment. Initially, it was simply because some
sunrise industries didn’t have expertise available in India. Says
Kris Lakshmikantha , founder CEO and MD, Headhunters India. “About
10 years ago back when cellular companies started recruiting, there
weren’t people from that domain. So they hired people from
insurance, banking, finance, manufacturing etc. Many people refused to
join and then later they came to me to help them get into telecom.
Important point is to ride the wave.” What it helped do on the
ground, was bring in different perspective, fresher ideas and unbiased
approach into companies.
Welcome to the brave new world
‘specialist generalist’ . India Inc is changing and experimenting
, and so are its employees. The new challenges with newer sectors and
changing knowledge platforms is opening up new avenues. For employees
mind-set changes are being charged by accelerated ambitions, and low
boredom thresholds. Says Anil
Koul, executive director, Omam Consultants:
”The new generation is ready to accept
challenges of diverse fields. The key catalysts to this process of
challenges are — ‘wealth creation’ , ‘social recognition’
and ‘quick learning’ . This experience is making India a true
global employee warehouse.”
Diversity of experience is also breeding
creativity , says Yasho Verma director, HR, LG Electronics .
“Diversity brings with itself the element of lateral thinking. A
person who has worked in different companies under different vertical
is bound to have a thinking process different from others,” he says.
Another trigger for the wave of
diversity adoption, is competition. Says Sonali Mohla, co-director ,
Savills India: “The business models of the companies are changing
very quickly now. Our own company started as a recruitment firm and
has diversified into HR solutions as well. So our people had to take
on different roles.
Also when we hired people, we chose
those who we knew would be able to work on the recruitments for a
couple of years and then can get into HR Solutions.” She is quick to
clarify though that this doesn’t mean specialisation is over.
“If you are a financial advisor , then
you must have your numbers right. Diverse knowledge with in that
domain is what one should be looking at” .
Diversity in skills is important, says
Agrawal in agreement, but not at the cost of developing specialisation
and expertise in the core area of business. “Ultimately, its the
expertise that will ensure your growth within the organisation. Merely
acquiring diverse skills won’t help.
One must first exhibit mastery and
expertise in his/her assigned domain and only then seek to learn about
other domains/areas. Once this is done, there will be no contradiction
of any kind.
A proven track record breeds no
ambiguity as to one’s professional skills.”
Companies are using various ways of
stimulating diversity of experience. Nowadays, it is generally an
accepted practice to move employees within an organisation across
different domains or functions.
“The Indian companies are taking
higher risk in such experiments and employees as-well are putting
their career at stake to accomplish the ‘expectations’ . The
Japanese work culture always promoted the concept of ‘job
rotation’ at all levels and this concept is an accepted norm in
Japan as well as globally. These competencies would be of immense help
to employees in the present age of Globalisation,” says
Koul.
The world has literally become a global
village and employees are expected to be open to relocation . Says
Randeep Hoda, head of HR at Amway:”Companies want employees to be
open to travel, relocation and to take on new
challenges. Because one is too
comfortable in a particular geography and location doesn’t mean that
the company
should not try to relocate him.”
Managing this diversity, however , can
be a very difficult task. Says Verma.“If it’s a culturally strong
company , there will be limited scope for new ideas. In a culturally
weak company, where there are people from diverse professional
background, chanellising those ideas becomes difficult. Companies will
have to strike a balance.
People say that about 5-6 % of attrition
rate is healthy for a company as it allows influx of newer people and
newer ideas.”
The organisation, though cannot force an
employee to move to a different function simply on the grounds of
‘not being open to new challenges’ , it affects the growth
prospects. Says Lakshmikantha: “If the organisation wants an
employee to move and he doesn’t , it will find a way around.
The company might get someone else above
you.” Agrees Mohla: ”If the reason for denial is not convincing
enough, you cannot go high up in that company as it sees you as an
inflexible person. Though they cannot fire you, but it will definitely
effect your growth prospects in that company.”
As Sisodia, says, in today’s world
only thing constant is change. Knowing the hard truth it is imperative
for people to positively embrace change. If a new role provides an
employee with new learnings and insights alongwith increasing the
probability of growth, the employees should seize the opportunity.
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