The Hindu Business Line : India’s biggest HR challenge

Something to smile about: The world of business is excited about India’s demographic advantage given that over 60 per cent of its one billion-plus people are part of a potential labour pool (between the ages of 15 and 64), but we have also to consider the sociological challenges confronting our youth.

Ganesh Chella

Come the time for exam results and suicide helplines ring incessantly, with the number of calls seeming to grow each year. Come a new academic year and reports of ragging on college campuses pour in, and the number of cases with fatal and near fatal consequences seem to be reaching alarming levels.

Look at any conflict involving diverse groups in our society today and you can see it ending in large scale physical violence in no time at all. And the frequency of such occurrences is certainly on the rise. Similarly, domestic violence is also on the rise.

Enter organisations and you are shocked to see the range of challenges and problems they have in managing young employees — poor socialisation, charges of harassment, large scale integrity lapses, white collar crime and, of course, a disturbing trend of suicide among young employees.

All of us in the world of business have been excited about India’s demographic advantage. That over 60 per cent of its over one billion people are part of a potential labour pool (between the ages of 15 and 64) is seen as a great reflection of the country’s economic potential. That by 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan further encourages us to believe that being young is a huge advantage for our nation.

Unfortunately, when I pay attention to the sociological challenges — of the kind I just described — that confront our youth, I begin to ask myself many questions: Are today’s youth a lot more prone to violence and provocation? Are today’s youth a lot more stressed? Are today’s youth challenged by some serious value conflicts? What will it take to mould, inspire and engage our youth so they become the productive talent pool that India and business organisations in the country want them to be?

Violence

Anecdotal evidence suggests that young Indians are tending to be a lot more violent. Our children are growing up in an environment where violence seems to be a part of daily life. This experience is influencing their orientation towards violence and making them more prone to violent provocation.

The content in modern media and entertainment is also a cause of youth violence. Children who have unrestricted access to such content run the risk of imbibing the value of revenge and see violence as a righteous way to deal with the evil around them.

Social alienation and discrimination arising from caste, religion and other characteristics also lead seemingly harmless young people to violence. Incidents of shooting, ragging, inter-group clashes and domestic violence are all expressions of increasingly violent young minds. Unattended, these have serious socio-economic implications.

Stress

Young Indians are certainly under a lot more stress than ever before. Simple pleasures — like joining a college or finding a new job — have become high stress events. In a world where there are seemingly huge opportunities, aspirations have risen sky high and the disappointments are steep, making mental wrecks of many young children and adults.

Once in an organisation, performance pressures, the insecurities and uncertainties about the future and a not so welcoming workplace add to the levels of stress. Incidents of suicide, increasing use of alcohol, the spread of lifestyle ailments and the growing demand for workplace counselling are all pointers to stress getting out of hand.

The youth are almost always criticised for embracing values that seem different from and unacceptable to the earlier generation. Yet, they have very little by way of community support to dialogue on these values, resolve value conflicts, observe the right role models and be guided to evolve a value framework that will stand them in good stead.

Leveraging demographic advantage

So what will it take to mould, inspire and engage our youth so they become the productive talent pool that we in organisations want them to be? This is a question that all of us, especially those in the world of business, must ask ourselves most urgently. Designing and implementing the most sophisticated human resource management systems are of little use if the young employees who walk through our doors have spent their formative years in distress.

Putting them through finishing schools and teaching them ‘soft skills’ would be a complete waste if they have not had the opportunity to develop their intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences in the early years. Asking them to trust organisations and offer discretionary effort seems a distant dream if they have spent their early years unable to trust most people around them.

Organisations may need to take responsibility for the situation even though it would seem to fall outside the realm of their control. We also need to understand the problem much better. This calls for urgent research efforts and a far higher level of public knowledge, discussion and debate.

Beyond all this, it calls for a parenting style that is a lot more deliberate and skilful. Parents will need significantly superior support systems to help them understand the minds of new-borns and the young and to shape them to become happy and productive young adults. In our desire to make our youth more and more employable, we have ended up converting our educational institutions into factories that create economic commodities to populate the workplace. We must correct this. Our education must create emotionally healthy and personally well-developed human beings.

It sounds nice to say that the future belongs to the youth. The actions we take today will in many ways determine if that future will be perfect or imperfect and if the demographic dividend will ever accrue to us.

(The writer is founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also co-founder of the Executive and Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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