Learning v/s Contribution

We had seen organizations taking approach of hiring fresh blood from the market with a commitment to groom them as leaders, in principle this is one of the right approach to tap the strategy of building talent given that the organization has time and energy to invest which would be in addition to the cost to these young blood.

I had come across couple of organization which have the thought of grooming leaders on the other hand there are organization which comes with the clear mindset of grooming mangers and they want people to deliver xyz task assigned to them, these companies are pretty much okay with the time of employee life cycle which would be less in comparison to others as monotonous jobs generally motivate people to look for role change and if the companies are not offering the role change within the organization these people look forward for a role change in other organization. I see it as one of the reasons in addition to what we say in HR people leaves their bosses not the organization.

 Recently I met one of the Management associate working with a company of repute being best employer for decay in a row. I was fortunate to work with one of the said MA who happens to be a postgraduate with one of the Top management colleges in India, the organization had a very unique induction process for inducting these management associates where they are taken through an idle mix of class room and field exposure and the duration of these induction program is around 20 – 35 days. Imagine the company has been spending on this process and top of it the young blood are paid from the day one they joins a handsome salary (for me its handsome as I was not even offered ? of the same). This help these young blood to take care of their expenses, return loan EMI’s, pub bills, bike petrol etc.

 Now coming back to the experience which I had recently experienced, courtesy to the role I had been I get a true opportunity to interact with a set of these young bloods who were deputed across India after the completion of the one month induction process. More of them were found frustrated after 3 months. Many of them started communicating only negative things about the organization where has few of them choose to live it through as there were limited choice available.

 During one of my interaction with a representative of the “young blood”; he told me that “Sir, what the hell are we doing here, I do not see any action happening. I am not contributing anything from the role which has been assigned to me. This is not what I hear from one many of them had come across and told the same. These guys are mix of complete fresh to corporate + a few of them do have couple of years’ experience before doing their masters.

 While interacting with them I had one question coming to me again and again are they being recruited to learn and contribute or contribute and learn? As per my understanding the business needs to be understood first irrespective of the department you choose to work or are allocated to you. Contributions is a result of inputs like learning, knowledge, understanding of culture, developing skills, aligning oneself to the business objective. One more challenge what I discovered is that the companies who have a belief of building talent should need to focus on their induction programs as if these induction programs are not linked to the real life of the company, a real picture of the company’s culture. If the induction programs fails to meet this requirement than we are inducting a generation gap within the system and also inviting a larger trouble of these young blood taking a different route then what they were supposed to take up.

 Learnings and contribution may go parallel if one had spent a decent time to understand the business and had acquired a real knowledge around the subject and the same is validated with the practical exposure. I am sure we all had experienced that what we learn in the books during our PG / MBA’s might not all relevant to the life what corporate has to offer; there already a huge gap between the expectation of these young blood and the experience what we have them to offer. These induction programs further adds to the expectations of these young blood which leads to a frustration and disengagement.

 It is high time that HR plays it role of balancing the act between the experience and expectations to ensure a decent engagement among those whom we recruit fresh out of the college.