Past few weeks, I have been interacting a lot with the millennial generation. Let’s face it .. millennials don’t have the best reputation. Although they are the largest and most educated generation in history, there are certain traits that make this generation very different.

We all know that most of them come with a sense of entitlement, look for short term gratifications, don’t like to be told what to do, ask a lot of questions and seem to take feedback with reluctance.

It all started a few weeks back, when we asked some of our friends, well-wishers and clients – “what is the one thing they wish they could change in their organization?” Some of these conversations lasted a few minutes while some of them lasted over a few hours. But one of the biggest challenges that all of them talked about was – most of our problems would get solved if we took ownership of our jobs. Especially – when it came to new hires.

When it comes to new hires, there is a lot of effort and money being poured into the hiring process. But what happens after you manage to hire the star candidate after sifting through all the resumes ?

The new hire walks in with a sense of entitlement. He knows he is good and perhaps he is actually very good at his work. You take him through a brief introduction about the company and the culture. His boss walks him through the responsibilities and does some basic priming. And then you decide, that he will be put through an induction program- whenever the next batch is formed. Here comes the challenge – the next induction program is due to happen only early next quarter and by that time – he has already spent 2 months at work. You tell yourself that this is the way industry works. You had toyed with conducting induction over e-learning but had received very low completion rates. So the only way out is to run it in batches.

But wait a second – why is induction important ? Right from knowing the company products,processes, culture to the strengths of the new hire.. usually induction program is a trailer into the movie of your organization with the expectation that the new hire will be one of the actors. However, the fact is – Induction program will happen after a month or two of his joining the work. And since the trailer is coming, post watching the movie , the new actor (hire) feels he knows the story, the script, his role and his dialogues. So the question is – should the trailer come before the movie or after ?

Here’s where our program “Flying Start” comes to play. Our first set of participants went through a day long program last week. They learnt about their strengths and understood their development areas. They understood what stopped them from achieving their goals and how they need to build credibility in their organizations. They looked at ways to take ownership of their jobs. They also learnt what is expected from them in their organization. And now, they also get nudge nuggets every week to assist them in this journey.

We are planning to conduct “Flying Start” program every month – you can nominate your new hires to this program. Let him/ her discover their strengths with us.

After conducting this program – I for one learnt a few things – “millennial” is not a generation , it’s a mindset – it’s us wanting to know what our strengths are ( meets our sense of entitlement), our need for knowing whether what we are doing is right or not ( a.k.a short term gratification), our knowing that we control our destiny ( a.k.a not liking to be told what to do), our curiosity about the world ( asking a lot of questions), and if the feedback is objective & fair ( reluctance to take critical feedback)

It’s a mind set that says – each one of us has talent, potential and strengths. All we need is a “Flying Start”

Choose to enroll your new hires of August ‘18 with Flying Start program. This time, we are looking at a 2 day program instead of one day based on the feedback we got from our participants and stakeholders. We are also planning to kick-off the Mumbai edition of Flying Start in September. Dates will be announced shortly.
Write to info@ableventures.in to know more about the program.

On that note here’s a song for the weekend (A song that I used to hear when I was in my teens by Kelly)

https://gaana.com/song/i-believe-i-can-fly-37

Some of the lyrics below:

I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day

Spread my wings and fly away

I believe I can soar

I see me running through that open door

I believe I can fly

I believe I can fly

Have a great weekend,
Smita