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FIIB’s Fourth Edition of Innovation in HR: Gearing for 2020 concludes on campus
September 20, 2014

Organizations can foresee a huge scope and opportunity with Gen Y or Millennials who currently comprise of 600 million of our current population. However, studies say that organizations need to transform their style of working in order to acquire and retain the Millennials.

To discuss the growing need of innovation for hiring the millennials, Fortune Institute of International Business dedicated the fourth edition of its ‘Innovation in HR: Gearing for 2020 Series’, to “Attracting the Millenials” organized on 20th September and invited industry experts to share their opinion about the same.

The Conclave started with Saraswati Vandana followed by lighting up the lamp by our Key Note Speaker, Mr. Rajeev Kumar, Vice President- HR, NIIT Technologies Limited.



Through his keynote, Mr. Kumar introduced ‘Generation Y’ to the audience, who look at a job as life experience, rather than as an end goal, accentuate life over work, are vocal about their likes and dislikes, demand change, are tech savvy and emphasize action over thoughts. In his talk he stressed upon the importance of understanding The Millennials, their needs and wants. He also suggested various interesting ways to acquire and retain the millennials. He said, conducive work culture makes employees perform beyond potential and also stimulates innovation, therefore, organizations must strive for encouraging and positive workplace.



Concluding his talk he said, “Millennials want same things as other generations but they prioritize differently.”

The Keynote session was followed by a panel discussion.

Session 1: Panel Discussion: Talent Acquisition in the 21st Century: Attracting the Millennials

The Panel Speakers were:

1. Mr. Subodh Saluja: Projects Head at Manpower Solutions (Manpower Group)
2. Ms. Archana Khurana: Founder of Human Rhythms
3. Mr. Somraj Dey: Senior Manager- Strategic HR & Operations at Lloyd Group

The discussion was moderated by Prof. Vidya M Iyer, Assistant Professor, FIIB.



Summary of the Discussion

Ms. Khurana started the discussion by sharing her viewpoints of Gen Y. She elaborated that Millennials are multitaskers, fast in their thought process, social media users, and have created the need for managers to think and act like millennials. She suggested that with “Boss Culture” it is difficult to manage the Gen Y; instead the managers should try to be their mentors or coaches. According to an HR survey that she quoted, it was found out that Millennials describe their career success by:

• Meaningful work
• Sense of Accomplishment
• Higher Pays
• High Responsibility

Looking at the change in the need pattern of this new generation who follow passion and not jobs, she suggested millennial managers to be:

• People Friendly
• High on Technology & Social media
• Offer challenging tasks
• Motivating and give instant feedback

She concluded saying, that we have been practicing old practices for long, so we should learn to work with millennials.

Mr. Saluja added that if companies want to hire talent, organizations should be able to engage and gel with Gen Y; as Talentism is now the new Capitalism. He gave an example of Infosys which has done away with close cabin concept and all levels of hierarchy work together as peers. He stressed on following this practice, as this offers sense of belongingness amongst its employees and hence contributes towards to quality of the work. During his talk he talked about ‘Concept of Gamification of Work’ which is generally practiced in IT companies. He explained how a normal induction process and brain storming sessions can be gamified and make managers and peers employee friendly individuals.

He also talked about ‘HR Center of Excellence’, which is now practiced by many organizations. Under this process, one HR professional from the company works with colleges and offers Live Projects to students. By the end of the process he/she identifies who to interview and students gets to know whether to join the organization or not; hence creating win-win situation for both the parties.

Mr. Dey took the discussion further by talking about how to handle the millennials and ensure low rate of attrition in an organization. He shared that Lloyd was started in 1952, which currently has 18 divisions of work and 3 generations are working in all the processes. 3 generations working together, with maximum strength of fast and caring millennials, it was difficult to organization to control the increasing attrition the rate. After senior and mid managers’ changing their working style with millennials the attrition rate was reduced to startling 36%. Therefore, he suggested training managers on millennials. He suggested keeping all channels of communication open and transparent and also stressed on regular feedback sessions. He also advised the managers to come with innovation in organization practices to retain the millennials.


After the discussion, panelists encouraged questions from the students- answering theoretical doubts with practical questions. They advised management graduates to be dynamic towards their coming professional career. The session was concluded by quoting John F. Kennedy, “We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.”

The enriching journey of this conclave was concluded by Dr. Anil Kumar Sinha, Director- FIIB by giving vote of thanks to panelists for sharing their quality time and knowledge with FIIB community.