13/11/2011

Multi-generational Diversity in the workplace – An India perspective

As the world’s second largest country, India has a population of more than 1.21 billion people. Of this, 29.7 per cent of the population is between 0-14 years of age, 64.9 per cent between 15-64 years of age and 5.5 per cent above 65 years. By 2020, the median age in India will be 29 years as compared to 37 years in China and USA, 45 years in Europe and 48 years in Japan.

The impact of a changing workforce profile
According to the Conference Board Global Economic Outlook, India, with a current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 7.6 and a projected GDP growth of 8.6 by 2020, will encounter a host of socio-economic and cultural changes in the workplace. The implications of India’s rapid economic growth trajectory include the demand for people continuing to outstrip the supply. This will result in a disproportionate number of young people entering the workforce, holding managerial and technical roles earlier in their professional careers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the average age of the multinational subsidiaries which operate in India is 24 years, while their global average, excluding India, is about 55 years. This gap arising from emerging market opportunities accompanied by an aggressive outsourcing strategy has skewed the age profile of organizational pyramids. This trend is likely to continue over the next two decades and get accentuated further as the workforce ages across the world. Organizations, therefore, will become more diverse than they have been in the past.

Implications for business
Today, most references to Diversity and Inclusion highlight gender and disability. However, over the past few years, some organizations have started expressing their concerns about the advent of millenials and their inclusion in the workplace. What is often not addressed is the likely impact of millenials on preceding and succeeding generations of workers. Organizations of the future need to leverage the strengths of multiple generations within their workforce in a way that leads to collaboration, increased knowledge sharing that results in creative solutions and building networks that foster knowledge sharing and value creation for both, individuals and the organization.

It is well established that differences in skill sets, work values, attitudes and overall approach to life exist across generations. These differences can have both, a positive and negative impact on organizations. Increased creativity, innovation, openness to change, stimulation for alternate thinking, cross pollination of ideas and better collaboration due to interdependency are some of the strengths that can be leveraged for competitive advantage in terms of business outcomes. On the other hand, conflicts, delayed decision making, dissipation of energy, chaos and dysfunction are also likely to increase due to generational diversity. These could result in counterproductive outcomes such as increased attrition of high potential talent, reduced engagement and workplace stress. It is this context that gives rise to the need to understand multi-generational diversity from the perspectives of the employee, the team and the organization.

Senior leaders and top management need to understand how interaction between multiple generations impacts communication, decision-making, consensus building and leadership in their organizations. HR leaders need to assure that processes are devised so that voices across different cohorts and age groups are heard. How multi-generational diversity is managed in organizations will determine what value will be created. In addition, it will enable leaders to think futuristically and create processes, systems and an organizational philosophy that will be able to effectively attract and retain a multi-generational workforce.

Current understanding of multi-generational diversity
Western countries, including UK, USA and Canada, have already focused research efforts on studying multi-generational diversity in organizations. They have categorized generations using a widely accepted practitioner classification based on birth years related to significant events in history in the western context. The categories so defined are: Veterans, Baby boomers, Gen X and Gen Y.

While this grouping makes sense in the Western context, the application of the same terminology and time frame in the Indian milieu seen in many articles and write ups in popular and academic literature needs to be questioned. Even as the Universalist paradigm of management practices gains attention due to globalization, national culture and demographics assume greater importance as key variables in determining generational values, attitudes and perceptions.
“Generation” is a socially embedded construct and is influenced by the social, political, historical, economic and cultural elements of society. Although generational differences exist across the world, the role of national context in defining generations is currently under examined.

The Indian Context
India is a country in transition. Its unique cultural diversity and confluence of multiple forces, including liberalization, identity politics, religious tension and threats to national security, have a contextual effect on the Indian workforce. Each individual brings deeply rooted cultural experiences based on state or location, caste, religion, beliefs, norms, ethics, behaviour and attitudes to the workplace. These factors need to be analysed to understand the differences in work values among Indian generations.

Various authors have made attempts to understand the Indian context. Several research surveys of Asian managers have contended that business leaders in the region are able to maintain a duality of values, one field of value formation is drawn from their own cultural heritage, while the other impacts them through the wider forces of internationalization. In the Indian context, therefore, it is possible that a blending of workplace values is taking place. The nature and character of these hybrid workplace values, attitudes and behaviours requires further investigation.

In a study comparing Indian and US CEO’s, it was found that despite extensive exposure to western management concepts and practices, Indian senior managers’ perceptions of top leadership is still influenced by their cultural background. The Indian CEO, even when criticized as authoritarian in some aspects of behaviour, receives greater idealization from the team of senior managers than his or her western counterparts.
In their 1997 research, Sinha and Kanungo found that the meaning of work for Indian employees is more than what one accomplishes in one’s job. Indian workers greatly value good relationships with bosses and direct reportees. Similarly, respect for age and seniority consistently emerges as a characteristic of the Indian workforce.

A number of scholars have also recognized differences in work values and motivations across different regions. In a study done by Sinha et al, 2004, on 753 students from seven cities, it was found that there were regional similarities and differences in people’s beliefs, practices and preferences. The students reported on their perception of what others believed and the extent to which they attached importance to their own or others opinions, desires and interests. Five values emerged, in contrast to the western literature –embeddedness in one’s in- group, harmony and tolerance, duty in contrast to hedonism, preferences for personalized relationships and arranging persons, objects, ideas and relationships hierarchically. Three distinct clusters emerged out of the seven cities – Patna and Varanasi, Baroda, Lucknow and Kharagpur and Chennai and Bangalore. Although differences within clusters were small or non-existent, differences across clusters were significant. In particular, the values associated with work regarding taking time off from work to visit ailing relatives, entertaining friends in the workplace and maintaining highly personalized relationships between direct reportees and their bosses differed significantly across the clusters. The common elements across clusters were familial relationships, preference for hierarchy and maintenance of personalized relationships. All three have implications at the workplace.

In addition to cultural and sociological studies, the field of consumer research provides valuable insights. A report titled “Inside Facebook Gold”, states older users are becoming a relevant user group in India. While India’s user base of Facebook in the age group of 18-25 years exceeds the average across the top 15 countries, users in the age group of 35-44 grew by nearly 20 per cent in the last year. The 55-65 age group was found to be the least active on Facebook.

Similarly, in the Juxt India Generations Study in 2010, it was found that for nearly 76 per cent of the youth in the age group of 19-24, money is their most important priority in life followed by fame and status. Forty-five per cent of the youth feel that the neighbourhood they live in determines their status in society. In another study by DeSouza in 2009, it was found that , youth from small towns, Dalit and tribal communities have higher aspirations in life as compared to those from metropolitan cities and other forward castes.

The family remains a key institution in the life of Indian youth with 55 per cent of the respondents mentioning that they would like to bring up their children in more or less the same way as they were brought up and over 60 per cent accepting that the final decision on marriage should be taken by parents.

This research is indicative of the presence of certain social and cultural factors that impact how the youth experience life. We believe that this world view of the young generation will impact its relationships with other generations at the workplace. Continuing generational values pertaining to family are likely to create greater spaces for collaboration across generations in organizations that are strongly hierarchical. While technology usage and proficiency is a huge differentiator among the cohorts in the US, exploring whether this holds true for Indian cohorts is an area that needs to be examined. Current research has not delved into understanding the communication, conflict resolution and collaborative processes that exist either in social spaces or in the organizational context.

Study on Multi-generational Diversity in Indian organizations
While existing literature in the Indian cultural context is diverse and fragmented, there is no single study which has focussed on generations in the Indian milieu. SHRM India is doing a research project focused on “Multi-generational Diversity in the workplace” in collaboration with Prof. Vasanthi Srinivasan from IIM-Bangalore. This study will fill a long standing gap in this research area.
The broad objectives of the study are:

• How do we categorize generations in the Indian workforce context meaningfully?
• How do multiple generations interact in the workplace?
• Are there inter-generational gender differences in the workplace?
• What are the mechanisms that organisations use to strengthen multi-generational collaboration?
• What are the implications for Leadership and Human Resource Management in the new conceptualization of generations?

In this study we propose to conceptualize generations within the context of organizations. Multiple levels of reporting relationships in organizations make cohorts the distinctive natural basis of division. This natural division of authority and responsibility is built on the notion of chronological succession—the idea that each generation passes through a social system or a social role, succeeding one generation and preceding another. The unique location of a generation in a chronological order gives each cohort access to a set of skills, knowledge, experiences, and resources that can potentially be passed on to or exchanged with the succeeding generation. Such a chronological succession creates opportunities for learning, collaboration, knowledge transfer, building and shaping ideas and innovation to build vibrant organizations. At the same time, this can also result in inter-generational conflicts, communication breakdown, knowledge hoarding and opportunities for self - centered conduct which can promote highly individualistic behaviour.

However, in a highly diverse country like India, the variation within a generation is likely to be accentuated by factors like rural – urban background, caste, gender and other socio-cultural factors. This diversity is likely to negate the proposition that people who share common birth and growth stages in a similar time frame have comparable access and go through the same defining events that influence their values and approach to various aspects of life. We will postulate that given the geographical location and the demographics, intra-generational differences are likely to be as many as inter-generational differences.

In western studies, generations are defined based on birth years and cohorts, and then subject to study through examining the similarities and differences between various groups through the use of surveys and focus group discussions. However, in the Indian context, there is a need to take into consideration a host of other social, cultural and demographic factors that could play an important role in determining values and attitudes of different individuals so that they could be classified into groups based on common patterns. Given this background, a study of generations in India needs to be anchored in an “emic” (an insider’s definition) perspective of what generations are within an organization. Hence, this study looks forward to inputs from a large number of people across various strata in organizations.

Once the definition of generations in the Indian context is landscaped, the variables to be studied in depth within organizations will be identified followed by an exploratory research. Subsequently, focus group discussions and interviews will be conducted in organizations to understand multi-generational diversity amongst assorted work groups. Based on the analysis, in depth case studies will be done in organizations which will provide practical insights to handle multiple generations from a culture perspective. Qualitative and quantitative analysis will be performed on the data and the findings reported in the form of a book published at the end of the study.