Page 34 - AIMA : Foundation Day Souvenir

role and the work that you do, regardless of whether you are an office assistant or the CEO of the firm. We encourage empathy, remove communication barriers, and have built a culture of respect for each other, with which I strongly believe everything will fall in place. Internal innovations and collaborations are encouraged, and we believe that generational diversity is our strength to make the world a better place.” – Jyoshna Reddy Bodedhula, co- founder & Head of Operations, Careerpedia and Inkprog Technologies Pvt Ltd, India.
A great way to leverage generational diversity is to understand the varying needs of different generational cohorts. Building an open culture and empowering the younger generations by providing them greater flexibility goes a step further towards ensuring generational inclusivity.
• Build and display trust
Research has revealed that both millennials and Generation Z like early leadership opportunities in their career. The sense of ownership and organisational citizenship behaviour grows when they are entrusted with leadership roles early in their career.
“Organisations have moved beyond orthodox methods of experience barriers for specific roles. The priority is now on competency/skills over years of experience. This opens up opportunities for young minds to take up leadership roles. It also opens up window for continuous learning and cross functional movements regardless of one’s background. Various MNCs are now encouraging work-integrated learning programs that groom early talent for taking up roles at the level of experienced professionals. The reason we see young leaders taking up CXO roles is proof of increasing generational diversity.” - Benjin Samuel, Senior HR Professional, India.
Most companies still do not have a digital-first mindset. Pandemic period has been a huge testimony to the power of digital and how companies can leverage the same to grow exponentially as well as become more resilient to future challenges and crises. Younger generational members are undoubtedly more versed and proficient in such technologies.
Creating reverse mentoring opportunities where a millennial or Generation Z member has an opportunity to reverse mentor a senior on digital and other modern technologies could be a great way to display trust on their capabilities and respect generational diversity in letter and spirit.
Expert teachers must meet at least once or twice a week for at the ‘discussion table’, wherein full teaching strategies are taught to the newly hired teachers during their first semester at the school. Experience is certainly more important to be a good academic/teacher, as teaching skills is a compounded skill, but that does not mean the new teachers are less valued. In fact, they gave great ideas, and they are handling e-learning faster compared to the older generation. Both parties learn from each other, and I feel such culture must be there in all the organisations regardless of their industry.” - Fatema Mahmood Ghareeb, Business and Commercial studies Teacher, Ministry of Education, Kingdom of Bahrain.
When the organisation shows trust in the diversity of thoughts, ideas, and capabilities of different generational members and leverages them in a way that creates complimentary competencies across the board, it truly harnesses the power of generational diversity.
• Revamping internal communications
A great way to leverage generational diversity is to create an open culture and engage different generations through a meaningful dialogue by strengthening the internal communications strategy. Some companies have revolutionized their internal communications by integrating social media like Bunzl, Cisco, Grant Thorton, Pfizer, Shopify, to name a few. Smart companies are employing such capabilities to encourage informal sharing among all employees of different generational cohorts. Social media tools such as Smarp, Bitrix24, Slack, GaggleAMP, Paper.li are some such tools that have helped companies integrate social media in their internal content sharing.
“The CEO of my current organisation—also my reporting manager—is younger to me. I see that the culture of the organisation is flat,
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