Article: Excessive workload, office politics make Millennials less productive

Culture

Excessive workload, office politics make Millennials less productive

However, the survey also highlights the critical skills which the Millennials lack in order to deal with the complexities at the workplace - emotional intelligence, stress management, persuasion and analytical thinking.
Excessive workload, office politics make Millennials less productive

Corporates are agog with research and studies on Millennials – and what they want at workplace. Even then organizations still cannot fathom why Millennials quit and decide to move on to start from scratch or change the vocation completely. 

A study by the HBR Ascend published here seems to have captured the essence why Millennials cringe at working in the traditional way – excessive workload, and office politics seem to have marred the spark the Millennials would otherwise create in their workplace. 

According to the survey about 40.33% of the 1700 respondents in the age group of 18 to 34 years representing various industries in India say that their biggest barrier to performing more effectively at workplace is “excessive workload.”

And that is not all. Office politics come a close second as 39.17% of respondents cite they lose interest to work due to this factor. 

Here are some of the pointers: 

  • Excessive workload: 40.3%
  • Office Politics: 39.2%
  • Too many meetings 33%
  • Unclear and/or changing job 30.2%
  • A closed/restrictive work 27.8%
  • Lack of collaboration: 26.8%
  • Lack of/inadequate training: 15.8%
  • Other: 17.4%


Speaking about the findings of this survey, Vivek Chachra, Country Manager (India), Harvard Business Publishing, said, “The aim of the survey was to gain a better understanding of how millennials view the workplace and what factors companies must consider while onboarding a millennial workforce. Burnout is a pressing concern for people of this segment. While the top two challenges remain constant across age groups, the more tenured group (aged between 25-34) felt that excessive workload is their top barrier (42.92% respondents), while the younger millennials (18-24 years) identified office politics (42.39% respondents) as the main pain point.”

However, the survey also highlights the critical skills which the Millennials lack in order to deal with the complexities at the workplace – emotional intelligence, stress management, persuasion and analytical thinking. A stark reality that while they are abreast with all the technical skills required to excel at their jobs, but inherently miss out to learn the soft skills – the skills which will be the ‘x’ factor in future. 

To cope with a difficult work environment, it is essential for individuals involved to develop resilience, but only 13% respondents felt that emotional intelligence was an area of strength for them. And a meagre 4.5% respondents agreed that they had the persuasion skills needed to be successful at the workplace, while only 8.5% respondents felt that analytical thinking is an area of strength for them.

Amit Aggarwal, SVP, Learning and Development, Genpact, said in the statement, “The four critical skills this survey highlights are spot on. Soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence and persuasion will be even more critical as workspaces become more dynamic and machine-human interplay rapidly evolves. Individuals need to work hard on learning these and companies too need to think about how they will integrate more of these into their development efforts.”

Gender-wise barriers

For men and women, the top barriers seem to be inter-changed. While 42.20% men reason excessive workload which hinders their productivity at work, women, on the other hand, cite office politics as their biggest hindrance to effective work (43.24%). 

Yuvaraj Srivastava, Group Chief Human Resource Officer at MakeMyTrip.com said in the statement, “Findings of the study validate the perception most of us carry about the enablers needed to make workplaces more productive and effective. I think the four skills identified had always been critical to succeed in any era however, in the current ecosystem the degree and propensity of their need is accentuated due to the increase in the dynamism and competitiveness prevalent in the business environment. I also believe that onus of helping millennials hone up these skills not only lies with the educational institutions and organisations they work for but also with the families of the youngsters.”

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Topics: Culture, Skilling

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