Collaborating across generations
To survive in an increasingly competitive business environment, enterprises must collaborate effectively internally. Nishwa Ashraf looks at the approach two companies have taken to promote inter-generational collaboration.
Today's organizations are made up of professional and technical employees with wide variations of education and training, spread out both geographically and intellectually. They hold a wealth of knowledge that, if harnessed, can no doubt provide a competitive edge.
Once a buzzword, now a necessity
Companies are increasingly realizing that they need to take a more proactive approach to getting the most out of their employees' experience and expertise. Leaders today routinely challenge employees to tear down silos, transcend boundaries and work together in cross-unit teams. Although such initiatives are often met with resistance because they place an extra burden on individuals, the potential benefits of collaboration to the organization are significant.
Collaboration can directly support the achievement of key business objectives by encouraging a culture of innovation and creativity, knowledge transfer and better understanding of cultural and generational differences - while also positively impacting the bottom line.
Collaboration in action
In this article, we present case studies by global IT services provider, HCL Technologies and electric utility organization, Southern California Edison, that detail how inter-generational differences in attitudes, values and communication are being celebrated and utilized through collaboration initiatives.
Case study 1: Making the workplace more "social" to engage Gen Y at HCL
In a bid to encourage collaboration, innovation and increase engagement globally among its Gen Y workforce, Anshuman Kumar, general manager and head, internal communication and employee engagement, reveals how HCL Technologies introduced a social networking platform that caught its younger employees' attention. A full version of this case study can be found via the link in the Further Reading box.
At HCL, we hire nearly 10,000 graduates every year and today, Gen Y constitutes a huge segment of our employee population.
Since social media is practically a way of life, with young people brought up in the age of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, it's vital to leverage these types of tools internally so that people can connect with each other at work. This is the reason we decided to experiment with newer and more creative media to engage with Gen Y.
Meme: HCL's online professional networking platform
We found that traditional forms of communication such as email didn't really serve as the best medium to connect with our young workforce or capture their feedback. This made us think: "How could we address the needs of this dynamic workforce and enable them to be participants in building the organization of tomorrow?"
We wanted to provide a platform in the workplace where employees of diverse functions, age groups, nationalities and locations could connect with each other and feel a part of the HCL family. The objective was to create a modern-day vehicle of communication that could facilitate dialogue, discussions, collaboration and innovation - thus Meme was formed.
Meme has similar features to other social networking sites:
- Creation: Employees can create their own profile page or groups and invite others to join.
- Groups: Exclusive pages can be created for specific departments and teams.
- Profile Map: Helps employees connect with people whose professional profile matches with theirs.
- Friend or Group recommendation: Automatically recommends friends or groups.
- Telltale: Allows employees to publish recommendations that others have written for them.
- Document and link sharing: Helps employees share links and documents with selected groups.
- Feedback: Gives employees the advantage of receiving instant feedback from anyone, anywhere across HCL.
The idea was to get employees to go from "official" to "social" while at work.
Members can read the rest of the article here.
This article was originally published in Strategic Communication Management.
Have your say
In what way have the different generations in your organization impacted on the ways of working? How are you encouraging a culture of inter-generational collaboration in your organization? Share your stories...
Recommended resources:
How to communicate effectively with Gen Y in a challenging economy
PODCAST: Ways to engage generation Y
How Deloitte's video competition engages internal and external audiences
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