In the new normal, how do organisations train young employees who are inducted into the workforce?
What are companies doing to make this transition smooth and resourceful?
"Meaningful work is very important," says J Arvind, vice-president and global head, human resources-commercial at DMI Digital Management, LLC, a mobile enterprise, business intelligence and cybersecurity services firm.
Arvind has a master's degree in social sciences and has served 25 years as a human resource professional.
"Working from home is stressful as there is a blur between personal and professional space. We should not overdo the follow up and checking," Arvind, below, tells A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com.
When you hire freshers to 'work from home', apart from the qualifications of the candidates, what are some of the skills you are looking for?
Nowadays, freshers are tech savvy and competent.
We have to see how adaptive they are to collaborate and work with a virtual team.
They must be independent and self-driven to do their work with minimal supervision.
Freshers learn a lot from their seniors and colleagues when they join their organisations. How will this happen if they have to work from home?
We have a structured virtual training program where they are taught theory and soft skills.
We try to avoid long hours like the original class room session and make it into two to three hours a day capsules.
We also give them offline work to engage them productively.
We add gaming to it to make it interesting and challenging.
We also assign mentors who are trained to help them succeed.
What do you do for team building?
This is a challenge. There are lots of virtual connect. We have happy hours together where they are encouraged to talk beyond work about their interests and hobbies.
Make the dialogue more non-work centric.
There must be informal connections too, all calls should not be about work.
When you chat informally, you will find creative people within the organisation. We give them awards for original ideas and work.
We are also trying to send across company branded items like masks to build connect with the symbols and relate to the organisation and brand.
How do you encourage loyalty and commitment?
It will be difficult and so we will have to give them a sense of purpose. Meaningful work is very important.
As long as they are learning and growing they will be loyal to the company.
What measures are you taking to ensure productivity without adding to the pressure that 'big brother is watching'?
We have periodic check-ins; it should never be every day.
Working from home is stressful as there is a blur between personal and professional space. We should not overdo the follow up and checking. It should be periodic and in a planned way.
What are the facilities fresher/s needs to have to work successfully from home?
We are looking at providing basic infrastructure which is the work station and furniture. We reimburse their phone and broadband charges.
