What is making business leaders lose sleep about the new graduates coming in 2015

A few days ago, I was talking to a industry professional about how Infosys  business transformation.
My question to him was "Can Infosys succeed in it's objective to partner clients for providing creative solutions that yield business outcome ?. The response  he gave was quite alarming -" where are those creative people ?  We cant even get collaboration going internally right , how do you expect that these guys will make such a change and be successful in doing it". But is this issue only about internal leadership of change or something more fundamental. Most of the execution happens at lowest client facing levels. So how well are these graduate  equipped to deliver on the promise. ?

Hay Group survey indicates that 89% of leaders in India are worried about the quality of future leaders. Young professionals, products of rote learning and consumed by social media are joining workforce at a time when collaborative working to address the challenges of a volatile, uncertain , complex and ambiguous business environment is the name of the game.

The survey indicates a scary reality .

• 74% of the respondents believe that they have hired graduates with deficient people skills due to lack of choice.
• 71% of these respondents believe that less than 25% of these graduates have people skills that matter, for success.
• 80% of these respondents believe that graduates  lacking people skills are toxic for workplace.

What do the Indian graduates think ?

• 77% of the graduates don’t value people skills – and believe they will succeed without it
• 57% do not think feelings about people are important
• 77% of these graduates say that people get in the way of getting a job done.

If this is the outcome of our education  it is matter of time that we will have inefficient workforce with a crab mindset , pulling each other down. The companies will be forced to  rely on powerful robots with artificial intelligence doing regular jobs so as to ensure that human ebola does not strike them.

What companies must do immediately ?

• Invest more in induction of new intake. 
• Push these graduates into team based outdoor survival adventure for at least 2 weeks duration or get the armed forces to conduct a 2 week intensive team program.
• Post induction, push the graduates into very small teams demanding high collaboration projects for at least 2 weeks.
• Design Performance Management KPI’s that discriminate in favour of teamwork

How can mid level managers enhance their effectiveness ?

Did you know

In India, 70 per cent of business managers created a demotivating climate for their employees. The world average was 55 per cent.( Source Hay Group Research -reported in BS 5th April 2013)

Good bosses are teachers. In fact their teachings accounts for 67% of  boss's effect on employees productivity - Kathryn L Shaw Stanford Professor of Economics - co -author of Value of Bosses.

Globally , 2 out of 3 employees are disengaged from their work ( Gallup Survey ), this leads to a loss of more than US$ 350 billion per year.

As per Dale Carnegie survey 50% of employees are engaged in India.

Towers Watson Study 2012 indicates that companies with engaged employees achieve 3 times more margins than companies with disengaged employees.

So the Question ?

If the business implication is obvious, why are managers unable to create the magic of engagement ?

Among many other reasons , the ones that stand out are :-

• Managers often do not get specific about role deliverables and expectations from their team members
• Unpredictable responses to situations
• Low interest in the employee 
• Low trust between the employee and the manager

Few simple ways to restore engagement if you are a manager

a. Provide support
b. Communicate by showing interest in the employee - listen more
c. Pay attention to task role and clarify outcomes and expectation
d. Work to build trust - as a sincere partner to your team member's success