OREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2015. “Millennials bring a lot of key strengths to their roles, including collaboration, team play, an innate understanding of new, digital technologies, and non-hierarchical team dynamics,” says Sriram Rajagopal. “A growth framework for millennials must be designed keeping in mind their personalities and strengths.” Excerpts:

“Millennials are good networkers and thrive in a collaborative atmosphere. The organization should nurture a socially connected work environment. Millennials appreciate real-time feedback. The HR team can enable this by creating digital platforms and innovating on traditional performance reviews. HR teams should invest in creating the mentor-mentee culture within their organizations. Digitize and gamify learning. Involve millennials in corporate social responsibility. HR departments can introduce enterprise social platforms to facilitate real-time conversations and interactions.

In today’s digital era, technologies such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC), sensors, machine learning and the Internet of Things are reshaping the human resources function. Some key initiatives include: To successfully attract the best talent in this new environment, companies must treat social channels as not just online job boards, but also compelling employer branding networks. Recruitment teams must invest in creating communities of ‘employer evangelists’.

HR teams must develop contextual data analysis and inference skills. Analytics-centric outcomes that organizations are focusing on include sentiment analyzers, contextual self-service query resolution engines, productivity radars, skill-gap analysis and workforce forecasting based on demand-supply matching.

At Cognizant, we have many internal channels of communication and collaboration. We leverage enterprise social network platforms to increase collaboration, facilitate instant dissemination of information, share best practices, provide updates from the senior management, give immediate feedback and forge stronger relationships within the team. We have been able to use crowd sourcing in three critical areas: query resolution, ideation and co-creation, and task execution. We have also adopted gamification in the deployment of talent processes and training programs. Our innovative social initiatives program, Outreach, is led and sustained purely by the voluntary efforts of our employees and provides them a great CSR platform.

Right since our inception, we have endeavored to create true meritocracy where people advance not based on tenure or role, but purely on merit. Cognizant provides an environment where our associates can be trained and helped to become successful.”