According to a survey by the Harvard Business Publishing (HBR) Ascend, about 40.33 per cent 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.
The next on the line is office politics which 39.17 respondents cite as the reason to lose interest in their work.
Vivek Chachra, Country Manager (India), HBR 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 per cent respondents), while the younger millennials (18-24 years) identified office politics (42.39 per cent respondents) as the main pain point,' he said.
The survey also highlighted the skill set that the millennials lacked to tackle these problems - emotional intelligence, stress management, persuasion and analytical thinking.
Millennials may be technically strong, however they miss out to learn the soft skills, which will be the 'X' factor in the future.
Amit Aggarwal, SVP, Learning and Development, Genpact, said, '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.'
It may be also noted that 42.20 per cent men reason excessive workload as a hurdle to productivity, on the other hand 43.24 per cent women cite office politics as the biggest set back.
Courtesy: www.peoplematters.in
