An organization’s future is determined by the potential of its employees. To this end, organizations take great care to ensure that they hire the best management talent available for them. This involves painstakingly thorough shortlisting, an extensive selection process and deep digging background and reference checks before an offer is even made to the candidates.

Once an offer is accepted, the organizations expect the young hire to start delivering from the first day itself. However, very rarely does that happen. It takes the new hires some time, working in the organization, to reach their full working potential. There is invariably a ‘tissue matching process’, akin to a skin graft operation, that takes place. This is more apparent in the case of Management Trainee hires from business schools. Lucrative salaries to such employees engender the expectations of miraculous results from the first day itself. These expectations, bar exceptions, do not materialize for the organization. This slow start is mainly due to the following reasons:

• Inadequate understanding of the business and the new hire’s role therein
• Lack of understanding of the organization’s culture
• Organizational diversity, in terms of age and experience associated with new hires and functional employees
• Trouble in transitioning from a college to a corporate platform

The first pain point can only be taken care of with time and experience gained by such hires. For the other points, however, an organization can undertake measures to let the hires learn the organization’s culture and help speed the transition along.

The burning need, in today’s scenario, is the diversity available to the organizations – be it sex, age, experience, culture etc. In an ideal scenario the new employees would handle the aforementioned in a considered manner, however, it is seldom so. In order to use this diversity as a lever to accelerate growth, the newest hires must hence learn how to do so.

This would also include experiential ‘action’ simulations to help the new employees communicate better, make better business decisions, develop their interpersonal skills and solve problems in a creative manner. In our experience, participants have benefited from such an experience and have come out more adjusted and comfortable in the organization in a professional context.

The experiential methodology works beautifully when it comes to bringing the new hires on board into the organization. In a recent workshop conducted for a group of young Management Trainees recruited from Tier 1 business schools across India by a Multi-national, the facilitator’s set-up varied experiences through simulations like Night Nav, Aircrash – Search & Rescue and the Quest to acquaint the trainee to the values of the organisation.  Through Air crash, the group learned about collaboration and Inclusion, while Night Nav taught them to innovate in a VUCA environment.

Experiential learning workshops would allow these employees to hone their ‘bookish’ knowledge to pragmatic, hands-on skills while gaining a thorough understanding of the dynamics of professional work life.

This helps the aforementioned trainees too, if not running, then hit the ground at a brisk walking pace.

by Vipul Mathur, Head Client Partnerships, Xperentia Tia Consulting.