Saying, “they work to live and not the other way around,” a director at University of Dubai has suggested that corporate human resource policies and procedures “must change” to accommodate millennials.
“We have to change the process,” said Hikmat Beaini, UD director of communications at a recent symposium about millennials in the workplace organized by Bayt.com.
“These people, they have everything they need. You cannot ask them not to work from home or telecommute. They work to live; they don’t live to work,” he added
Beaini said for one, company HRs may want to try doing away with the punch-in/punch-out policy about attendance, considering how connected millennials are. “Instead of punch-in/check-in and punch-out/check-out, why not whatsapp-in and whatsapp-out?” he said.
Beani was among four resource people at the Bayt.com event’s panel of discussion, the others being Adeeb Al Ameri, head of HR at Etihad Airways; Sayed Haggag, HR market director for the Middle East and Africa at Marriott International; and Ashutosh Sinha, head of Landmark Group’s talent acquisition and strategy section.
The forum was facilitated by Bayt.com co-founder and Chief Technological Officer (CTO), Akram Assaf who, in the course of the deliberations posited that millennials “feel bad if they don’t get likes on Facebook.”
“How does that translate to the work environment?” he asked the panelists to which Al Ameri replied: “Make them feel that they make an impact on the organization.”
Haggag said Marriott has been “shifting away from the traditional way of interviewing applicants where there are now a lot of interaction between them and the managers.”
“Things have changed very dramatically,” he said.
Sinha agreed, saying a “basic shift in HR should be implemented” to make it “tuned in” to the “digital natives,” the millennials as he described them, and the Gen C or the connected generation. (Jojo Dass)
Photo Caption: The panel of discussion at the recent Bayt.com symposium. From left, Bayt.com co-founder and Chief Technological Officer (CTO), Akram Assaf; Adeeb Al Ameri, head of HR at Etihad Airways; Sayed Haggag, HR market director for the Middle East and Africa at Marriott International; Ashutosh Sinha, head of Landmark Group’s talent acquisition and strategy section; and Hikmat Beaini, UD director of communications.
