Crina Ilie, Genpact: Growth mindset is an important topic, which requires a lot of courage, but unfortunately it is often avoided in boards or by the HR”

“A trend that we have noticed in the last 6-7 years, visible in our company as well, is that the first option for young people is not to be a people leader, but rather the last option. I think this should put us all in a reflective position, especially in executive teams.

That manager, especially the team leader, the frontline manager who has the execution teams under his or her control, has the most difficult role in the organization. I think the business and human resources community does not give these people enough credit and we are not close enough to these first line managers,” Crina Ilie, EMEA HR Leader, Genpact said at Work Compass HR Conference organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• Why is their life difficult? First of all, these managers have the most direct contact with the customer. They are the first to receive customer frustrations, they are the angry, tired employees with various personal problems. They receive all the organizational plans that need to be implemented, but also the reporting needs. How do we help them and how do we recognize their challenges is a big question.
• After 30 years in human resources, I have noticed that the role of manager has diversified so much that the manager must be a coach, mentor, inspirational, a kind of digital ninja who facilitates access to resources. The last difficulty for any manager, regardless of level, is the generational overlap.
• In Genpact we have 5 different generations in the office. In the same team you can have from baby boomers to generation Z. Each generation has different financial, socialization, learning needs. All these needs are different and a manager is challenged to adapt and make the approach flexible for each employee.
• What we do is personalize the relationship with each employee depending on the life cycle in the organization (0-3 months, 3-6 months, 9-12 months, etc.), the generational area and the personal context.
• The manager is the most important link in the organization. I hope that learning budgets as support for frontline managers will be put on the table again. In our regional and global programs, investments in people leadership as learning experiences are the most consistent. Are we doing enough? No, but I think it is very important to know the importance of these roles and to bring the position of people leader back to where it should be, to be a vocation, to be a calling, to want to be less selfish and more in the service of others.
• In the learning area, we are witnessing 3 radical changes in the last 2 years: what we learn, how we learn and our mentality towards learning. In our company, we look at T-shaped competencies, meaning that it is no longer enough to know only the domain, but also the industry. You can easily find this multifunctional combination in a platform where things are well organized and you can access the combination of a domain and a technology or a domain and an industry where you want to apply it.
• The second major change, which is also felt in low-end jobs, is a proliferation of technology and advanced technology competencies. All our employees use technologies like ChatGPT and related products.
• How we learn – and here platforms have a huge benefit – is in short pills. Following our research, we found that the preference is a combination of audio-video learning and practical learning: tips, tricks, techniques.
• The mentality towards learning has changed greatly. We are trying to address two limitations. The first fascinates me as an HR professional and is about the fact that people come to companies with the promise of a future in which they will develop. Once they have arrived at the company, they do not want anything to change, they want to stay in the same job, develop their skills and do not want changes. The second limitation is growth mindset, for which there should be induction courses in companies or even courses in school.
• Growth mindset is an important topic, which requires a lot of courage, but unfortunately it is often avoided in boards or by the HR sector.