Abstract
M.Com. (Business Management)
Today’s workforce is undergoing dramatic shifts with millennials joining the workforce and bringing their ideals, values and identity to organisations. This generation has received increased attention, associated mainly with stereotypes that at times have negatively impacted on their relationships with staff members from older generations. Succession planning and skills transfer are important strategies that organisations use to grow and retain their talent. Programmes are put in place as strategies to drive skills transfer from the older generations to the millennial talent pool; however, the question remains whether or not these strategies are efficient and create value for the organisation.
The aim of this research was to investigate the challenges and unique complexities of skills transfer when grooming millennials for succession roles in Bank X Group IT. The researcher wanted to understand the skills transfer from older generations to South African millennials, and it was therefore important to get perspectives from different sources, based on their role in the organisation’s succession planning process and included organisational succession planners, mentors and millennials. A qualitative, cross-sectional time-based research design was used. The researcher created three interview guides, which consisted of similar semi-structured questions, with interview questions based on themes and concepts gleaned from a review of the relevant literature on millennial’s conceptions of skills transfer.
The findings revealed that stereotyping led to ineffectiveness of the mentoring relationship. On the one hand, older generations deemed millennials lazy, expecting things to happen overnight, anticipating moving through the ranks very quickly, etcetera. On the contrary, millennials’ saw the older generations as rigid and not willing to explore new technologies, among other things. The researcher made recommendations to organisational succession planners and mentors to overlook the stereotyping of millennials and find common ground between the generational cohorts to drive succession planning without imposing on each other. This research draws attention to the need for more information in understanding millennials in the workplace and exploring myths surrounding generational stereotyping, and provides recommendations for future success.