Blessed with a demographic dividend, Bangladesh has seen a surge in educated, talented youth who are looking to grow their potential in a career of their liking and eventually contribute to the economy and society. The private sector can play a major role in providing leadership opportunities and exposure to new job entrants while they grow their functional strengths and competencies.
Beginning my career as a Territory Officer around 20 years ago, I have noticed that the young talents today are very different compared to the ones of my generation. They look for purpose, context, simplicity, and creativity in everything they do. They are surely much more agile and versatile thanks to the wider exposure to the world through digitalization.
It is important that young people need to gradually focus on building strengths and be open to taking on diverse types of roles in their career. It’s been observed that every role provides opportunities to learn something new and helps build resilience to deal with ambiguous situations in both professional and personal life. Newcomers need to understand that being bold, objective, humble, and responsible are essential values to kickstart a journey to professional development.
To help the inexperienced minds grow, leaders need to have candid conversations, offer regular mentorship, and empower their juniors. It is the role of leaders to explain the pros and cons of any decision to the young talents; this is critical to bring a balance in their mindset. Leadership, it must be understood, is a two-way path where both leaders and employees must participate in the process willingly. They need to embrace feedback and hold each other accountable to build trust, produce better results, and create a culture of continuous improvement.
Organizations need to take active steps in building an inclusive and empowering culture. Companies should offer flexible working arrangements to strengthen their inclusion. BAT Bangladesh, for example, provides working mothers with six months of fully paid maternity leave. The company also offers paternity leave and daycare facilities. While complying fully with Bangladesh’s labour laws, the company policies surpass local entitlements.
In our journey, we have found that inclusion and diversity are critical for the growth of each employee, team and the organization itself. As stated by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company, organizations with diverse employees are 36% more likely to outperform others financially. We have witnessed how the inclusion of a higher number of women and different backgrounds of people in the workforce enhances the company’s performance; it expands the breadth and depth of thought-leadership which brings in diverse views for managerial decision-making.
Young talents will benefit more if they are open to diverse experiences at the early stage of their career. Large corporations offer unique experiences of seeing things end to end, and the youth get the scope to learn important elements of management like strategy to execution, process and governance, and people and culture. Not all roles will initially fit them, but being open to different experiences will help them build a stronger foundation for their destination.
May I also recommend, those who are interested in being a marketeer can start their career in sales. Being a Territory Officer or Area Manager in Sales provides invaluable experience at a very early age. Aside from developing functional and leadership skills, it helps one to grow as a human being, build resilience and empathy, and be part of the greater society. Sales Teams are usually the first ones who get to feel and respond to changes in the business environment. During the Covid pandemic, sales leaders across the country had to lead from the front to guide the organizations in making critical business decisions and navigate the unprecedented challenges.
Lastly, as corporate professionals, it is our core responsibility to create a positive impact on the economy. No matter how important or significant it is, our actions should always add value to the society and community we live in. We should try to be passionate, strive for continuous improvement, be humbly assertive, and pursue the people’s and society’s well-being. We should remember that we can call ourselves successful in the private sector only by positively impacting society.
Numayer Alam, currently working at BAT Bangladesh as the Head of Commercial, has recently won the Bangladesh C-Suite Award as the Sales Director of the Year.
