CHENNAI, INDIA: Managing the next generation of employees is the major challenge that human resources (HR) managers are going to face in the coming years, senior officials of information technology (IT) sector said here Wednesday.

"Pay hikes, bonus and designation do not largely matter but an appreciation in public for the work done carries more weight amongst the new generation. They work on the power of collaboration. Companies have to provide such collaborative tools. In fact performance appraisals have to be redesigned," R. Chandrasekaran, president and managing director of Cognizant Technology Solutions said at the two-day HR Summit 2010 organised by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) here.

According to Krishna Kumar Natarajan, CEO and MD, Mindtree, the 21-year-old fresh graduate looks at the work environment and not the big corporate names. At times, the whole work place has to be recreated, he said.

"If work is fun, people will spend more time at work and the productivity will increase," said Chandrasekaran.

Interestingly speakers at the summit considered the word HR bad and said terming humans as a productive resource or an asset is not right.

"At Mindtree we call it as People Function and not HR," said Natarajan.

Chandrasekaran said the top management should spend more time to build next generation of corporate leaders who will work across continents and manage a global workforce.

"We have failed to spend time with the nextgen. We should ponder whether we are open to imbibe the new technology of communication," remarked Aparup Sengupta, MD and Global CEO, Aegis Ltd.

According to the speakers, the top management has to change its mindset so that changes are there across the organisation.

Looking back at the actions taken by Indian IT companies to manage the recession, John Sullivan, CEO, Dr. John Sullivan & Associates of the US, said business cycles are getting faster and like engineering companies IT company HR managers too should do failure analysis.

He said instead of knee jerk reactions, HR managers should be alive to the precursors to bad times.