People – Exploring the Potential

Talent management is a notion of the MNC and not the luxury of the Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Talent management is the prerogative of the HR and not the job description of a business manager. Talent goes where the money draws it to. Connect the statements….

All myths!

Talent Management in today’s scenario is not restricted to a particular type of organisation or a particular function in an organisation. Talent management is not as simple as doling money to attract good employees. It’s much more than that. Talent Management (TM) has undergone evolution to emerge as the competitive differentiator among equals. TM today includes an entire gamut of activities that are wide and highly impacting in both scope and depth. It is an organisation wide phenomenon ferociously being driven by senior management to ensure that the organisation braces itself for the tremendous opportunities and more importantly for the deepening economic crisis the world faces today.

Like any other beliefs, the belief in TM and its impact on business can be superficial or realistic. Lip-talking organisations tend to tow the line of Talent Management purely to portray themselves as a short-term attractive destination for good talent. It is perhaps the tactical ploy of the management to create an atmosphere of talent recognition and development while all the way believing that if situations get worse, the initiative will be the first in the line of cost cuts. The outcomes of such short-term strategy are equally miniscule. Perhaps, the short term attractive proposition may actually result in fresh talent acquisition; the retention of the same will be a lost cause. Organisations such as these result in demoralising the workforce and driving them towards their own competition thus spelling doom on themselves. Such organisations fall prey to their short-sighted action plans and complete lack of strategic thinking.

High employee turnover rates are not a rare phenomenon nowadays as organisations struggle to retain talent. Turnover rates among CRM companies in India are bordering around 30%. It is interesting to note that smaller turnover rate along with low labour costs were the competitive advantage as far as competing with the US firms was concerned. But this advantage seems to be waning away at a scorching pace. Companies today are deploying task forces and external consultancies at a premium to understand this very phenomenon and the causes that lie beneath. Most companies today are aware that their workforce is the only differentiator when capital, assets and focus on cutting-edge technology are becoming rapidly duplicable.

Talent Management is more of a necessity than luxury if an organisation expects to thrive looking at a long term perspective. And this long term perspective is very important given the distortion caused by the severe downturn in the economy. Companies are developing their Talent Management frameworks tailored to the business needs and working on roadmaps to develop and sustain talent in the organisation. While some companies have put their hiring plans on hold and are busy cutting costs, the talent conscious organisations are seizing the opportunity to acquire quality talent at cheap prices (given the level of frustration at B Schools). While some short-sighted organisations blame the recession on the wrong doings and flamboyance of so called ‘Talented MBAs’ from premier B schools, the more established and strategically planning companies are cutting hiring at lower value chains and are concentrating on acquiring best MBA minds who they believe can lift their organisations out of the slump. It is this mindset of the companies that will see them sustain and retain talent over a longer period of time. Walk the Talk is the name of the game. If a company does not display and practice its focus on Talent earnestly, it will not be able to create a successful marriage with the talented lot, who will turn out to be the differentiating factor in such troubled times.

Bill Gates was not wrong when he quipped “Take away our 20 best people, and I will tell you that Microsoft will become an unimportant company.’’

Walking on the picturesque Gulf Street in Kuwait, it was amazing to see myself liberate and free myself in the mind and soak in the vast Arabian Gulf by my side. It so happens that a visit to a marine drive always makes one feel good. In this moment of liberation me and a couple of fellow interns started talking about working hours in different countries, their work ethics, the challenges one faces at workplace and above all what mistakes employers normally end-up making.

One such discussion thread was about how promotions in organisations can backfire. The first thought that came to mind was the Peter’s Principle which describes that normally people get promoted to a level of incompetence. A friend observed how in most organisations, various levels are filled with people who have stagnated and are not promotable any further. The most prominent mistake employers do is by awarding employees with a good performance record with a promotion without bothering about his potential and competency fit with the job he is expected to do. This leads to him/her reaching a level in the organisation where his performance dips and emotionally drains the employee as a once good performer changes to a mediocre cog in the wheel. The other two sides of the catastrophe is the effect upwards and downwards.

The dip in performance leads to slip in business performance that affects the senior management strategies and increases the deviation from business plans. What was once a decision by the senior management to improve performance and employee satisfaction and engagement ends up in doing exactly the opposite!

The downward effects are found in the way the subordinates feel to work under an incompetent boss. An incompetent boss is unable to manage his subordinates and their expectations. And this results in employees losing faith in the abilities of their boss to resolve issues and manage results. This disconnect results in misalignment of strategies with employee expectations. Employee engagement at the subordinate level suffers and leads to attrition and bad equity for the organisation in the job market.

But not all is dark and scary in today’s corporate world. To counter this very situation, companies are taking proactive measures to ensure that individuals with competencies that match the expectations of a role are promoted. Thus there are a number of organisations that spend a lot of time,money and effort in identifying the ‘right’ people for the ‘right’ job. Succession planning, competency mapping and various organisational development tools go a long way in dispelling the concerns that loom over making incorrect choices. Other tools used by employers is to develop mentoring programs where senior management help in identifying and guiding potential leaders to develop their competencies and slide into senior roles with ease when the time beckons. To sustain such a mechanism, the much relevance is stressed on maintaining a strong talent pool in the organisation with the record of good performances and the potential to manage the managers. The talent pool needs to be developed and nurtured with regular reviews and assessments to ensure that the talent is ready for the next stage. Given the rapidly changing market dynamics, this ready-to-go talent pool acts as a great differentiator. A recent survey by a reputed consulting firm confirms that the Top 20% of the most preferred places to work had a sustainable talent pool in place to mitigate the risks of a continuously changing environment. This arrangement has a spin off effect on employee engagement and job market equity. It’s no rocket science to realise that its not enought to teach a man to fish, but to ensure that his son learns to fish as well! Keeps the restaurant open all days!!

Ah, I totally forgot to tell you about how great the Hard Rock Cafe on Gulf Street was!!!

The world is changing! And the corporate world is changing its outlook towards HR. Amongst all the metamorphosis that is happening around us, one prominent element that stands out is the focus on people…. The ‘Right’ people.

The old notion of people being an asset to an organisation has undergone a paradigm shift. Today is the era of lean mean fighting machines and in such a competitive environment the onus on organisations is to cut out the flab and maintain and flexible and value adding work-force. There is no room for mercy or charity in this race to be the most efficient and effectively managed institution. Companies around the globe are today focussed on restructuring their three Ps – Process, Performance and People. Bouts of ‘right sizing’ and layoffs have hit the headlines of many a newspapers recently. In this context it comes extremely critical for an HR practitioner to objectively identify the ‘right’ workforce in terms of quality, quantity and mix. Age, ethnicity and value alignment are of critical importance as HR around the globe tries to tackle workforce aspirations and business performance in multinational organisations.

Talent Management has become a burning topic of discussion at coffee tables across. A very reputed HR portal (Bersin & Associates) has voted talent management enabling issues as the Top 22 among a list of 62 issues identified. This just goes to accentuate the huge impact talent management has on business performances of corporations globally.

Talent Management is a stratified into talent acquisition, talent auditing & assessment, talent retention and talent development. All these set of activities are used to ensure that the machine is kept running through out the life-span of an employee in the organisation. Beginning with getting the right people in, the talent management practice begins to support the business practices. Identifying the right candidates using various assessment tools like competency based interviewing and psychometric tests etc, the people with the right attitude and aptitude are inducted in. The recruitment and selection process is followed by a well planned induction and on-boarding process that ensures that the new recruits are exposed to the culture, values and systems of the organisation. The talent prevalent in the workforce is consistently being assessed using various tools like assessment centres, talent reviews etc to ensure that the rotting apples are identified and proactively repositioned to ensure that productivity doesn’t suffer. In this regard, a renewed focus is being laid on lead indicators to ensure that modifications are carried out proactively. This calls for metrics that can be tracked and constantly monitored on dashboards by senior management. HR metrics hereby are the drivers of the talent management practices. This attempt to quantify and assess HR performance in terms of talent management has resulted in C-level Business leaders acknowledging HR as a strategic partner in their business vision.

Finally based on the talent levels of the workforce and the criticality of the roles, development programs are sketched out to ensure that the employees are being groomed into becoming future business leaders with the right mix of values, competencies and performance potential. Succession planning is an obvious next step in ensuring that the critical positions do not go unfed in the event of talented workforce leaving the organisation. To facilitate a robust succession planning exercise, organisations around the world are ensuring that the critical roles are identified and the required ingredients in terms of the competencies are chalked out in an objective fashion. Once the roles are identified, the challenge is then to assess the workforce and identify a talent pool that fits the bill. Talent pool depth and coverage play a crucial role in justifying ROI on the entire gamut of talent management activities being carried out in an organisation. A visible spin off of a robust ROI in terms of human capital management is a healthy sense of engagement among employees. An employee looks for good career opportunities, a compensation that suits the effort and the outcomes he delivers and an opportunity to develop his competencies to move to bigger and better things. An employer who facilitates these opportunities for its employees has reason enough to believe that his business stands to perform exceptionally.

“Henry Ford, Jack Welch, Bill Gates….. All practitioners of Talent Management.”

Hi!

Welcome to my brand new blog that tries to share and generate content and literature on harnessing, managing and developing human potential for the corporate world. Talent is manageable and sustainable when due importance is given to the fact the people are the largest resource available with any organisation.

Assets, Capital investments and business investments are susceptible to market forces. What we need to understand is that people investments are just as susceptible to market fluctuations. To delve further into the vast potential available to learn and deploy people management practices, I intend to get this blog running.

My interest in the area developed in a subconscious manner when I started working in the customer service management field of marketing for Mahindra & Mahindra- Automotive Sector. My experience at handling people related issues made me focus on role holder competencies that could aid my business requirements. I observed that a little focus on developing the people donning the roles helped me sustain and perform my business activities with a considerable amount of ease and effectiveness.

Further, my first year of study at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources brought me to interact with a battery of information related to people management. What started off as people management was slowly changing to ‘talent management’ as talent referred more closely to the value-added part of having people working for you. And talent I reckoned could be transferred, developed, assessed, retained and recruited as the need may be. But to have a holistic view of the subject and keeping the discussion as pragmatic as possible, I intended to have the blog named ‘people potential’. Hope this initiative helps make information on talent and people potential fairly interesting and helpful.