People – Exploring the Potential

Calm is a good way of living life, especially if interspersed between two high intensity timelines. Perhaps that is why it’s called calm! And a similar period of cautious calm is what we are experiencing in the business world. It is as though the world is sitting quiet to record even a whisper or an inkling of a sound that points at the recession ending. But as it always  happens that one senses what one wishes to sense, we find reports and statements being made in public that make us believe and have a hope against hope that the recession could actually be coming to an end. But is this lull actually the best plan of action or perhaps the lack of it?

One very interesting fact about the uncomfortable calm we are in is that neither are we sure if the high-intensity period is arriving in the near future nor are we sure of how long the bad times are going to last. But isn’t it taught in almost every B-school in the world that managers need to work with incomplete information and take measurable risks. And is it really beneficial to act when the world lies low scathing in pain? Mckinsey & Co in its paper titled ‘Learning to love recessions’ (June 2002: Richard F. Dobbs, Tomas Karakolev, and Francis Malige) talks of how some companies by their sheer act of getting active in times of recession have resulted in improving their value and emerging stronger from the recession. The article specifically mentions high risk activities like M&As carried out in times of recession by such companies to have fetched higher returns than the ones that pursued the same activity in boom time. It is interesting to find that 63% of the former organisations laid low when times were good and used the pent up capital to make an impact when the world was down with recession flu!

These are strategic decisions that defy man’s conventional Make-hay-while-the-Sun-shines wisdom and yet result in returns that are significant and differentiating in character. So what’s the take away for us HR folks? Get cracking in bad times. This is the best time to act. Just when all the competitors lie low in a circumspect manner trying to evaluate options in a state of corporate confusion, some others are cashing in on the opportunity to make the most of the clear strip available on the talent highway. A testimony to the fact is the participation of SMEs and start-ups along with PSUs that made a beeline at India’s premier B-schools last year. The puzzle was not all that cryptic that we can’t understand. The demand-supply mismatch let these firms to make the most of the situation and lap up talent in a way never done before. It just went to show how the economy lets the spirit of initiative drive growth: a drive that is coupled with the need for a change and is dependent on the hunger for growth.

The role of the state is debated in many an economy stuck between capitalism and communist ideologies. Whilst the communist ideology believes in the rule of the state and state run businesses to achieve inclusive growth, the capitalist model blames the role of the state for reduced productivity and complacency in performance of industries. A country like India is effectively a hybrid of both – and hybrids are interesting. The government and the corporate sector come together in various Public-Private Partnerships to ensure viability of ventures that result in social benefits. Interestingly Dr.Montek Singh Ahluwalia , Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission in one the interviews mentioned that in times of recession when the business world is suffering, it is the state that needs to come forward and stimulate economic activity. Investments in improving infrastructure can be one such intervention by the state in such times. This will pave the way for a smoother transition of the corporate world with the requisite infrastructure in place, once the recession begins to subside.

The calm therefore need not be universal in character. If one actor is down with a flu the other needs to fill in. Because the show must go on!

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.”