The Hindu Business Line : Building talent in-house

"We believe that training should be given in doses and our managers should be steeped in the culture of the organisation. Only then does assimilation of the skills that we impart become all the more easy."

A VIEW OF THE TATA STEEL plant at Jamshedpur

Even as most corporate houses repose their faith in B-schools when it comes to hiring trained managerial personnel, the philosophy at Tata Steel is quite different in this regard. For the steel major, its human resources development policies are dictated by certain beliefs . One such belief is that while business schools do serve their purpose of training managers, some teachings are better appreciated when faced in the context of real-life situations. It is in such situations that the gap between academia and industry is a trifle too glaring.

Says A.M. Mishra, Tata Steel's Vice-President (Human Resources): "Management institutes abroad are more in sync with the dynamic corporate world. As such, management education there is in touch with reality and hence more dynamic. In India, not all B-schools are in tune with the dynamics of the corporate world. Yes, some do take up consultancy work with the corporate world, but few who undertake case studies take into account the redundancy factor which results from the time lag between the point at issue and the time the case study in undertaken."

Grooming managers from within

According to Mishra, Tata Steel's philosophy lies in "grooming managers from within". "When we recruit our managers, we expect their career association with us to be for around 35 years. Lateral recruitment is resorted to only when there is no in-house capability available for a particular post. We believe that training should be given in doses and our managers should be steeped in the culture of the organisation. Only then does assimilation of the skills that we impart becomes all the more eay," he says, and cites instances of General Electric and Toyota Motor Company where almost all the managers comprising the top-rung are groomed from within. This also facilitates homogenous thinking among the company's top brass.

Mishra agrees that for multinationals the nationality of the CEO does not matter. However, those at the operational level must be in sync with the local understanding and culture. "That is going to provide the differentiation," he says.

For Tata Steel, the choice in terms of recruitment has been clear. Instead of hiring MBAs, the organisation has preferred to "hire engineering graduates and make MBAs out of them". As such, in-house training is provided at the entry-level, middle-level and senior-level management. From sending its managers to XLRI Jamshedpur for a one-year, full-time MBA course at company expense to having a tie-up with Insead of France and other management and technical institutes, Tata Steel has something to offer in terms of skills upgrades for all its managers. The focus is on enhancing functional efficiencies, managerial capabilities, inspirational abilities, leadership issues, teamwork, strategic thinking, personality development, organisational skills and so on.

For the record, Tata Steel spends around Rs 25 crore annually on providing managerial and technical training to its managers and technical staff. Interestingly, while graduate engineers are provided managerial training after being on the job for a few years, workers and supervisors are imparted managerial skills as well.

Need-based training

Says Sohini Iyer, Head of Talent Management, Tata Steel: "Training is provided at the functional and managerial levels. Need-based training is provided for enhancing competencies and the entire exercise is captured electronically. Trainees fill up self-assessment forms before the training indicating the levels of competence on specific parameters. The same parameters are assessed after the training to assess the difference in competence levels. Results show there is a high correlation between training and performance enhancement."

According to Atrayee Sarkar, Head, Market Research Group, Tata Steel, the company facilitates informal training by allowing its employees to experiment with different things while on the job.

Development of functional skills

"At the lower rung of the managerial ladder, the focus is on the development of functional skills while up the ladder it is more of leadership issues where one is being prepared for a larger role in the organisation," she says.

Sarkar, who has been through formal training sessions, is sanguine that "while informal training is beneficial in terms of learning and experimenting with new jobs and ideas, formal training structures unformed ideas in one's mind and gives shape to unformed moulds in the mind". Adds her colleague, Subodh Pandey, Tata Steel's Chief of Marketing, and who has been with the company after graduating as an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur in 1992:

"Till 1998, I was working as a pure engineer. That was when I felt the need to complete an MBA course and, in 1998-99, I was part of the first batch of the one-year, full time General Management Programme at XLRI. That was the first break-point in my thinking and approach to management."

This was followed by functional, on-the-job training in the US, Japan and Europe. A programme on customer value management with McKinsey helped him "understand myself better and gave me tools on teamwork and taught me how to continuously bring improvements in the group that I am head or part of".

Pandey says the different training programmes undertaken by him have helped him add value to the organisation. And in saying so he is just endorsing the sentiments of his colleagues in the organisation.

More Stories on : Management | Human Resources | Steel | Tata Steel Ltd

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