The Hindu Business Line : Develop talent from within

There's a peculiar dichotomy in the human resources (HR) industry. HR managers wholeheartedly agree that talent should be groomed internally, but when asked what their biggest source of talent is, the reply is almost always the same — executive search firms.

"Not many companies that I know of have identified future leaders," observes Yeshasvini Ramaswamy, Director, People Practices, e2e Business Solutions, a Bangalore-based HR, legal and accounting solutions firm.

Talent is definitely a scarce commodity and high performing talent is even more difficult to come by. "Therefore, organisations have to start developing a model which promotes CEO behaviour in projects," she says, adding, "Otherwise you'll have the Indian cricket team in your organisation, with 90 per cent of the members on the verge of retirement."

While that may be a consultant's viewpoint, CEOs and HR managers agree that identifying key talent is indeed becoming a challenge. In a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies, participants said that developing talent for the future was the biggest challenge of the decade. Vivek Mansingh, Country Manager, Dell India R&D Centre, stresses that it's the CEO's job to create the leadership of tomorrow and not just mentor them for today.

Speaking at a symposium on leadership, he said building a talent pipeline is crucial for organisational growth. "At Dell, the exercise is done every six months with Michael Dell himself identifying key talent and giving them an opportunity to grow," he said, explaining the Dell way of grooming leadership of tomorrow. He advises top management to "assign at least one task where the identified key talent plays n+1 role."

Does this mean that money and position can only temporarily retain employees, but to keep them locked in, one has to empower them? Agrees Anand Talwar who heads Talent Management at ITC Infotech, "Individualised development plans and empowerment are very effective tools. To positively impact retention rates, employees' career aspirations should be tied in with corporate learning and development efforts."

ITC Infotech has invested in internal systems to track employee performance and manage workforce development, which in turn enables the company to identify high potential employees, who are encouraged to play a more active role in their work and are involved in taking responsibility for improving the way things are done.

Ramaswamy says key performers have to be treated as entrepreneurs within the organisation. "There should be mini-business units and executives heading these treated as CEOs," she suggests.

In fact, e2e Solutions has also launched an intrapreneur-entrepreneur model for companies where the mid-level high-performer individual is handled within the company as the CEO of his project or team. He or she is responsible for the profit/loss, team spirit development, financials and marketing. "At a later date, if the candidate wishes to leave the organisation, he or she is given the option of becoming an entrepreneur in his or her specialised area, with the parent organisation as the first client."

This, she says, helps in two ways: One, the parent organisation does not have to spend more time, money and effort in training another person for the same position and two, the high-performing individual has the opportunity of spreading his or her entrepreneurial wings with the parent organisation as a support.

Sridhar Sarathy, Vice-President, India Operations, Juniper Networks explains the power of empowerment. "It is the process of enabling or authorising an individual to think, behave, take action and control work and decision-making in autonomous ways. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own destiny."

At Juniper, empowerment implies the development of the India Engineering Centre towards being a centre of excellence for product development. "We need to build competencies so that the employees of Juniper India can work on end-to-end product development. This gives them a sense of ownership and pride," he says.

He points out that it is not enough to authorise individuals to make decisions on their own; they must also be educated on how to make the right decisions. There are training and mentorship programmes that enable individuals to make informed decisions. So how critical is the leadership role in mentoring/training key talent in organisations? ITC Infotech has developed a `career mentoring framework', where superiors are available to protégés for guidance and counsel. In addition, the senior management team, coupled with planned developmental interventions, personally mentors identified talents.

Sarathy agrees that strong talent management leads to greater workforce productivity and other benefits. Companies are increasingly realising that they cannot be successful unless they have a good strategy for developing talent.

"Given its importance, the strategy needs to be driven from the top. CEOs and COOs should oversee talent management strategy rather than delegating it to HR departments. HR, in turn, should be made responsible for supporting the strategy and executing it," he says.

Mansingh of Dell India has a CEO's recipe for developing key talent: Inspect what you expect and guide them to success, teach leadership yourself, develop the ability to motivate yourself and your team towards achieving a goal and get the best out of your team. Remember, organisational effectiveness is proportional to the strength of leadership.

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