The Hindu Business Line : ‘Talent management, our biggest challenge’

Talent management is the single biggest challenge faced by a high-growth industry. And, if a company is growing at double the industry’s rate of growth, there’s the additional problem of getting good quality people in large numbers.

Priya Balasubramaniam, Director, HR, ING Vysya Life, talks to The New Manager on the human resource challenges in one of the toughest business sectors, more so in India because the insurance industry in the country is relatively new and opened up for the private sector about eight years back.

What is the biggest HR challenge for a growing company like yours, getting talent or retaining it?

The insurance sector in the country is growing at 30-40 per cent annum and ING Vysya Life is growing at more than double this rate. Therefore, there’s a huge demand for good quality people across levels. In contrast, in an industry that’s growing at 8-10 per cent, the need for people is not so high and intense and, therefore, people movement within the industry is far more limited. The real challenge is that movement within the industry is high leading to high attrition.

The second thing is that the insurance industry is relatively new here, having been opened up to the private sector in 2000. So, the number of people with domain expertise is limited.

So, you have three factors: a high-growth industry, a rapidly growing private sector and a limited number of people. Therefore, talent management is going to be our biggest challenge. Also, it’s not so much an HR challenge as a business imperative. So, the issue keeps me awake as much as it does my CEO. And this is not just in ING Vysya Life. It would be across the industry.

What is the differentiation you offer to attract talent to the insurance sector?

We realise that rewards management needs to be competent and competitive; performance management has to be transparent and HR operations have to be brilliant. But, of course, all of those things are obvious. This is the price of entry into the game. If the organisation is not doing any of these, it is not in the game at all.

To my mind, all these aspects need to be done and done well. However, they will not give you the differentiation that you need — differentiation in terms of talent management, which is our goal today and on which we are focussing strongly. The crucial differentiation between organisations that do well and those that don’t is talent management.

This means we need to have people who grow and contribute to the organisation. Getting people with the right attitude is like grappling with famine in a land of plenty. We need young people with a can-do attitude. For instance, there are people who are good and very solid but they desire structure.

Unfortunately, they are not for us. They are suited for other industries. The can-do attitude is required at all levels, because this is a growing industry. It is a pain point for both of us when an employee leaves because an enormous disruption happens. So we spend a lot of time with senior management candidates explaining this part of the job.

Where does the challenge lie in the insurance sector? Getting and retaining people at the entry level or mid-level managers or getting people with the right kind of attitude at the top?

The challenge of resourcing exists at all levels. Not just people with the right skills who know their functional areas well but those who come with a can-do attitude.

Often times, we spend a lot of time training junior-level staff, but it’s also a question of managing costs. My resourcing team and the concerned line manager look at various issues before recruitment: even if somebody is not ready, we provide mentoring and promotion from within.

In some functions, we recruit from industries where skills are fungible across industries. For instance, for roles in marketing, distribution and customer service, we could take people from retail and telecom, because they work in the same way as us: geographically dispersed, yet centrally controlled.

Is the transition from other sectors into insurance easy, considering this is a hardcore sales job?

We are a little dissimilar from the IT industry, where people come in with a fair degree of knowledge of the industry. If the transition is managed well and we cross the hurdle, we make the person comfortable, and then people generally do well.

In frontline sales, the first six months is crucial. Some of them may not take to the industry. When you are recruiting in huge numbers, the selection process has to be absolutely right. In some cases, you need them right then and so you train the person. There will be leakages in the first few months. I would say that in frontline sales, out of 100, more than 50-60 would survive. Of every 10 people, one or two are employable. Not freshers but people with experience in other industries. What makes a good sales manager cannot be measured in 45 minutes or in over-engineered assessment centres.

So, what are you doing to retain frontline sales people?

For the frontline sales, we have a well-defined performance management system (PMS), which is clearly and transparently linked to their own growth as well as their career growth. We provide a clear line of sight to people as soon as they came in. The PMS allows you to track yourself and your progress; you also know the rewards. It was a unique concept when we launched it. It has served us well.

Is the talent pool growing in the industry? Are you working with academic institutions to help prepare young people for the industry?

In this industry, some players are already doing this. But, of course, there’s always a need to do more. But large companies are also rethinking long-term investments in such programmes. Will they get return on investment? Today, across the world, the market is so heated and there’s so much turbulence that companies do not know what kind of talent they would require in two years’ time. Both the demand and the supply sides of talent are volatile.

Some companies, in fact, are rethinking their long-term programmes. They are looking at unbundling some programmes and looking at predictability.

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