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As 70 per cent of companies in the country struggle to find candidates with relevant skills, including technical, business, digital and soft skills, it is time that leaders started focusing on building the talent pipeline, industry insiders opine.
“Stop blaming the pipeline. It is time to think about inclusion differently,” said Manish Bahl, AVP, Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. To win in the digital economy, companies need to double the speed of talent acquisition and move to value-based relationships from transactional interactions, he said.
Bahl was participating in a HR summit hosted by Cognizant in Mumbai. At the meet, several executives and industry leaders also underscored the importance of diversity, terming it a pillar of productivity, profitability and engagement.
Workforce of future
Stating that talent scarcity is one of the biggest challenges facing organisations today, Bahl said diversity and inclusion are set to play a key role in creating the workforce of the future.
“Organisations and leaders should cultivate a culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion, and build a hybrid workforce straddling different age groups, genders and orientations. The culture should be realigned to eliminate unconscious biases and discriminatory language and behaviour,” he added.
Speaking about women in the workforce, Bahl said, “In India, there is over 47 per cent female enrolment in higher education, but only 27 per cent representation in the workforce. This further drops to a low of 13 per cent in STEM-based careers. The country could increase its GDP anywhere between 16 per cent to a whopping 60 per cent by 2025 just by enabling more women to participate in the economy.”
Family no deterrent
Terming the contention that a woman, when she becomes a parent, is focused more on family and less on work, and therefore, may not be interested in challenging assignments or career advancements, a myth, Bahl said organisations should enable more women, especially mothers who may be temporarily out of the workforce, to re-enter it. “Technology can enable them to stay connected, remain collaborative and to participate,” he added.
The executive warned that without more diversity and inclusive representation in the workforce, “the talent gap will only widen and it will be difficult for companies to meet the demands of the digital economy.”
He also urged companies to make age a competitive advantage, “for multi-aged hybrid teams tend to produce stronger results given the blend of technological fluency with soft skills and industry knowhow, all of which drives innovation.”
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