Key to controlling attrition!
Source
The war of talent in corporate India has shed a lot of blood in the form of rampant flow of intellectual capital from one business entity to another. The attrition levels have been very high in the past few years compounded by an acute dearth of skilled talent.
In such a scenario, talent management (TM) programmes have become a buzzword across corporate India, though unfortunately, very few organisations can boast of its success. In order to find reasons for its low success rate, we need to first understand the fundamental philosophy of such programmes.
One of the premises the TM process is based on is that it is the employee’s responsibility to manage his or her own career. This challenges the traditional outlook that has put the manager in charge of the careers of his/her subordinates. This one basic principle creates a semblance of an apparent loss of formal authority that can be traumatic for the line manager, resulting in developing a fundamental disconnect with the TM process.
This is the result of the prevalent command and control structures, the degree of which may vary from corporate to corporate.
The managers need to quickly realise that they need to evolve their roles from controlling and managing talent to leading talent. Instead of creating career paths for their employees, they need to help them discover various career options, provide resources and create opportunities for them. out a future
The manager’s role is to coach and counsel their employees and create an open and caring environment. Critical for developing and retaining talent is for managers to share information, knowledge, market trends and help the subordinate chart out a future direction. The employees are then empowered to execute strategy and take on implementation challenges through which they derive maximum learning.
Steep learning is one of the biggest factors in retaining talent. Linked with learning is constant assessments/ feedbacks to such employees by their managers in order to help them create benchmarks to further their development.
Another major objective which the above mentioned style achieves is inducing creativity and innovation. Constant knowledge sharing, generation and dissemination of ideas and motivation to take on steeper challenges lead the company to greater heights through innovation of processes, services, products, etc., which is critical for any company’s success.
The other thing the TM process strongly advocates is the free flow of talent across the organisation from one function to the other. This goes against the tenet of turfism, which is still ingrained, in varying degrees, across the corporate world. Having said that, cross-functional moves sometimes do temporarily expose the donor function but we also need to recognise the fact that, anyway, the organisation will lose the person, if it were not to cross rotate the person to meet his/her career aspirations. The other point in favour of such moves is that the donor function of today will become the receiver tomorrow, from some other function !
Managers need to understand that these cross-functional moves are required for developing a systemic understanding which is so critical for handling future senior management roles in the organisation, in addition to developing a strategic outlook. Such moves help the organisation to build a strong bench-strength for the future, helping to plug gaps immediately, with minimum or no set-backs, as and when a senior person leaves. For the talented employees, this again fast-forwards learning and career growth thereby keeping him/her glued to the organisation.
In addition to the above, to achieve the systemic understanding objective, some progressive organisations encourage one-on-one meetings of their top talent with various members of the senior management team, including the CEO, which also helps broaden their perspectives in addition to helping them further align their objectives with those of the organisation.
In order to remove the fundamental hurdles, companies have adopted measures, and to good effect, like talent management as one of the main KRAs (key result areas) for line managers, CEO’s office directly driving TM process for top talent, incentivising sharing knowledge, etc.
But there is a prerequisite to all this, for the success of such an important process and in order to develop an organisational ability on attracting and retaining talent is that the organisation must possess the “passion” to do it — a similar “passion” with which the organisations drive for top line growth. You will know the passion exists in your organisation when, in an unfortunate event of an exit of a talented employee, it saddens the hearts of the top management team and most of all the CEO’s !
/** It's an unfortunate coincidence to see this article and the last few lines on the day of sudden demise of our colleague and friend at Juno online services, Hyderabad - Mrs. Sirisha Srivatsan - May 04, 2006 - Thursday Night **/
From: C.S.Murali - Our Senior VP!
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 10:21 AM
Subject: Sad demise of Sirisha
Importance: High
Folks,
It deeply saddens me to inform you all of
Sirisha's untimely demise last night.
She was a well respected and extraordinarily
committed member of our United Online family.
She'll remain forever in our hearts.
-Murali
The war of talent in corporate India has shed a lot of blood in the form of rampant flow of intellectual capital from one business entity to another. The attrition levels have been very high in the past few years compounded by an acute dearth of skilled talent.
| The managers need to quickly realise that they need to evolve their roles from controlling and managing talent to leading talent. |
In such a scenario, talent management (TM) programmes have become a buzzword across corporate India, though unfortunately, very few organisations can boast of its success. In order to find reasons for its low success rate, we need to first understand the fundamental philosophy of such programmes.
One of the premises the TM process is based on is that it is the employee’s responsibility to manage his or her own career. This challenges the traditional outlook that has put the manager in charge of the careers of his/her subordinates. This one basic principle creates a semblance of an apparent loss of formal authority that can be traumatic for the line manager, resulting in developing a fundamental disconnect with the TM process.
This is the result of the prevalent command and control structures, the degree of which may vary from corporate to corporate.
The managers need to quickly realise that they need to evolve their roles from controlling and managing talent to leading talent. Instead of creating career paths for their employees, they need to help them discover various career options, provide resources and create opportunities for them. out a future
The manager’s role is to coach and counsel their employees and create an open and caring environment. Critical for developing and retaining talent is for managers to share information, knowledge, market trends and help the subordinate chart out a future direction. The employees are then empowered to execute strategy and take on implementation challenges through which they derive maximum learning.
| . Critical for developing and retaining talent is for managers to share information, knowledge, market trends and help the subordinate chart out a future direction. |
Another major objective which the above mentioned style achieves is inducing creativity and innovation. Constant knowledge sharing, generation and dissemination of ideas and motivation to take on steeper challenges lead the company to greater heights through innovation of processes, services, products, etc., which is critical for any company’s success.
The other thing the TM process strongly advocates is the free flow of talent across the organisation from one function to the other. This goes against the tenet of turfism, which is still ingrained, in varying degrees, across the corporate world. Having said that, cross-functional moves sometimes do temporarily expose the donor function but we also need to recognise the fact that, anyway, the organisation will lose the person, if it were not to cross rotate the person to meet his/her career aspirations. The other point in favour of such moves is that the donor function of today will become the receiver tomorrow, from some other function !
Managers need to understand that these cross-functional moves are required for developing a systemic understanding which is so critical for handling future senior management roles in the organisation, in addition to developing a strategic outlook. Such moves help the organisation to build a strong bench-strength for the future, helping to plug gaps immediately, with minimum or no set-backs, as and when a senior person leaves. For the talented employees, this again fast-forwards learning and career growth thereby keeping him/her glued to the organisation.
In addition to the above, to achieve the systemic understanding objective, some progressive organisations encourage one-on-one meetings of their top talent with various members of the senior management team, including the CEO, which also helps broaden their perspectives in addition to helping them further align their objectives with those of the organisation.
In order to remove the fundamental hurdles, companies have adopted measures, and to good effect, like talent management as one of the main KRAs (key result areas) for line managers, CEO’s office directly driving TM process for top talent, incentivising sharing knowledge, etc.
But there is a prerequisite to all this, for the success of such an important process and in order to develop an organisational ability on attracting and retaining talent is that the organisation must possess the “passion” to do it — a similar “passion” with which the organisations drive for top line growth. You will know the passion exists in your organisation when, in an unfortunate event of an exit of a talented employee, it saddens the hearts of the top management team and most of all the CEO’s !
/** It's an unfortunate coincidence to see this article and the last few lines on the day of sudden demise of our colleague and friend at Juno online services, Hyderabad - Mrs. Sirisha Srivatsan - May 04, 2006 - Thursday Night **/
From: C.S.Murali - Our Senior VP!
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 10:21 AM
Subject: Sad demise of Sirisha
Importance: High
Folks,
It deeply saddens me to inform you all of
Sirisha's untimely demise last night.
She was a well respected and extraordinarily
committed member of our United Online family.
She'll remain forever in our hearts.
-Murali
posted by Mega at 2:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home