The
Background The title, 'The War for Talent' is an idea that has been borrowed from McKinsey & Company, who
published an article on the subject way back in 2001. The idea kept ringing in
our minds and we kept observing at every step of our interface with our clients
as to what really mattered and subscribed to ending the war. We were in the business
of handholding and transforming organisations. The ultimate objective was to
provide our client organisations a competitive advantage, which was only
possible by establishing the most compatible and contemporary methods of work
with the right approaches of the people positioned in the organisation that was
in focus.
The
Theoretical Understanding Competitive Advantage
was a term coined by Michael Porter who deposed that superior performance
reached through competitive advantage will ensure market leadership. Primarily
a marketing concept, was later captured by Dave Ulrich to display the miracles
that unique competencies helped to achieve this (Competitive Advantage) in an organisation. Ulrich went on to add to it the concept of value proposition - the HR agenda for the next decade. The entire stage was set to reduce
attrition and retain quality people through these concepts.
The General Scenario The question
that remained to be answered in client organisations in this part of the world
was how to implement them. And this was, despite globalisation. The concepts
were believed to be too 'west oriented' and the argument was, that they would
not be universally implementable - the usual cultural resistance to any change
initiative. They believed that these were marvellous and brilliant concepts in
themselves, but far from deployable. Promoters were averse to accepting any of
these jargons and would not let you 'touch' them. They knew nothing else but
profitability, as the required yield from a business organisation. No amount of
convincing even through Kaplan & Norton's Balanced Scorecard could persuade them, that there were other measures too, for assessing
the success of any organisation. And to make matters worse, there was a special
lot, who would agree with everything that you suggested, but when it came to
putting things into practice, there was a luke warm response which in turn
affected the approach. The task that lay ahead of us was therefore gargantuan.
There were three kinds of challenges that emerged when we did our Force Field Analysis: (1) The workforce (including managers) who accepted the modern
scientific management theories, but challenged their adaptability, (2) the
second lot who would refuse to think beyond financial gains and (3) the third
who preferred to be where they were because they lacked the risk taking ability
or the ability to say 'yes' or 'no' and act proactively.
The Internal Churning
This
prompted Team PERCON to embark on every assignment in transformation, with greater caution,
particularly while interacting with the promoters, the influencers and the
starters/triggers. In all possibilities the priority was to understand and
empathise with the woes of all or at least the three groups mentioned here. One
had to oscillate between addressing a variety of concerns from work methods to
attitudinal issues. Everything converged on cultural aspects. We therefore
decided to examine all the cultural issues right from the scratch and concluded
on a process shown in the figure above. We decided to seize the first
opportunity to make things simpler and start at the beginning.
Crystallising
the vision was our first task. The translucent character of a
vision is its peculiarity and most of the times, the promoters perhaps never
had the blink to think about it, or they perhaps only dreamt of taking their
organisation somewhere, which they could not define later and the thoughts were
lost in oblivion. This is where we spent days together, to put these thoughts
in words and help them to characterise their ultimate horizon for the
organisation. Every action that the organisation followed thereafter was within
this frame.
The next
area of our challenge, and perhaps the biggest one, was the identification of
the value system that the organisation adhered to and what it
needed to be embedded with. An example here may explain things better. An
organisation in order to transform would need a core competence of resilience,
which emerges out of innovativeness and an 'out of the box' approach. But if
the organisation has been adhering to the value of obedience and in traditional
terms strictly abiding by the instructions of the top leadership, this approach
would never find space to creep in by any means. This gives rise to a situation
of conflict between two sets of values - the values associated with obedience
on one side and the ones associated with openness, curiosity and debate on the
other. Dismantling the culture or value of obedience was not what we
encouraged, but we kept showing the advantages of debates and querying over a
period of time - best done in cross functional teams, for instance. Likewise
all conflicting values were being addressed and tackled to develop an
innovative culture. The biggest battles are fought here and smallest of
victories leave a moment of rejoice and success towards change.
Guidelines for introducing a fresh value system were always obtained from
Rushworth Kidder's Eight Universal Ethical Values
A business
organisation is largely understood as, "an organisation set up by an
individual or a group of people who collaborate to achieve certain commercial
goals and is formed to earn income for its investors." The underlying
theme here is indicated by the terms 'commercial', 'income' and 'investors'.
Most organisations have their mission statements revolving around
this theme. The appeal is for higher profitability and turnover. The evolution
of terms, such as ‘return on investments (ROIs)’ also emerges from this mental
construct. With constant interventions, persistent recall of the success
factors of an organisation delineated by Kaplan & Norton stated above
and the transition to a contemporary value system this perception begins to
erode. Most of the times, the mission statement is susceptible to redefining or
tweaking. Bringing in its acceptability amongst all, amounts to braving it out
amidst defiance from various quarters - persistence is a competency one has to
exclusively depend on.
The impelling
factor that keeps playing as an undercurrent or even explicitly, is the
motivational factor - whether self motivated or extrinsically inspired. The
mission is deciphered into organisational goals and they in turn are converted
to domain or functional goals. This is shown in the following example from TVS:
TVS Motor
Company – Mission
We are committed to being a highly profitable,
socially responsible, and leading manufacturer of high value for money,
environmentally friendly, lifetime personal transportation products under the
TVS brand, for customers predominantly in Asian markets and to provide
fulfilment and prosperity for employees, dealers and suppliers.
In this statement, what are clearly observable are
the organisational goals:
- highly profitable
- socially responsible
- high value for money
- environmentally
friendly
- lifetime personal transportation products
- in Asian markets
- to provide fulfilment and prosperity for
- employees
- dealers
and
- suppliers
In case the
above emerge as the organisational goals, then the domain goals are also
distinctly visible. Each of the above goals could be split to suit the goals of
each domain. For instance, to make the company profitable, the marketing domain
has to work out its plans for South Asia, prioritise on positioning and selling
and therefore read its goals in that perspective. Similarly the HR domain has
to work out alignment plans for rejuvenating the task force and the Operations
domain has to pull up its socks to increase the efficacy of their processes and
so on. From here on the job goals become clearer and the KRAs more easily spelt
out.
This done,
it is time that we slip back to from where we started, i.e., intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation, which in turn help consistent efforts to attain these
goals which in common parlance we call commitment. Here just
involvement of people is not enough. Yes we are talking about engagement.
Readers are requested to see the subtle distinction. Involvement can be donned
(most of the times is) on someone, while engagement is aroused from within. Engaged employees and teams would work towards
these goals and achieve them. The higher the commitment, the higher is the pace
at which they can be achieved and the higher is the quality that would make
them discernible.
Our description of the internal churning actually
ends here but it isn't the end of the 'War for Talent' yet. What we need now
are the processes, which should sustain the yields of this
churning, and fetch the poise of an equipped organisation! The blocks and the
arrows in the periphery denote that. These protect the internal processes
that have been depicted by the quadrants of the circle, which we have already
discussed in the 'internal churning' section.
The
Protectors
These are the
rectangles at the periphery of the ‘circle’ divided into four quadrants
discussed in ‘internal churning’ above. It becomes necessary to mention as to
why we have decided to call them ‘protectors’. They are the processes, which
consistently govern and safeguard the sustainability of what has been achieved
through ‘internal churning’, and if not pursued would lead to retracting all
efforts. Subroto Bagchi, Executive Chairman, MindTree Inc., in his book High Performance Entrepreneurs' suggests that if you have a vision to build a skyscraper, you cannot
afford to keep plumbing provisions for a two or three storied house. Therefore
the protection has to start at the stage of plumbing and what metaphor could be
better, when we say that we have to start assimilation right from the
grass-root point.
Let's
examine the rectangular block at the bottom right. It speaks about Hiring,
which is the entry point for anyone in the organisation. One has to be
conscious about the method - where the requirement details such as the
Job Description, Competency Chart and Job Specification have to be comprehended
well and then only the sourcing activity should commence. The accountabilities
and the role clarity should be significantly analysed and identified with,
before any sourcing process starts. The approach has to ensure
visibility about the cultural dimensions of the company to the candidate and
the attitudes need to be well assessed, besides the knowledge and skill
elements. What are being referred to here, is known to everyone and are laid
down stipulates, but what is necessary here are the aspects of empathy and
involvement with the organisation and also the awareness of the ultimate goals
of the organisation. The people implementing these processes need to possess
the intensity in each of these characteristics, else they should not undertake
these tasks. Therefore it is recommended that the recruiting team should
brainstorm and plan out to the minutest detail of the recruiting strategy. It
is for sure that one insufficiently assessed candidate increases the recruiting
cost in diverse dimensions, including the brand.
Let's go
over to the next rectangle the one coloured pink and mauve and what you find
here is the most significant contribution that the organisation has to make
towards the fundamental settling down process of the newly hired person - onboarding.
"You hired that person to do a job. Giving him the tools he
needs to do that job and perform at a high level should be your top
priority.....", says Michelle, the onboarding expert. We at PERCON would look at it as the process
that entails a systematic and comprehensive approach to familiarise a new
employee to help him or her to get "on board." It was important for
new employees to quickly acclimatise to their new work environment and get to
know that he or she was welcome aboard and also diminish the time for his or
her learning. Chipping in with information such as performance expectations
straightaway, would get to minimise misunderstandings, which often arise at this
stage and lead to frustration, so much so that they could even result in a
premature departure of a new hire. Research shows that the first ninety days
are exremely critical and if one is able to clear that hurdle successfully, the
journey for the new hire enables him or her to 'cross the bridge' successfully.
As someone put it, onboarding was the bridge between the résumé screening,
interviewing, and selection of a job candidate and the annual review measuring
how that employee was doing in the job. This should not be confused with
orientation, which on the other hand, is the event that usually takes place on
the first day or even in the first week of the tenure of a fresh entrant and
provides for a download of information about the organisation and a bulk load
of formalities to complete.
Major efforts in onboarding are the
responsibilities of the seniors to persistently open windows to usher in more role
clarity. This calls for having done the home work well and having the job
description and job specification in place with enough flexibility and space
for tweaking the responsibilities to bring in more transparency in
communicating them. The clarity has to be in the following areas:
- Work Methods
- Time frames
- Work responsibilities
- Customer-Supplier
interface
- Work priorities
- Performance expectations
- Resources
Role Clarity
and its diverse implications need to be understood in depth by each supervising
manager. There has to be clarity in the understanding of each manager as to
what was meant by role clarity how it should become a priority. This leaves most of us in a lurch as to
how does each manager feel responsible to do this and this is where it becomes
imperative for each manager to subscribe to the other role.
The other role is non else than mentoring. The organisation has
to assign a mentor for each new entrant. Ann Rolfe, the famous mentoring expert
defines mentoring as, "Interaction with another that facilitates the
process of metacognition". Now what is metacognition? Taylor (1999) defines
metacognition as “an appreciation of what one already knows, together with a
correct apprehension of the learning task and what knowledge and skills it
requires, combined with the agility to make correct inferences about how to
apply one’s strategic knowledge to a particular situation, and to do so
efficiently and reliably.” The mentor helps the mentee in doing that. The
mentoring dialogue opens up when the mentee mirrors on his or her personal
exposure to a circumstance, concern or dilemma and then the mentor guides the
mentee in collecting data from a diversity of sources, arrange and analyse the
preferences and helps to choose from the alternatives the course of action,
which would include planning and executing it. The process of re-evaluating the
outcomes would continue in order to move up the learning and performance curve.
Therefore there are no time-limits prescribed for this process and has to be an
ongoing activity.
You have now
ensured only fifty per cent of the protection that you need to offer to sustain
what you have achieved through 'internal churning'.
Therefore we
move to the next protector rectangle, on the top left corner. We have seen how
we have been able to facilitate the employee to mount on the 'track for
progression' after his embarking the organisation and help him balance his
journey within. In order to entail the seriousness attached to his association
with the organisation, the meaning of his performance expectations (outcomes),
need not only to be reinforced but also measured and such parameters need to be
transparently communicated. This is referred to as defining performance
(this also includes redefining if required). Defining performance would
tantamount to chasing a mirage, if the employee is not looked after well. What
we should be searching as his best performance would be possible for him to
achieve, not only with the quality of assignments with added value but also
what we are ensuring for his wellbeing, so that he puts in his best. Work
related employee wellbeing is defined as follows,“that part of an
employee’s overall well-being that he or she perceives to be determined
primarily by work and can be influenced by workplace interventions.” The length
and breadth of employee wellbeing would be that which includes development of
organisational, managerial, social and physical workplace considerations as
well as elements such as people’s physical and psychological health. This also
includes employee wellness initiatives. Let's be very clear that we should not confuse this concept with that
of the traditional employee welfare, where the underlying philosophy was to
give away to the employees, so that the employees were happy and felt more
involved with the organisation. Here the effort is entirely to build a
'bonding' with the workplace. A typical example would be that of Google! Organisations are to perceive this aspect with an openness that
perhaps is more required than desired. It's not an expense; on the contrary it's
an investment that has far reaching and protracted effects on the thrust needed
for a paradigm shift. This is no more the prerogative of the 'knowledge worker'
oriented industry alone and it is a pride to mention that even conventional
organisations are following suit now. See how Unilever has worked
on it too! The bonding that we are talking about here is employee engagement or
talent engagement. The subtlety that we would like to focus on,
is why we chose to use the word 'talent' and not employee. According to Marcus
Buckingham the author of 'First Break All The Rules', managers have to
recognise talents in every team mate - the power within!! Competencies are only
subsidiaries to talents, which emerge from various factors but essentially the
core of each talent is made up of passion.
And the best
definition of passion we have come across is by Ken Blanchard: Employee
Passion is the positive emotional state of mind resulting from perceptions of
worthwhile work, autonomy, collaboration, growth, fairness, recognition,
connectedness to colleagues, and connectedness to leader, all of which lead to
standards of behaviour that include discretionary effort, long-term commitment
to the organization, peak performance, low turnover, and increased tenure with
the organisation.
Engagement
of talent would be possible when the person possessing that talent is engaged
with the organisation. The only way to acquire precision data about employee
engagement in an organisation is to administer a qualitative and a quantitative
assessment. The technique needs to be customised according to the values, the
business strategies and the communication style acceptable to the organisation.
But essentially when the survey is being designed, make it a point to cleverly
partner the key employees performing the tasks for which engagement levels are
being measured. This measurement has to be an ongoing activity, as
organisations are continually evolving. While keeping in mind that engagement
refers to the workplace bonding and not just keeping the employees happy, it's
worth mentioning that even accountability contributes to engagement!
This brings
us to the last of the four ‘protectors’ and that is where talent engagement
takes us to – making the employer, the
employer of choice. The employer of choice is an organisation where you
find a clamour amongst the potential human resources to ‘bag’ a job with it.
How would that happen? Today’s job-seekers are extremely discerning and
conscious about what they are looking for and therefore would not opt for any
and every job opportunity that comes their way. They weigh various aspects: besides
other things importantly, the compensation package, the job content, the work
environment, the career growth prospects, and of course the learning. The
employer has to ask himself: Is he ready for this? Is he at the bottom of the
ladder debating whether to climb, has he started climbing or has he probably
realised that he was climbing into an undefined space (reminds me of Jack
climbing the beanstalk, achieving success every time and finally settling down
for some bagful of golden coins, the harp that played the music and the goose
which laid the golden eggs, but Jack didn’t have competition and nor was he
aware about obsolescence!) having to whip up an idea that was fresh and
rewarding in terms of engagement. Two qualities that the organisation evidently
has to promote besides whatever we have been discussing so far – innovation and
experimentation and they have to be embedded in a set of values, ridden with
trust and transparency.
When you
become an employer of choice you have attained the employment brand. It is
worthwhile to think and analyse at this stage, whether such a brand was
possible to attain without a product brand or a corporate brand. Well yes and
no!
Yes, because
if you have a great employment brand, your product brand would improve as your
brand managers are an engaged lot and would do anything and go to any extent to
create that brand. The same would apply to your PR too and therefore you would
have a great corporate brand.
No, in the early
or nascent stages of an organisation because of the following two reasons: a.
you need to be known in the market for whatever business you are catering to
and b. you need to have humongous energies and resources in terms of
persistence and patience to await the product recognition, on which rely the
revenues of the organisation. Although we second the understanding that
businesses survive because of people, the latter are dependent on the financial
viability of the organisation, a fact, which we cannot ignore.
Having accomplished
the employment brand, our agenda is two dimensional. We have achieved the
Competitive Advantage mentioned at the beginning of this write-up, but we need
to sustain that. The war is over but a new war begins? May be not a war,
because you have already built the culture of promptness and perceptiveness,
but a continuous combat and confrontation has to be faced in order to set new
benchmarks and mark up with them. That is how one would have a sustainable
competitive advantage and get over with the War for Talent!
