Human Resources – Challenges & Opportunities in the New Economy

Organizations across the world today realize that a ‘satisfied’ employee is not necessarily their ‘best’ employee in terms of loyalty, commitment and productivity. Only an effectively ‘engaged employee’ who is intellectually and emotionally connected with the organization, feels passionate about organizations Mission, Vision and Values. HR Functions are burning the midnight oil & trying to go above and beyond the call of duty to achieve this mammoth task of effective engagement . To be effective in the current environment HR needs to know as much, if not more, about the ‘business’ of the organization as the business people do. We need to be able to speak the language of HR in the context of the business so that HR can influence the decisions made by the business that impact the people of the organization.
The Indian IT industry is going through the toughest phase as there is a huge shortage of good talented work force in Indian market. The war for talent has reached its peak and many corporations are witnessing higher attrition trends. The biggest challenge for any Human Resource Function today is multi fold such as Attract, Retain, Develop, Talent Transformation and Effective Engagement. HR is an important function within any organization. It is also the most dynamic of any enterprise function. Expectations are constantly changing….expectations of the employees, leadership team, customers. HR has to serve all constituencies – Its people, extended families, shareholders, leadership of the organization and the customers of the organization. In this ever changing corporate climate of innovation, turbulence, mergers, HR professionals should act as ambassadors of change by creating the right processes, practices & systems to inculcate a win-win culture between the organizations & its people.
I believe the role of HR is going to be very crucial in building/transforming organizations. Employees of the organization will have to become the champions of HR function at all levels to develop and sustain a highly engaged & emotionally connected employees.
Key Human Resource Challenges & Opportunities

• Severe shortage of right skilled manpower/employees

In India there is no dearth of Engineering & graduate colleges, may be we are one of the country which has maximum no of educational institutes. As per the recent NASSCOM survey there is a need for more than 300,000 professional qualified, employable & Industry Ready people are required in the next 2 years. With increasing poor quality products from universities employability ratio of engineers/graduates is at all time low of less than 25%, I am not sure if we have data on employability ratio among other graduates. Today many of the industry leaders are burning midnight oil to chalk out strategies to develop employable skills to all their employees.

Many large organizations are spending in excess of Rs.600 Crores per annum towards training/grooming people on various aspects of industrial & technological requirements. So as a nation we need to start addressing this issue of developing survival skills among the youths of India so that we do not become factories of producing Engineers without the RIGHT skills.

There is a greater need for industry & academia to work together without any personal agenda to develop overall talent across the country to meet the industry demands. Else India will loose the technological edge by virtue of not having employable skilled people in the country. I am sensing certain level of complacency among academia as they have truly transforming into a engineering/graduates factories without any quality check methods & processes.
Few thoughts on how to survive skills shortage

• Think beyond Compensation - look at innovative strategies to attract and retain good employees. Identify what factors which enable good employees to stay in your organizations and create content to showcase your employable culture.
• Clearly defined career path for every role & individual. Create challenging opportunities, provide good work/life balance and flexibility in the workplace
• Utilize the skills & experience of senior colleagues to coach/mentor people at all levels. People need to exhibit passion and great commitment at all levels.
• Skill Improvement & knowledge acquisition opportunity for all employees. Support in certifications (PMP, PMI, technology specific certifications such as MCP, MSCD, Sun certification etc.), further education program through university tie up for higher education.
• Be a true ‘employer of choice’. Offer and encourage balanced and flexible working arrangements for all employees. (Day Care, Health clubs, recreational facilities, sports complex, social networking etc.)

Employee engagement - From active engagement to active disengagement

Engagement is a very emotional & culture centric word and needs to be managed well in every organization. We are living in the word of digitization where everything is getting automated and role of human interaction is diminishing fast. While this is seen as a great advancement of integrating all systems & processes across organizations, we should not loose out on the need for regular human interventions to connect with larger organization. Organizations are recognized by the people and their ability to relate to the overall vision.
Engagement is about motivating employees to perform to the best of their potential. An engaged employee gives 100 percent to his company and becomes a trusted ambassador of the organization. Employee Engagement is the means or strategy, by which an organization seeks to build a long lasting partnership between the organisation and its employees. Organizational dynamics are changing too fast where employees have become the nucleus of the organization around which all activities are planned. Today organizations exists because of its people and people are the vehicle of growth for any organization.

It’s extremely essential to realize the need for active engagement at all levels to build a strong, sustained and culture oriented organization where employees are the core of organizational growth strategy. There is a greater need for the organizations to invest in employee relations and build a sustained strategy to engage people at all levels. Many organizations are adapting to Employee perception surveys, feedback systems, employee led task forces to create higher level inclusivity & engagement.

Every employee in any organization wants more than money to stay in with one organization for a longer period. Even though pay sometimes becomes a justification and often shows up in exit interviews, most employees stay in organizations because they have many aspirations and interests which need to be addressed and guide them to build a long term career with the organization. Every individual is keen on building a competitive advantage for himself/herself; to create competitiveness in oneself, people are always on a look out for challenges to sharpen their axe all the time. In order to achieve their aspirations, they are always expecting an active engagement & constant attention with thier managers/organizations. Engagement is all about creating a sense of inclusivity among employees with the organizations, to create inclusivity one need to understand the stated & unstated expectations of employees.

Increasing Socio economic imbalance between IT & rest of the industries
Sunrise industry of modern India, Information Technology (IT) which has a dream of achieving 86 Billion dollar has clearly taken India to a global arena and has made all of us proud. The whole world is looking at Indian IT industry for solutions to their business challenges. India's higher education system contributes about 350,000 engineers and 2.5 million university graduates annually to our workforce, yet at any given time about 5 million graduates remain unemployed. A survey done by McKinsey Global Institute shows major IT organizations find only 25 percent of engineers are employable, and NASSCOM report foresees shortage of 500,000 skilled, employable work force by 2010.
Today the whole world speaks about IT & only IT and the rest of the industry segment has lost out in creating its own space in the global arena. This is equally true for India which a strong developing economy with close to double digit GDP Growth. While all the attention has been given to IT has made all of us proud but this has created new set of challenges for the other industries. The issue seems small but actually it’s a bigger threat which needs immediate attention before it’s too late. Current generation graduates seems to believe that there is no career other than IT and this is leading into severe shortage of manpower in manufacturing, automotive, retail, garments, cement, civil, academics and so on.

Due to high visibility, lucrative compensation, global exposure & Fancy work culture, curiosity, excitement has successfully ensured that all people migrate to IT and ignore the other industry segments. This has clearly created an industrial unrest in Indian economy. This may offer different challenges all together if not handled well. There is a greater need for the government to bring in legislative changes to labour laws which impact other industries and also create a economic balance between IT & Rest of the industries.

Managing Work Life Balance & flexible work environment
“Facilitating the employees in managing their WORK & LIFE commitments is a business imperative and not an optional extra” this statement explains the importance & need for the organizations to take right steps to facilitate employees in achieving a balance between their work and personal life. Organizations need to recognize that in order to recruit and retain high quality employees, it needs to take a multipoint approach, by implementing innovative & different employment practices to enable employees to strike a balance between their home and work life.

Most organizations did not give adequate attention to Work Life Balance till it became an employee engagement issue; later organizations took a one-sided approach to their work-life efforts. Many organizations have developed systems, policies, processes & rewards program to solve the work-life-balance problem. While these were helpful but these overlooks a critical factor. Work life balance revolves around individuals and no two individuals are equal; work-life balance is more an individual issue that affects the organizations and not necessarily an organizational issue that affects the individuals.

It’s very important to realize the need for a life outside work so that people can start thinking of how to balance their work life. Based on my industrial experience I have seen that most youngsters do not have a personal life outside work. The role of Human Resources is extremely critical to act as a change agent in creating awareness & importance of life outside work and its positives. There are many innovative ways of creating Work Life Balance such as telecommuting, work from home facilities, Day-Care Centre for young parents with children, health clubs, Flexible office timings, paternity leave, sports competition, recreational facilities, family day celebrations, learning from unusual sources, Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives etc.

Global Business Model
We are living in a flat world today with increased technology usage and boundaries are disappearing very fast. The role of HR in the new economy will change to that of creator of overall values and direction. With easy access of Internet cloud more and more businesses can enter the global marketplace with great ease.
The role of HR professionals with increased international business practices, international labor laws, multicultural sensitivities and multiple languages is going to be an uphill task. All HR professionals need to be knowledgeable of other cultures, languages and business practices to be able to create a stronger support system. 21st century is definitely the defining period for Human Resources with global market place shrinking day by day and becoming one world & is offering a whole new set of challenges.
This has lead to many innovative practices which are scalable and cross cultural in nature. HR needs to take a centre stage and enable global business growth by transforming from an administrative function to a strategist, engagement champion, culture ambassador, trusted advisor to business head etc. HR needs to evolve from strategic business partnership to strategic business leadership (driving change and results, not just monitoring them). In a nutshell the role of HR will be to manage, nurture, develop and retain the best intellectual capital.

Work and Society
Family and life interests will play a more prevalent role in people’s lives and a greater factor in people’s choices about work—there will be more of a "work to live" than a "live to work" mentality. Employees will demand increases in workplace flexibility to pursue life interests.

1. Based on my industry experience Technocrats may refuse to make the sacrifices required today in their family lives and more people (not just women) will opt out of traditional careers.
2. Work will serve as a source of cultural connections and peripheral friendships and people will start creating life within work rather creating life outside work.
3. Employees will continue to struggle with their need for work/life balance, and it may get worse in the years to come in this competitive world.
4. Community involvement and social responsibility will become part of an organization’s business vision & everyone has to adopt this method to make impact at the gross root levels and our focus should be on Education, Poverty & illiteracy.
5. Those people who refuse or are unable to adapt & pick up newer skills/technologies will find it very difficult to accomplish their career goals and will trap themselves in lurch.

People Development
Lifelong learning will be a requirement. The focus of training/learning activities will be on performance improvement/enhancement and not just on skill building. Employees with varied skills and competencies will be valued more highly than those with a depth of expertise in a single area. Problem solving, analytical, cognitive thinking and decision making will become a required curriculum with practical work problems as the teaching medium. The whole learning environment itself has undergone a sea change from a class room oriented approach to a case study driven with live examples, role plays and lot of field work.

1. Training will be delivered "Just In Time," whenever people need it, using a variety of technologies.
2. Companies will demand constant personal growth, and employees need to respond positively to higher expectations. It will not be possible to survive in the workplace without basic computer skills. People who can learn new skills/competencies quickly will be highly valued.
3. As the computer-savvy generation is more assimilated into the workforce, employees will become much more productive in complex tasks and less dependent on other people and departments.
4. Versatility will be the key factor in determining employee value with strategic thinking, leadership, problem solving, technology and people skills close behind.
5. Compensation systems will be linked to business outcomes
6. Positions need to be organized in teams focused on a task, not organized around a hierarchy.
7. Positions will be defined by the competencies needed to be performed.
   Employees will be more independent, moving from project to project within their organizations.
8. Many jobs will be redesigned to be much broader in scope, especially in management positions.
9. Employees will be increasingly measured by how much value they contribute to the business, not by whether they fulfilled predetermined objectives.
10. Work will be more challenging, and jobs will become increasingly complex

HR Challenges in the new economy will be completely different from that of the past & it needs out of the box & innovative strategies to deal with all unusual issues
We as HR Professionals need to brace ourselves and develop necessary competencies to be able to tide over the current volatile economic & people industry.