Banking fiasco in the US and its after effects on Asian and more importantly on Indian economy has imbalanced the investment in people management leading to a crisis in talent retention.
India’s competitive advantage had a great impetus from its healthy talent pool and its ongoing talent supply. Talent supply in India, both quantitative & qualitative, was coming close to the reality. A tectonic shift was witnessed in 2008 when until Quarter – III most of the organisations were working on one or other innovative strategies of building a perennial pipeline for talent with the economic growth hovering around 8~9% of GDP. The US jolt had the ripple effect and the shock was felt in India too. By the start of the Q-IV industries started experiencing the burnt effect.
Fast growing and skill crunched sectors like Banking & Finance, Engineering, Aviation, Realty, and Hospitality were the first in row to face the heat. Revisiting employee cost to reshape them to become lean was the immediate response of most of the organisations. Tangible & intangible expenses were revisited and restructured. Various possible options were explored and adopted to cut costs and reduce expenses while improving other factors to get through the crisis.
The situation demands a faster response. People being the most fragile resources need a delicate handling. Hence retaining the talent is pertinent. Organisations no more can afford to lose the star performers and be prone to business risk. Hence an urgent need arises to arrest the outflow of talent while continuing with the restructuring & rightsizing to make it people lean organisation.
Now the million dollar question lies before us that "What HR can do in the time when most of the organsiations are bent on downsizing, in the name of rightsizing the workforce?"
Few recommendations may follow:
1. When the Ship (Organisation) is in troubled water HR can put its first and best efforts in ensuring that a single sailor guides the Ship & the rudder is set accordingly so that it can sail the boat through it successfully.
2. HR has not only to maintain the People Motivation level but has to increase it using non-monetary tools.
3. HR can pay attention to develop the people on key skills as in the time of crisis brilliantly trained people fight the situation relatively better. Machine efficiency can be enhanced to 100% while the human potential can be exploited beyond 100%, which can bring back the organisation not only in the mainstream but competitively ahead as well.
4. HR can play an active role in refraining the Top Talent from falling out of the company bandwagon, as these people need an extra care in the turbulent times.
5. Since the star performers also get punished with not being rewarded for their performance and the downsizing spree adds to their nervousness. They start feeling insecure at the workplace and tend to look for a Greener Pasteur leaving the organisation at loss. HR can act as a “caring mother” at this stage.
6. HR can get people aligned & developed to fight with this critical situation. In the moment of crisis the muscles must be toned up so that they can consistently fight with the situation.
7. Develop people on Cross Functional skills so that the top performers in Deptt. with surplus manpower can be transferred to the Deptt. Which are either inadequately staffed or by removing the non-performers from that Deptt. This may strike a balance in retaining talents and getting rid of the dead woods.
8. HR can help the organisation to raise the people performance bar, as this is the time where the best performance can be extracted from people to turnaround the company performance. People, who are unable to cope up with such performance pressure will leave the company while the people who stays back are the one who will really contribute to the turnaround of the company.
9. HR can ensure fair evaluation of people performance so that the people who are contributing their best can be adequately reward when the company recovers from the current situation.
10. HR can play an active role in control of Communication Flow so that Grapevine can be contained and the discouraging news can be prevented from reaching people in general.
11. HR can initiate Management – Employee Interaction after drastic & severe actions taken, to maintain the morale & faith of the remaining employees.
12. HR can pass on the onus of making the organisation lean by bringing the line managers in so that the people productivity & operational performance due to “just sufficient” people is not affected.
13. HR can review its Minor / Low Cost Benefits, which may have, direct impact on the employee morale. They can be given second priority in control so as to maintain the high spirit of people.
14. Outsourced routine activities can be brought in and be carried out by the remaining people by increasing their job responsibility in the reduced manpower situation
15. HR can contribute to enhance the “Value Addition per Employee” by maximising employee inputs.
Aditya Sinha
Date: 1st Jan 2009
* Alternatively the comments can be directed to sinha.aditya@rediffmail.com
