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Developing Tomorrow's Managers
In the fast paced industry, companies are finding it difficult to keep in step due to the inadequate number of middle level managers. The challenges are many. According to Rosita Rabindra, executive VP, HR, NIIT Technologies, “We have a bigger challenge at middle level for the simple reason that IT workers, after three-four years begin to handle teams. This does not happen in any other kind of industry. So, for a technical person, managerial skills do not come naturally. Hence, there are programs these people are put through.” NIIT has a SEED program to let employee transition from worker to manger apart from the program run in collaboration with ISB. According to Nandita Gurjar of Infosys Technologies, “Today, the concern is not of freshers, but of managing the middle level as we are growing them too fast, and we have got into a panic mode because of the boom and promoting them left, right, and center. This can do more harm than good.” She adds that sometimes what is needed is just experience and also senior managers to work with junior managers as mentors. HCL's Eagle's Nest Program is aimed at identifying and grooming high performance managers. The idea has been drawn from the qualities of an Eagle, and the program looks at identifying managers who display a keen eye for excellence, vision, fearlessness, tenacity, vitality, a nurturing and co-operative attitude and an ability to soar high.

The middle level crisis has become crucial for the BPO industry. According to Shanmugam Nagarajan co-founder and chief people officer of 24/7 Customer, “The BPO industry is amongst the very few industries in India where the demand and the role of the middle manager has emerged and evolved very rapidly in the last few years. With the industry growing at a rapid pace and the absence of homegrown middle managers, it posed a challenge to companies that had to balance people growth to meet revenue growth.” Some global players have also made their entry into India eying the managerial training segment. Disney Institute, one of the leading players in experiential training, leadership development, benchmarking and cultural change for business professionals across the globe entered into a tie-up with Saviance Technologies to bring -professional development programs.

Tapping the Physically Challenged
According to statistics, there are around 6 mn physically challenged people in the country, out of which a large chunk are well qualified and can be employed in the IT/BPO industry if adequate measures are put in place. But there are very few instances of tapping into this pool of talent. Gurjar of Infosys, which incidentally is one of the largest employers of challenged people, says, “We have clearly identified processes and the type of people who would be able to do that job. We are very clear that we don't do this as a charity. They go through the training like anybody else and we take all the steps to make sure that these people are successful.” MphasiS, also through its program Project Communicate, has made a beginning to tap the talent from this category.

The Outlook
There has to be a concerted effort on the part of all HR heads, Nasscom, central, and state governments to address the issue of harnessing the talent in India. Gurjar says, “The HR heads should concentrate on creating talent rather than poaching them. We need to own the responsibility rather than pretending.” Rosita Rabindra says, “People with good skills are still in short supply and all the companies are trying to get the best talent. The cycle time to find people is very high as the total base of people in that specific domain is very small.” So, what is the solution? According to Ajay K Sharma, president and CEO, New Horizons, “India does not lack in 'bodies'. And my belief is that as a people we do not lack in talent either. Both from the desire to learn/upgrade and also in terms of grasping ability.” So what is causing this gap? He says, “Clearly it is our inability to train this willing and vast resource pool effectively. What is needed is a concerted effort by all stakeholders-industry, government and educationists-to identify skill gaps and put in place measures to reduce them.

On Employability Taking cognizance of the fact that talent is a critical differentiator for sustaining India's competitiveness in the global sourcing landscape, NASSCOM, in association with its member companies from the industries, has taken several initiatives and programs aimed at both creating suitable talent for the industry and also transforming the “trainable” workforce into an “employable” workforce. NASSCOM has taken the employment pyramid approach to better understand the industry's skills requirement and create specific education and development initiatives. The base of the pyramid represents simple technical skills (including entry level jobs in the BPO industry and vocational jobs like networking, hardware maintenance, etc). The middle stands for skills which are mainstream and account for the majority of the existing shortage in the industry, while the top of the pyramid, represents high-end technology skills (in areas such as bio-informatics, embedded software, product architecture, DSP, VLSI, program management and multimedia convergence), which are niche today, but will become mainstream in the near future. For the top of the pyramid, programs like setting up 20 new IIITs are in the pipeline; for middle of the pyramid, NAC Tech and setting up of IT/Engineering Finishing Schools and the IT workforce development initiative; for the bottom of the pyramid we are working with initiatives like NAC. Som Mittal president,Nasscom At the top end of the skill stack, which is where high-end jobs including R&D feature, NASSCOM has been working with multiple government agencies to facilitate interventions with an objective of expanding the pool of specialized professionals. Some of the significant interventions include working with Ministry of HRD to establish 20 new IIITs across the country. Each of these IIITs will be an autonomous institution and will set up through a Public-Private partnership between the MHRD, State Government and IT industry firms. Additionally, in order to promote the academia-industry research linkages, the Government of Delhi has decided to establish a Science & Technology Park and has asked NASSCOM to prepare the Detailed Project Report. NASSCOM, in collaboration with the DST is also looking at capacity building for post graduates and PhDs in IT technologies. To bring in a higher degree of focus, NASSCOM is institutionalizing these efforts under its Education Initiatives, which are designed to nurture better industry-academia interface and ensure better synchronization between the education system output and industry requirements. The initiative includes workshops and conferences, faculty sabbaticals, training programs, mentorship initiatives, and encouragement of research and survey-oriented projects. NASSCOM has also been working closely with bodies such as MHRD, AICTE, and UGC to standardize the curriculum and pedagogy. We are confident that with the support of all stakeholders and active partnerships with the government, we will be able to ensure a continuous supply of talent for the industry

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