Necessity is the mother of invention. While Indian businesses (particularly
IT & ITeS) have been growing at a healthy pace, the organizations have had
to grapple with serious issues related to talent acquisition, engagement, and
development. With so many of these issues being caused by macro-level
developments (e.g. shortage of requisite talent, attrition), organizations have
had to accept things that are not in their direct control. Hence, on an ongoing
basis, organizations innovate-to meet the talent challenges head-on. This is
reflected in agile recruitment methods such as referrals; work-life balance
initiatives such as the Concierge services; and rapid training through
e-Learning.
As elucidated in Mckinsey's 'War for Talent', most Indian IT and ITeS
companies do not suffer from a lack of a 'Talent Mindset'. Almost all the
CEOs and HR heads that we talk to, recognize the importance of human capital in
building and sustaining their knowledge organizations.
Key Challenges
Their challenges, however, are in shifting from reactive ad-hoc steps in
talent innovation to an integrated and proactive strategy-to help answer the
questions of the hour:
- How do we continuously enhance our talent-based competitive advantage?
- How do we build an agile talent acquisition and retention engine?
- How do we permeate the talent mindset to every employee (and not just with
the HR or senior management)?
To help find answers to these questions, always quick to adapt to global
standards, many Indian IT and ITeS companies have approached the people
practices contained in the People Capability Maturity Model from the Software
Engineering Institute (People CMM).
The Solution
The People-CMM is a framework of global best practices that enhance an
organization's capability to attract, retain, develop, and deploy talent.
Based on research, the model presents these practices in an integrated manner,
so that the implementing organization inherits a scientific system in which to
deploy the same.
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BEST PRACTICES
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Business-driven Mindset
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CEO acts as a true
'sponsor', i.e. he provides a business context to this exercise, forms
the core team that will lead the implementation, enable them through
funding, and conduct regular status review meetings.
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The objectives of the initiative are defined not just in terms of
Maturity Level to be attained, but also in terms of specific business
metrics such as attrition, joining rates, employee satisfaction, impact of
employee satisfaction on customer satisfaction, etc.
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Business leaders have to realize that line managers will make the real
win in this internal war for talent.
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Adding specific performance goals for every managers, e.g. for
supporting People CMM implementation, improving their team's competency
ratings, and career counseling.
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Definition of
Competency Frameworks
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Defining the
dimensions of technology, behavior, and function in qualitative and
quantitative terms.
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Need to keep the competency frameworks relevant-given the rapid
change of roles, organization structures, need for higher capabilities in
the organization, and transparency.
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Focused Talent
Development
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On a periodic basis
(usually every 6 months), individuals are mapped against the competencies
defined for their roles.
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The methods of competency mapping include: formal assessment centers,
rating by self followed by a validation of the same by the manager,
assessment by subject matter experts.
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To have a competency assessment at the end of each project.
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Showing ourselves the
mirror
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As an organization,
what is our average competency rating on 'communication skills'?
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Within Department X, what percentages of our people have been rated at
least 4 out of 5 in Oracle?
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Within our Project Manager community, what is the average competency
rating on skills?
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Enhanced Business
Planning
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The key points to
remember in business/manpower planning:
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Which
knowledge/skills/competencies are business-critical?
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What is our current standing on these-in terms of number of people
and their average ratings?
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If low, how do we improve these levels?
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At the most fundamental level, the People CMM is an organizational change
model.
It is designed on the premise that improved people practices will not survive
unless an organization's behavior changes to support them.
The People CMM consists of five maturity levels, or evolutionary stages,
through which an organization's people practices and processes evolve. At each
maturity level, a new system of practices is overlaid on those implemented at
earlier levels. Each overlay of practices raises the level of sophistication
through which the organization develops its workforce.
| The Five Maturity Levels of
the People CMM |
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Source: Software Engineering
Institute
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The more mature an organization, the greater its capability for attracting,
developing, and retaining the talent it needs to execute its business.
Over 3/4ths of the world's People CMM Level 5 (the highest Maturity Level
in the model), are Indian companies! But unlike their successes with other
process model such as the CMM Integrated, this hold specials significance as
most of these companies have implemented the People-CMM based on their intrinsic
needs-and not because it was an explicit client requirement (eg in an RFP).
In Future...
Looking ahead in this talent strategy space
ala People CMM-mode, there's still room for further introspection and
system overhaul. The successes, so far have been limited in their organizational
and industry reach. Some key imperatives for the future:
- Widespread understanding of the fact that high People CMM maturity maps
directly to a successful talent strategy, and its execution.
- Organizations that have already attained high maturity status need to
continuously invest in sustaining the same. Pressures of growth and
competition for talent can sometimes make us de-focus on the very driver of
success.
- The high maturity capability needs to be attained by so many more IT and
ITeS companies. Many of them are on this journey-they need to stay
'invested' to reap high returns.
- India's prowess surely is not restricted to IT and ITeS. As other
industries mature and come in the global/domestic limelight, they'll have
to face similar talent strategy challenges. Why not start early? So,
because, at the onset of next year's summer, we'd like to look back with
pride and say: “In 2006, the pieces of our talent strategy came together
rather well”.
Ajay Batra, consulting partner,
QAI, is an SEI authorized lead appraiser for People CMM.
He is Asia's first Software CMM and PCMM Lead Assessor. He spearheads the QAI
practice of Human Capital Management.
mail@dqindia.com
