In our industry, two very crucial talent elements demand a CEO’s time and attention – hiring the right set of people and ensuring that talent is engaged. Owing to several typical characteristics of a brick-and-mortar industry like ours, where consumers are always connected to the company, having the right people on board is a top priority for a CEO. Having the people who blend into the organization’s culture is therefore extremely important for a CEO. In these times, as a CEO, it is important to act as an advisor to where the organization is sourcing talent from and guide the talent acquisition team in decisive matters such as which campuses talent should be sourced from, the profile of people the organization should be looking to hire and building a diverse and balanced workforce.

Diversity within the organization is a big agenda for CEOs. Diversity does not simply imply hiring of more women, but also encompasses a more holistic approach to having people from diverse ethnic and economic sections of the society. A CEO should act as the guide and advisor for the organization’s diversity agenda. A CEO’s role in the induction process is also very crucial and I personally drive several training and learning initiatives within the company. In an industry like ours, training is a crucial component of business operations and every person has approximately four man days of training per year. A CEO should work very closely with the learning and development team and track how the workforce is growing in terms of knowledge and skill. I personally track this measure in my scorecard because it is the most critical piece of the business.

A CEO needs to connect with key employees in the organization very closely. In our organization, a big piece of employment value is the opportunity of key employees to go for external courses and certifications. Key employees get the opportunity to attend higher education in their key skill area in engineering or arts discipline, or for general management aptitude such as an MBA. All these are initiatives, including nominations and selections, which I personally drive as a CEO.

The amount of time which I invest in talent related activities continues to increase, as we’ve seen that through a CEOs direct involvement, there was a much-needed drop in attrition numbers as well as improvement in the ability of the workforce to perform. In my scorecard, I track employee engagement, retention of key talent, training, and employee productivity as key metrics. I plan to spend more time and effort on talent management in the coming months and it will continue to increase in the future. In terms of relative importance of business priorities, talent is most certainly among the Top 3.

Every talent measure emanates from employee happiness and it is a CEO’s job to understand the levers of employee happiness within the organization. Some measures of happiness that CEOs should absolutely ensure include are having engaged employees, having people in the right places in the right kind of jobs and a sense of pride and self-realization in the workplace. Instilling a sense of pride of working in the organization will continue to be among my top priorities in the coming months.

PRAVEER SINHA is the CEO of Tata Power