Training Development

Are you people ready for the coming growth cycle?

Harsh Kapur•

19 April 2015|

Updated on 6 March 2019

Companies are still playing a wait and watch game and are conservative when it comes to investing in people assets

Economic change is driving an increasing need for organizations to adapt quickly and adeptly to dynamic market conditions. How companies and their leaders manage change and engage their workforce in the process can significantly impact their ability to achieve strategic business objectives.

Current scenario: A cross-sectoral study conducted by Terragni Consulting in understanding organizations’ people readiness for the upcoming growth cycle has thrown up some interesting results.

The study clearly highlights the fact that though business sentiments are showing a positive trend, companies are still playing a wait and watch game and are conservative when it comes to investing in people assets. Moreover, as far as development initiatives are concerned, the primary focus of most organizations remains improving productivity and leadership initiatives; however, due to limited or stringent cost control measures most of these initiatives are executed internally. While industries across all sectors are anticipating growth in the coming fiscal, high attrition is also a real impending possibility.

Challenges identified:

Putting in place a successful people readiness strategy is not an easy undertaking. It requires the creation of an integrated planning process, including steps to take before, during and after the change. Organizations have to overcome many hurdles to prepare their workforce to work in a cohesive and efficient manner. The study has brought out some critical factors that need to be addressed by any organization while getting ready for the upcoming growth cycle.

Business demands higher alignment of thought, strategy and action between the CEOs and CHROs

The need to develop people is being increasingly understood by Leadership teams; however implementation mechanisms to address today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment are missing

Mindset shift at the leadership level to evolve and implement new processes and systems, and get rid of ineffective traditional formulas of talent management

Shift needed towards alignment of people to the larger objectives of the organization, rather than focusing on short term benefits

Teams continue to work in silo. Efforts to create task forces that are truly effective needs attention

The Gen-X and Gen-Y co existence is more challenging to manage than in the past

Creativity to keep employee morale upbeat is much needed

Companies with large market share and scale are finding it difficult to attract skilled talent from the market place

Organizations’ over emphasis on investing in experience as opposed to potential is coming in the way of creating a diversified talent pool

Work force rationalization imminent for managing businesses efficiently

What do organizations need to do

Every organization needs to have a renewed and focused approach towards their people development initiatives. They should look at allocating increased and separate budgets for initiatives that take into account the changing market dynamics across all levels in the company.

Charting out growth plans for both people and organizations, projecting a clear career path for employees to work towards, which is necessarily based on the foundation of a competency framework

Succession planning is the need of the hour, necessarily for critical positions, also for future critical roles

Every new hire is a risk. The question is whether you're measuring the potential reward against your investment. Organizations should look at having a right mix of experience and people with the right potential

Put in place periodic job rotations to improve cross functional knowledge. It helps groom or prepare potential people for future leadership positions by increasing their knowledge, skills and perspective. It can also assist an organization in creating members with a broad base of organizational knowledge. It helps develop new personal relationships across the organization which may further develop a sense of cohesion and loyalty

Companies need to actively gather insights from all that data that is residing with them to create specific employee motivation and engagement initiatives

To summarize, People Development is the mantra for achieving future business growth, improving retention, with an increased emphasis on developing talent beyond the Leaders – the emerging focus is towards the middle management and the young entrants!

The research was conducted across Indian, American and European multinationals sizing between 300 to 5000 people. Sectors covered are Infrastructure, Engineering, Automotive, Off highway, Pharma and Information Technology.

Disclaimer: This is a contributed post. The statements, opinions and data contained are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of People Matters and the editor(s).

Author

Harsh Kapur