30 to 40% of the CEO’s time will go in people-related issues - Sanjay Modi, MD (India/Middle East/South Asia), Monster.com

What are the key trends you see arising in the Talent Management space?

Firstly, technology will play a very important role in integrating the different platforms related to talent management and that will become crucial for companies to optimize their investments in people; technology will take recruitment inputs, performance management inputs, training & development inputs, this information integrated will allow HR to understand what type of people their organization require from the ROI perspective. Technology will help companies to track people from the entry level thought to the complete employee lifecycle. So technology will help organizations move from present analysis on what is happening to futuristic analysis of what is going to happen. The more capable the organization is to predict what is going to happen, the better are their changes to be competitive in the market.

Secondly, as the business is becomes more virtual, the challenge for leaders will be how to connect. Flexibility in terms of work location and time will be a demand both from the both perspectives of business and the new generation of employees. Today a client face to face meeting is not mandatory; it is actually losing its importance over time. You can be at home talking to your client and you can be as effective as you were in a face to face meeting. The challenge for HR will be how to manage this type of talent when the physical contact is not there. That means communication will become very important, it will become crucial for people to feel connected and it also means that the HR policies and systems will need to be more robust, as this will be the only common thread that will integrate all employees across all locations.

Thirdly, organizations will need to focus strongly in attracting talent and the use of the online media will become critical: from their own websites, to social networking, to mobile technology. The main problem that companies will face is being able to identify and articulate what is their communication plan and how to differentiate themselves from the competition. If you do not do so, you can create clutter in the seekers mind so rather than having a strategy working for you it could work against you. I see the role of HR increasingly becoming a marketer in times to come, they will to need to understand employer branding and what differentiates their organization from others.

Finally, another key trend that I see is that 30 to 40% of the time from the CEO will go in people related issues and decision. The reason is that talent is an increasing business driver so CEO cannot take an eye away from the people issues. HR and CEO working together more will intensify because the war of talent like we saw in 2007 is back.
Overall I think what is new is the mind shift; issues like retaining talent, using of technology, focus on communication will become central to both the HR and CEO in terms of understanding and sincerity to execute.

How ready are Indian organizations ready to face to these new trends?

I feel many companies are talking about it and this is already a start. Personally I feel that more focus on action is required. The issue is that when the business review happens one of the issues why companies might not have been able to deliver will be headcount. It is imperative to focus on these areas as prevention and not as postmortem. Companies will start looking at innovative ways to find talent, to groom them internally and train them to move across roles quicker.