Article: Top 12 trends: Talent Redefined - Ram Kumar

Strategic HR

Top 12 trends: Talent Redefined - Ram Kumar

Ram Kumar - Executive Director, ICICI Bank
Top 12 trends: Talent Redefined - Ram Kumar

The new definition of talent

Indian companies have taken the western approach to define talent. Talent is only attributed to people who come out of the Ivy League of schools. But the numbers are insufficient for the requirement of the Indian supply chain of talent. Therefore, companies are developing a "home grown" approach to identify talent in non-ivy league areas and schools. For example, Goldman can afford to continue with the traditional approach as they might hire in small numbers but an ABG or ICICI has to hire in thousands eventually giving rise to the need to be creative in the recruitment strategy. Companies that go beyond the obsession of B-schools and look at talent in a non-conventional way and non-conventional areas will be able to use that as a competitive advantage.

Companies building capabilities in education to create supply chain of talent

The home grown model that started long back in the 60s or 70s by companies likes Sail, SBI, NTPC, created internal capabilities to train people to hire as part of the supply chain. Companies will build these capabilities, as the war for talent increases and will look at creative ways to ensure that wages are not increasing; also they will not deplete talent pools because companies are becoming parasites and are stealing candidates from their competition.

Retention of talent and segmentation to optimize resources

Attrition is natural in any high growth economy and fighting and aiming to achieve single digit attrition is not a possibility. What companies will need to focus on, would be to identify the 10 to 20 percent of the population that they want to engage and differentiate. They would need to target single digit attrition for their segmented group only. It is like any portfolio manager, more capital is allocated to the investments that give more ROI. Similarly, with talent, one may allocate 40 percent of the investment on 20 percent of the people. These are the laws of nature.
 

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Topics: Strategic HR, #ExpertViews

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