Growth and talent are directly related

There is no ambiguity that in the future business sustenance will be a factor of growth. Companies that will fail to grow will fail to sustain their business. Many successful brands failed to prepare themselves for change in business conditions and new innovations and relied too heavily on their product brands to drive their businesses. While a consumer brand may be the source of revenue and profitability presently, an organization needs to continue its investments in talent who can prepare the brand for the future. The relationship between growth and talent is not too difficult to imagine. Growth and talent are directly related, whether it is growth in numbers or growth in terms of new product and business creation. It would not be unfair to say that the ability of an organization to attract talent will be equally or more important than the ability to attract customers.

Growth of the organization is directly proportional to the quality of organizational talent. It is the era of re-imagining, re-inventing and simplifying. This dimension is timeless only things the parameters of talent will keep evolving. We would need smart talent that can:-

• Harness future tastes and preferences of our customers as well as non-customers
• Reimagine the applications of technology in a whole new way

The capability to grow depends a lot on how an organization is able to simplify talent management. Companies and consumer brands will rely on talent who are able to harness the taste of the customer. Talent will be at the core of reimagining and reinventing growth of future business corporations. For example, there could be opportunities where a particular technology in the pharmaceutical industry can be used for the aerospace industry. What future business corporations need is the ability to understand these cross pollination opportunities. Talent management, consecutively, has to evolve and become more flexible.

Talent managers of the future should be able to learn from industry level challenges and hence, combine solutions from multiple industries to drive growth. Talent managers will require a multi-disciplinary approach and look to combine solutions from other industries and geographies. It will be worthwhile for a talent manager to build the brand development skills to understand and implement from other industries.

Organizations, which invested in talent brands early on, are beginning to see the market rewarding their efforts back. Some of these rewards are by way of more revenue and higher profitability. These talent brands are the ones who have developed the reputation of being employee friendly, and have invested both in internal and external branding. A key indicator of the changing market sentiment is the recent surge in surveys and rankings aimed to promote a positive image of an employer. Besides that, several consulting organizations and consulting services have sprouted in the market in recent times indicating that an increasing number of companies are trying to build their talent brand.

The consumer’s brands (products/services) are viewed as an outcome of an organization’s business and talent practices. The world implicitly recognizes the people behind such aspirational products and services. People search for their personal aspirations in that culture. You want to be part of that culture. Consumer Brand is people’s external perspective of a brand, which can create expectations and attract talent.

People want to know what kind of opportunities an organization can provide in shaping up their careers. After academic career, the biggest learning happens on the job. So whether organizations have a strategy around, a structure to anchor learning and growth, how many leaders have an organization produced; are there role models – all these aspects create a pull for the talent – Freshers or Lateral.

Consumer brand is primarily created by financial parameters as well Talent benchmarks. So, the organizations need to execute planned investments in building talent practices, thought leaders and role models.

Companies that lag behind as employer brands typically fail to demonstrate an architecture and vision for the brand. What will differentiate a successful brand from the others will be its ability to demonstrate future vision. For example, with the drone delivery experiments, Amazon wanted to emphasize its image of its innovation centric and futuristic brand. Several other examples such as Elon Musk and Tesla stand testimony to the fact that innovation and futuristic vision contribute strongly to a brand.

Another testimony of a strong brand is its ability to project itself as an agile organization. A company should endeavour to project itself as one that embraces new technology and tools. A technology savvy company automatically projects an image in the mind of a common observer as that of a highly aspirational place to work.

What corporations need is smart talent who can understand and harness the taste of the consumer. A talent brand, therefore, becomes extremely important in the coming times.

As told to Vikram Choudhury