Big fish eat small fish.’ In this era of mergers and acquisitions, this age old adage has a profound relevance. Growth for scale is a survival imperative for the enterprise in the globalized economy. It is no more a choice.

In today’s world of online market places, 81 per cent of the Indian CEO’s cite the lack of ‘Talent Availability’ as their biggest roadblock to growth. According to the latest Talent Shortage Survey conducted by the ManpowerGroup™, the skilled workers are the most difficult to find. Individual contributors like sales representatives, engineers, technicians and drivers are the next on the list of jobs hardest to fill globally, and over 35 per cent are unable to even get the adequate applications.

Today, ‘Talentism’ is the new capitalism. The dynamics of the talent pool itself are evolving into greater complexity as attracting, engaging and retaining employees, specifically ‘High Potential Employees’, has been challenging. Also, the socio-emotional make-up of the newer generation workforce is significantly different. The talent of today is looking for a ‘meaningful career’ and the tangent has shifted to ‘living a life’ and in the process make some money. The top talent today is not looking at a company to provide a “job for life” but rather a “career for me.” This translates into how an individual’s interests aligns with the organizations goals and how they can work together to meet the shared objectives while deepening and broadening the individual’s skills and capability.

So what is it that a contemporary organization can do to be able to get the required talent for scale?  

A compelling ‘Career Value Proposition’: Organizations today need to move away from the traditional paradigm of ‘Employee Value Proposition.’ Organizations today need to create an eco-system that provides opportunity for growth by experimentation and exposure.

Organizational agility: Organizational systems, processes and policies have to be very agile. We have entered into the age of ‘one size fits one’. In order to ensure that an organization is able to bring in the required talent for scale, it will need to look beyond the current idea of flexi-working. We, at Right Management, have worked with organizations to win the talent war by bringing enhanced agility by the way of:

• Task-based role definitions

• Appreciation and leveraging of unique competencies in individuals

• Outcome-based, technology-enabled work delivery models

• Customized compensation plans

• Dynamic organizational structures and career paths

• Individual specific learning and development paths  

HCM technology enablement: The state-of-the-art HCM technology is clearly evolving as the most critical lever for talent attraction, engagement and retention. Collective intelligence through collaborating and interacting is the new norm. ‘Social’ has fast become the central tenet for this shift. Organizations will need to rethink their approach toward technology to ensure ‘social’ forms that very framework that underpins all existing HR processes.

Culture of engagement: Today, employee engagement is becoming increasingly complex. Organizational leaders need to reorient themselves toward the contemporary ways of engagement and connect with individuals at their place and their language.

Talent is the fundamental basis of organizational growth and an unforeseen challenge. Organizations need to look beyond the traditional paradigms to solve this very non-traditional problem to scale the businesses to the aspired heights.