Winning the War for Talent

Talent wars shall be fought even more fiercely in the times to come. Every sector faces a shortage of the right kind of talent. ‘According to the survey, 67% of employers in India are struggling to fill jobs, second only to Japan, where 80% employers reported struggling to fill positions. The India figure is almost double of the global average, which stood at 34%. The survey further revealed that Indian employers are experiencing difficulty filling critical positions (talent) within their organisations.’ ‘Talent scarcity in India has worsened, as just a year ago, India was ranked 29th among 36 countries surveyed, when 16 per cent of employers faced difficulty to fill jobs.’

Talent wars have also meant that poaching of talent has become a common practice. Hence organizations have two fold challenge – one to see that they can create talent-pipelines in the organization but before that they should be able to hunt their own talent before the external head-hunter hunts them and hands then over to some other beneficiary.

Cognizant recently paid 200% bonus to its top performers. The average bonus payout for its employees - 137,700 globally - for the year ended December 2011 was above 150%. This is in sync with the growth of the company. ‘In 2010, Cognizant grew its revenues by 40%; in 2011, it grew its revenues by 33.3 %. In both the years, Cognizant's revenues grew 10-15% higher than what industry body Nasscom projected for the industry.’

Essar Group has developed ‘Next Moves’ – an internal head-hunting initiative to help employees with premium talent get what they deserve. An employee has to complete 2 years of his service in the company to be eligible for ‘Next Moves’. ICICI Bank and Aditya Birla group have also reportedly started similar initiatives, although they have not branded the exercise. Microsoft India employees can seamlessly transfer among the six business groups if they feel that they are stagnating in their current job. Companies like Accenture, L'Oreal India, also allow their people to switch to completely different kinds of roles.

Clearly, the efforts of all these companies, goes beyond the clichéd talent management. Talent engagement has instead replaced the former. Engaging a talent strongly to an organization by creating ways and means to make their stay productive and meaningful, both for the individual as well as for the organization has become an imperative.