The Pull of Brand & Value Proposition
New factors have emerged to ensure the right talent is engaged and it is retained:
The common struggle f or a ny enterprise is to get the right talent and often HR executives and even CEOs find this task an onerous one. It is imperative that a talented, properly trained and motivated workforce should be there in order to achieve operational excellence, drive innovation and gain customer confidence.
As the competition for talent rages on, often HR managers and sometimes even CEOs tend to take decisions that may prove wrong in the long run. In today’s environment they have to - and they have started to - think outside of the box. Today it is question of building talent and not just acquiring it. And acquiring talent that fits the culture of the organization,
PACKAGENOTACONSIDERATION
Gayatri Balaji of Nanobi reminds one that money or pay package is never the reason that somebody either joins an organization or leaves one. It is simply an excuse to rationalize the decision, she says, adding: “If the organization is unable to create a learning, challenging environment for its people, neither can it attract good people or retain them.”
Anuj Gupta of Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic points out that transitioning a human centric function to a completely technology dependent and highly responsive function was significantly demanding during covid. However, he says in the case of his company, its exceptional brand values paved the way for building a structured approach to ensure an inclusive and flexible organizational culture to onboard new talent. “We faced the unavailability of right talent with the right skills at customer location. Therefore, we started on-the-job trainings for the employees to fulfil the immediate needs of our customers,” he says.
STARS CAN DEMORALIZE
The advice of Vinod Govindan of Oceans is never focus on star performers. “My lesson is while stars are good in the short run, in the long run they can demoralize the organization. Most talents are not star material; they are just hard-working people who have dreams. I have always failed when I focused on a few stars to help me achieve goals. It demoralizes the larger parts of the organization and brings down the gains made by the stars. Organizations that focus on stars will struggle to get good fresh talent easily, because a star-based atmosphere is more often than not, a toxic one,” says he.
It is necessary to identify early whether the talent has the resilience and true interest in working on the ‘new normal’, apart from good coding skills. feels Anand Awasthi of Avhan Technologies. He says most people tend to want predictable, comfortable\cushy jobs, even though they initially say that they are attracted by the ‘new’ technology and want to work on it as well as develop themselves.
“Accepting, and then bypassing, the practicalities and difficulties of ‘using as well as bending’ their previous understanding\ knowledge or one may call it ‘unlearning’, is the real skill that we watch and search for,” he asserts.
Ashwin Chawwla of Escrow Play has this to say: “Well, if you have hunch for the right candidate, move mountains to have him onboarded. Look beyond terms.”
Balaji Vishwanathan OF Expleo specifically speaks about covid times and says the increase in demand, while it was expected in Q4 2020, the surge and quantum was a surprise for reasons that were difficult to comprehend. However, he says, the fight for talent was real and the difficult lesson that his organization learnt is that to stick by the principles is very hard when one sees the costs nearly doubling, ethics and scrupulousness were hard to see with no-shows on the date of joining or not showing up within the first 10 days of joining etc.
“It was a challenge to keep the selected candidates warm, more than offer an attraction. The offer to join ratio was going down from the traditional 85-90% to ~60%. It is candidate-driven market today and they make the choices at any stage, as we saw quite a few who had resigned from their previous jobs seeing the demand and were confident of drawing a good joining bonus, etc as well,” says he.
Identifying the right employee for the positions, negotiating on notice periods and meeting salary expectations are core according to Chirag Patel of Acute. “Not everybody is looking for changes in these unprecedented times,” he avers.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Govind Ramamurthy of eScan believes that with time the mindset of candidates has changed a lot. Earlier, he says, candidates who we had deemed to be talented would happily join an organization by understanding what kind of an opportunity they are being presented with. “However, this generation is a lot different. They compare the perks that come with the opportunity and seek work-life balance which seems to be of high priority in this age,” says he.
“We are going through a tectonic shift in the organizations’ assumptions and mindset about the need for people to work from designated workplaces (offices) and requiring people to relocate,” opines Ganesh Jivani of Matrix Telecom.
He points out to the sudden and wide acceptance of remote working and WFH, which he says, has opened new avenues for people living in cities and this is increasing competition in attracting talent. “This is equivalent to a remote eCommerce company competing with retail outlets in Vadodara or Varanasi or Visakhapatnam,” says he.
Rohi t Mathur o f Exponent i a highlights the f ac t that different candidates have different aspirations and some get kicked by opportunity to work on hot tech while some want to build something big while there could be some who would want to manage a large team and so on. “It’s important to align aspirations to the role,” he stresses.
BRAND IS A FACTOR
Pramod Sharda of Icewarp recalls the
time his company just launched its operations in India and was not known as a brand. “So, when you come to be known and has created that brand presence and seeing the difference, the best of talents would want to join you to enhance their careers,” says he.
Alpharithm’s Srikumar Kumar reads the minds of the job aspirants: “Most junior roles are fulfilled based on meeting with the salary expectations and brand value. They generally compare the benefits of joining an SME organization as opposed to a large multinational. They want to see if we are able to pay them salaries on time every month. So, we are working on changing our marketing messages on social media platforms to ensure the brand value and commitment towards employees stand out,” he says.
Vijender Yadav of Accops strongly believes that brand plays an essential part in decision-making by prospective candidates. Startups usually face this major challenge while competing with bigger known names in attracting talent, leading to quality talent at times being sceptical about applying, joining, etc, he says.
SOCIAL MEDIA, ONLINE PRESENCE
Secondly, he says, in today’s world, social media and internet presence is a key medium to gather information. “Prospective employees often consider online reviews of the company as an important parameter while applying for jobs. Therefore, companies must invest in having a strong online presence such that it makes it easier for organizations like ours to attract good talent,” he suggests.
As attracting the necessary talent is directly linked to an enterprise’s success, the imperative for all forward-looking organizations is to identify areas of improvement in the workplace, enhancing the value proposition and ensuring that the new hires settle down and grow in their career. This is the mantra for getting in and retaining the right talent.