Old Methods Too Soon Become Obsolete

Bangalore, January 29, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Candidates with good leadership skills are extremely scarce in the market as organisations are competing with one another to recruit them

Guruvayurappan PV works for a leading healthcare KPO, specialising in offshore healthcare management services in revenue cycle management, with offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Trichy and Manila. A specialist in organisational development and behaviour, he has launched key change management initiatives in a 25-year career in the HR business. Here, he explains how to create a talent pool, develop leadership pool, create leaders through proper promotion and to strike a culture and work-life balance. Excerpts:

What are the most significant trends you see on the HR front, across sectors and in the healthcare industry, in particular?

2015 was an exciting year for many industries. The healthcare industry, in particular, witnessed high growth, which lead to an increase in hiring. In 2016, the role of HR seems to be poised for greater partnership with other internal teams, keeping the dynamic workforce gainfully engaged, developing exciting career enhancement plans for employees and retaining employees.

Here are some of the focus areas:

Creating talent pool: Skill deficiency has been one of the key contributing factors towards losses faced by organisations. The quality of work, customer satisfaction and addition of new businesses are also dependent on the available talent. We, at Omega, have made conscious efforts in creating a talent pool for deficient profiles.

Developing leadership pool: Candidates with good leadership skills are extremely scarce in the market as organisations are competing with one another to recruit them. Moreover, high caliber talent comes at a very high price point. With this in mind, we nurture and build leadership talent internally through a competency framework. This process continues to help us retain good talent by boosting the morale of employees. 

Increased focus on culture-balance: Organisations will increasingly look at leveraging the ‘culture of the organisation’ as a differentiator in employer branding efforts. As we continue to hire candidates with diverse backgrounds from across the country, our on-boarding and engagement platforms focus on the existing corporate culture, thereby improving employee engagement. Our leaders across levels have a sound understanding of our company’s culture and they strengthen the company’s efforts in engaging and empowering team members. Through our competency framework, we help our associates plan their careers and prepare to take on future roles, besides providing them with the support they need to perform better. We have programmes like ‘first time leader and ‘lead the leader’ to build the leadership pipeline for the organisation.

Do you think Indian firms are ready or getting ready for future transition?

Globally, the way businesses operate has transformed drastically in the last few years and that applies to Indian companies as well. With newer technologies taking centre stage, the HR function has become all the more complex. Many roles and job titles of tomorrow will definitely undergo drastic changes. Disruptive innovations are creating new industries and business models and old ones are becoming obsolete. Nowadays, different generations work together combining their skills and expertise. The workforce has become more diverse and people work longer with ‘continuous learning’ at the core. Thus traditional career models may soon be a thing of the past.

As we step into 2016, Indian organisations are preparing themselves to attract and create a quality talent pool with retention strategies for the long run. 

How are you introducing innovation in the field of learning and development of employees?

Today, businesses that fail to revamp their learning management solutions, often struggle with productivity and growth. Leading enterprises are gradually abandoning traditional methods of learning in favour of more effective solutions—often involving technology and innovation. Taking this into account, we at Omega have introduced ‘Value Innovation’ as one of the competencies for leaders where they are also trained on ‘innovation modules’. We have introduced ‘social learning’ and ‘knowledge management’ as a tool for ‘learning from the peers’ and others. We have also introduced additional initiatives internally for our employees, like mobile-based learning, with snippets of small videos published during weekends to make the workplace more productive, creative and delightful.

Do you use social media to attract talent, how much and in what way?

Social media is a very effective recruitment tool to target and attract the right talent for organisations and to fill positions at a fast rate. We also leverage our social medial posts and blogs to target the right fit, as they act as one of the tools in our ‘employer branding’ exercise. Social media tools come in handy for hiring talent with niche skill sets and for mid-level positions.

How do you assess employees’ potential before hiring and once they are on the roll?

With the hike in internet penetration, technology and competency-based selection processes play a key role in assessing candidates. In addition to deploying traditional methods, we also use online tools, video interviewing and psychometric tools that help in assessing candidate competencies required for the role. However, talent hired from the market may not perform at full potential in the new assignment during their initial tenure. The factors behind this gap in performance may depend upon various parameters, including cultural fitment and relocation. To solve this, a competency-based skill-gap analysis would help build bridges and sometimes the right training is a good solution.