Recruiting heads should swear by these tenets before hiring

“Hire for attitude, train for skill…” this has been a core strategy for several talent management think tanks of late. Is it asking too much to hire for both? Why not hire for attitude, skill and cost? These are questions that have started emerging in select HR circles and point towards a need to change the way we view talent.

The age old “build vs. buy” debate has somewhat blindsided us into thinking there are no other options.

Traditional wisdom has always dictated that building was a better and more sustainable option than buying talent from the market. In today’s VUCA environment; does this still hold good…?

With rapid evolution of technology, the only undeniable reality that exists today is disruption.

Traditional ways of doing business are fast being replaced using digital fundamentals of Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud that ensure fast adoption, maximization of reach and re-imagination of how we pay for goods and services.

Given this landscape, enterprises are being compelled to reimagine not just business fundamentals, but talent management principles. Talent strategy is no longer driven just by long term value drivers, but by the need to ensure a more immediate view to business growth and stability.

The talent dynamic in the country is set to change over the next couple of years especially due to Gen Y and Gen Z entering the workforce and a number of skilled individuals dropping out of active employment to become entrepreneurs. Enterprises are therefore being pushed to rethink their talent fitment & deployment strategies in the face of rapidly changing business and talent landscape.

The concept of “fitment” is no longer just a compensation concept but a comprehensive compatibility measure for an individual’s fit into an organization. Traditional assumptions need to be dispelled with to realize that this concept is not restricted to external talent.

The crux of this change would be to look at fast changing business needs in a VUCA environment and commensurate talent availability and fitment from several sources (Build/Buy/Borrow). What’s essential in all this is “timing” and deployment of the right kind of tools to ascertain fitment. With dynamic talent fitment firmly at its center, an overarching talent strategy can lend significant competitive advantage to a firm.

However, alignment of enabling talent infrastructure like Learning, Performance Management, Career Management and programs & policies is essential to the success of this model

For this model to be a success, HR outfits need to adopt the following 5 tenets:

1. Hire Smart: Firms would need to deploy unified technical, behavioral and compensation fitment assessment platforms to evaluate suitable candidates faster and to improve hit rates.
2. Skill based pay: With the proliferation of skills, firms can no longer follow grade based approaches to compensation. Skill cost understanding is imperative both from a market as well as a people deployment cost standpoint.
3. Equip workforce: Career platforms and succession plans need to be dynamic and deployed through an agile platform to ensure speed of talent identification to tackle rapid change
4. Rapid training & reskilling: With rapid entry and exit of skills & functions, in order to develop competitive advantage firms need to adopt technology enabled agile, gamified learning platforms.
5. Use of Technology: Every aspect of an employee lifecycle today can be enhanced and optimized for the current environment using a strong technology backbone. E.g.
   1. Hiring – NLP fueled search and cloud based Technical, Behavioral and Comp Fitment platforms to improve hiring efficiency and ensure better talent fit & retention
   2. On-boarding & Learning – Cloud based LMS with internal social network capability that would help create communities of learning.
   3. Performance Management – Gamified PMS created through intuitive platforms that help track and manage performance on a real-time basis
   4. Career Management – Gamified career management systems that help individuals chart out their own careers and learning at their own pace
   5. Total Rewards – Fully integrated workforce analytics and rewards systems

Some would claim all these tenets are a thing of the future, while some others would claim that they have already started using them…however, one truth stands out…these tenets are necessary in the future we’re staring into. India as a country is now prepared for a higher form of talent management and market leaders would soon be decided basis who can adopt these tenets faster than others.

(This article is authored by Abhishek Sen, Director, Practice Head, Talent and Performance, Aon Hewitt)

(Image: Thinkstock)