Developing skills and overcoming talent challenges

Friday, 3 January 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The issue of talent challenges and the logical connection between skills was highlighted by IPM Senior Lecturer – HRM Dr. Ajantha Dharmasiri during his keynote address at the National Chamber of Commerce Annual General Meeting held recently. Dr. Dharmasiri began his presentation with a quote by Peter Drucker: ‘There are no good organisations or bad organisations. There are only well managed organisations and ill managed organisations. Following are excerpts: I would like to take you through some of the thoughts I was battling with, some of the observations I have, and some of the challenges and recommendations I think would assist in overcoming those challenges. The topic I have picked is Talent Challenges – in order to talk about the critical fact and I see a logical connection where Wijesinghe stopped is that the three things we require: skills, skills and skills. Let me elaborate further to have a broader term – talent. The road ahead with regard to our discussion; I would like to ask three fundamental questions and try to answer those questions within the next half an hour: 1.What are the key talent challenges we Sri Lankans face?

2.Why are they important to organisations? 3.What should HR professionals do about it? The broad overview The talent is in high demand they call it a talent drought. Talent has always been there in the business, in the CEO forums and in the discussion where people talk about the progress and growth. What is talent? Talent comes from a biblical term, it was a term to exchange trade, it was a commodity that has some value. So even in the current business context it is used, talent is something which has value. Amongst hundreds of different definitions I prefer what Prof. Dave Ulrich had to say in his book HR Transformation – Skills ++ which goes beyond what Wijesinghe said: Talent = Competence x Commitment x Contribution Competence is the skill component and is the know how part. Commitment – the know why part; in other words you are into, you are motivated, passionate and you show that in your action, that is commitment. The third one is where your heart comes in through a proper value framework which is contribution. Let me sum up by saying competence is your head, commitment is your hands and contribution is your heart. So the three H approach towards work – Head, Hands and Heart you need to have all three to have a comprehensive understanding about the term talent. The use of multiplication is purposely used to show that it is not addition. So one has a bearing on the other two terms, if one is missing the entire thing goes down. "Let us all thrive in turbulences. Do not expect a rosy path, there will be turbulence, there is turbulence and the world will always have a bumpy road. Let’s move and let’s achieve our talent challenges confidently. May the journey of tackling talent challenges be a meaningful one and enriching one and be a successful one in adding value to your institution, your industry and to the nation at large" Let’s ask the fundamental questions: Do we have the required competencies in our work places? Do we have the required commitment from the people in our work places? Do we see that they really genuinely contribute to the work places? As quoted by Swami Vivekananda: “Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.” A thought that goes back to the Western world of the 100: zero principal. Give 100% expecting 0% in return. That is all about contribution. Don’t worry about what you get as remuneration or as your perks. But give your best that comes from a deep heart it clearly comes from your value base. Competence, commitment and contribution together we call it talent. This is how I agree with Prof. Ulrich in defining the term talent. Let’s look at this conductor who is attempting to perform symphony at an orchestra, you see the musical instruments which is obviously in good shape but there is something fundamentally lacking. What is it? He does not have the talent; he does not have the players. You might have the best conductor in the world; you might have the best equipment in the world. But without talent, without the players you can’t have the music. What is the parallel we can draw from this to a typical organisation? You might have the best CEO, the best in town and you might have the best financial resources, physical resources, information resources available but if you don’t have the most precious resource the vibrant live resource which is the human resources that contributes to your talent pool. That is my simple approach towards talking about talent challenges. Primarily it is a case of acknowledging the need for talent and also being aware of the case that we need to have talent. With that backdrop let me go in to the challenges. Talent drought There is a huge talent drought across the globe. This has been proven by many researches carried out by consulting organisation on a global scale. When I go to the USA to teach International HR, there is one key issue that comes out. Where is the talent that we require for our expansion? Talent is critical right now, it will be more critical in time to come. ‘Talent Challenges – Top Concerns’ is a KPMG research study in 2012 which asked executives on a worldwide scale: Which of these activities has your company’s HR focused on mostly in past three years and which will be focused on most over the coming three years? From that list the biggest challenge/concern was highlighted as the most critical one, the most vital one came out as – retaining crucial skills and experienced in the business. Talent retention was identified as a critical issue. So talent is of top concern. It is not only for the HR professionals but it is also for the business leaders as well. One CEO said: It is too precious to be left alone to the HR people to handle; we need to get involved. It is a business issue; it is a critical factor in the business agenda. Based on a Deloitte consultation these are the talent shortages that they have identified, they talk about Asia Pacific, America, Middle-east and Europe. Out of the three categorisations based on their survey, they say in the Asia Pacific talent shortages are significantly and relatively higher. They have identified areas where the talent shortages can be acute. Since we are in Asia this makes a lot of sense. South Asia being a humanely rich region, we house 1/5th of the world population and sadly we are only second to the sub-Saharan Africa with regard to poverty. Interestingly Prof. Bhushan from South Asian Institute of Management states that we have the worst form of poverty and the best brains which are co-existent. That is a challenge we have to live with, that is a paradox if you like to call it, that we have to face. So what can be the way forward with regard to talent shortage? Sri Lankan scenario Zooming from the global level to the regional level, let us talk about Sri Lanka. When I talk to many CEOs they lament that they don’t have required talent. Recently a top insurance company CEO said that he is hiring a marketing director from India, because we don’t have that calibre marketing professionals in Sri Lanka. This is only one side of the story. On the other hand when I talk to the academia; the professors, vice chancellors and the university people they say they produce lots and lots of graduates every year. Year on year the numbers go up, but I would sadly call it raw talent. There is a gap between raw talent and required talent. The people who are coming out of the universities are really not ready to take up the distant challenges. They have to go through a longer learning curve. They take a longer time to learn and perhaps unlearn and perhaps to relearn. This is a challenge so I would say this comes back to us, what we can do in order to bridge this gap. Take tourism as a point and as we are aware they have projected by 2016 we might get or we aspire to get 2.5 million tourists and to achieve that we need infrastructure, we need more rooms, we need more facilities and on top of that we need more talent obliviously. When I speak to the CEOs they lament that they don’t have required talent and in fact they see the trend that when they take people they learn and leave to middle-eastern countries for a lucrative career in hospitality. One country manager was seriously contemplating whether we need to bring people from Philippines. They have identified that the Philippines’ could run some of the functions in our hotels. I was wondering why Philippines and I realised the value of it when I was in Manila three days ago. I saw the tremendous talent they demonstrate with regard to hospitality. The way they treat their customers, the extraordinary passion they show in their action and the enthusiasm they demonstrate the way they behave is quite a challenge for us. We have to go a long way from just talking about Sun, Sea and Sand. We need to look at the talent in a whole new perspective. That’s one example from hospitality and when we look at the apparel and we talk about other areas. When we look at SLASSCOM I know in the IT and BPO industry; they have a huge challenge and even though we talk about the higher literacy rate, the ability to speak proper English might be a challenge. So there are gaps, think about your particular work place, think about your industry, think about the business arena you are operating in; are there such gaps? Then we need to work together, you need to work in collaboration with the industry and institution. That is happening very well at the University of Moratuwa, I think similar effort is required in order to foster talent. We know there is a big issue with Arts graduates. Take for an example the Archaeology graduates; every year they produce more than 50 Archaeology graduates. But the Department of Archaeology cannot even accommodate 20. So what will happen to those Archaeology experts, do they go and excavate here and there? Where would they end? Just doing administrative work, just do something mediocre? So those are the things we need to take in to consideration. I would see later on the challenge for HR in talent. Talent challenges are multi-dimensional and would really come out from this gap. Talent challenges and its seven Gs What would organisations do with talent? We need to start with a goal – begin with the end in mind. Your mission, vision and strategy are all in good positioning and purpose. You need to look at why you are doing and what you are doing. If there is no clarity in why you are doing and what you are doing you continue to do the same thing repeatedly. If you do the same thing repeatedly you will get the same old results without a breakthrough. So starting with a goal you need to get the right talent acquisition. Recruitment and selection are hiring challenges. I would say hiring as match making. You need to have task and talent fit - technical suitability; you need to have person and position fit – the psychological suitability; then you need to have individual institution fit – the social cultural suitability. You need to check these things when acquiring talent. Getting the right challenge is the first challenge you need to address. Having obtained the talent, having got them on board the story doesn’t end; you need to give them the right remuneration, rewards and recognition. You need to ensure that you are either reaching the market or above the market standards with your packages. In your recognition schemes you have to ensure that people are happy and you offer them something meaningful. It goes back to the management maxim; what gets rewarded gets managed. Giving is not enough you need to grow them. You need to grow talent, you need to give them training opportunities, and you need to ensure they are developed. Training is to do something and development is to be someone. You have to ensure that they are trained to bridge the current gaps and they are developed for future opportunities. Growing is a very critical area. I see in certain sectors in Sri Lanka training is just taking place without proper emphasis on the effectiveness of training. You have a budget, you allocate the budget and you conduct training and you are very happy to say that training hours per employee – we have covered this number of hours per employee and we trained people. No, that is only the beginning; the story continues to have effectiveness ROI of training. Kirk Patrick on his training module stated that you need to look at the result level not just the reaction level just after the training. You give an evaluation sheet and everyone ticks off excellent in all the areas and presents a feel good sheet. Just give some comfort for the trainers. You have to go to the level of how they implement and how they show results to the organisation. That’s where the grow factor comes. Then comes the glue factor the neglected component in talent handling. Gluing means you need to keep people attached to you and they will not be grabbed by your competitors. I would call this employee engagement, which is a growing concern in the business circles, in the CEO circles. How can I engage my people better? Sometimes they may be physically with you but mentally and emotionally away. They are not putting their hearts in to action. So engagement according to Gallup consulting group has three Ss; say, stay and strive. n They need to say what they mean to say – freedom of expression, opportunity for them to express themselves. That is the beginning of innovation.

Stay – long association not job hopping people, continuation, partnering in progress.
Strive – that’s where the contribution comes, where they add value. They are just not passive passengers they are peak performers.

Then you need to glow talent. That’s all about performance management. Performance and potential comes in to the scene. You’ve got to give them opportunity to perform and then you need to recognise high performance and then you got to look at a talent pipeline, identifying people for future positions. That’s where the glowing part comes, for every critical position we need to identify two to three potential successors. Some people are reluctant to do that because they feel threatened. If I find a successor what would happen to me? So that should be a mature approach of getting the best out of talent, glowing talent. So I would argue that this six would be matched with guarding; proper values, proper policies and practices. For me the best control comes from the control which is based on norms and values. When you have a proper value framework, people are governed by the values and they should adhere to those values and their behaviour should reflect those values. That’s where the core values become very important. When I go to organisations and facilitate brainstorming sessions with the CEO and top management teams and in one of those organisations when I asked them ‘what are your core values?’ they look around and ask each other, core values? The point is that you got to ensure that proper value based controls are in place. These are the seven Gs where each G can be a critical talent challenge. So I would say all these seven Gs comprise of the talent challenges in front of a Sri Lankan entrepreneur, manager, Sri Lankan business leader and particularly a Sri Lankan HR professional. Role of the HR professional Let me zoom in to that particular role perhaps the neglected role – perhaps the not-so-recognised role – HR professionals. I would argue that soul searching is required by this so called unimportant or less recognised, sidelined people who do not serve in boards so much. There are perception issues and there are performance issues. What are the perception issues? What are the performance issues? I conducted a survey of over 100 HR professionals in different industries based on their senior colleagues, head of finance and the CEOs’ commentaries. On one side the HR professional gives his response and on the other side the other functional heads give their response about HR. There were two angles; senior managers’ perception of HR; and HR professionals’ self-assessment. Let’s take a look at the overall finding against Sri Lanka, which is not so healthy. Only 1/5 which is 20%, are regarded as business partners – the senior people said yes he is adding value, he is a vital partner of business discussions. Sadly 4/5 might be an isolated contributor and they might think they are adding value, but not so much as their colleagues. They both are convinced that they are not adding value and they become mere operational players. This is where the problem arises. The custodians of talent are not doing their role well no issue talent goes down the drain. So it is a wakeup call for the HR practitioners and it is a wakeup call for the heads of organisations to work together with their HR colleagues and this is very much confirmed by the recent study carried out by my good friend Hilmy Cader of MTI; in the MTI HR forum last year found 90% of the professionals in Sri Lanka believe that HR is not worthy of being in their boards of directors. It is a big issue because they lack knowledge in business sense and strategic involvement. Having the warmth, having the care, having employee caring is business analytics. We should convert their contribution into tangible measures. That is awfully difficult and challenging. In contrast the other side is that 40% of the HR professionals think that they can’t be in the boards of directors due to misplaced negative perceptions; you see two sides coming very clear. How business people look at HR and how HR looks at them. So the gap is very clear; it is very evident in my doctoral study about South Asia, a region of the four countries – Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. I went to 30 organisations to interview their head of HR, interviewed their CEO and interviewed their head of finance. The head of HR was giving his perspective and the CEO and head of finance gave their perspective. Two things came up with that: 1.Opportunity deficit – The HR person is ready to contribute in facing the talent challenges. But the organisation is not giving enough opportunity. They don’t engage the HR enough. 2.Competency deficit – The organisation give a hand for the HR professional to contribute, but the HR personnel are not ready. I see these scenarios in all four countries. Particularly in Sri Lanka there are so many young HR professionals coming up and they lament that they don’t have enough opportunities. So many CEOs lament that their HR is not doing enough. One common feedback came from the CEOs: my HR knows HR but he doesn’t know business; that is a challenge. We have to dazzle with two Vs and all of us are dealing with these two Vs; value and values. Value – refers to stock value, the value as your net worth. My argument is that you can’t have that value without the plural values. It is the beginning in which it talks about the talent in action. I wrote an article – Producing value by practicing values. You need to practice values in order to produce value; otherwise it is a short term affair. You got to have this proper mix. It is only possible by having a clear understanding. Value is not something you give but something others get. Talent challenge The talent handlers need to bear this in mind it is not about what you give, it’s all about what others get. It is easy to put an advertisement in the newspaper with the job specifications, conduct some interviews and get the best person that applied. But that is not enough; that is based on what you give. But a lot depends on what the customers get. We have to do a lot in this front. Not just making money either by hook or crocks. If you want to have a long term sustained approach, talent is something you cannot miss out on your agenda. Talent challenge therefore divides in two; the current state focused on personnel and strategic administration and we move on to contributor. How can we continuously raise the bar? There are impending forces and there are impeding forces. Let me focus on three impending forces; HR professionals, they go the way forward and competitive measures and as competition is sky rocketing they get the pressure to retain the talent, visionary leaders – when you have visionary leaders, they will work against the impeding forces. Competence between the gaps: sometimes the HR professional is not the person who is suitable for every other thing. Sometimes they are put to the safe zone which is HR – the least damaging area. Sometimes over administration, people administration and not people and talent, low encouragement from the top management. If the top management is only interested in numbers and numbers, there is something wrong. I have participated in board discussions and it becomes bored discussions where all numbers and numbers and numbers. I suggested at least quarterly let’s take up the people matters, let’s take up the people challenges and let’s talk about the talent challenges quarterly in the board meetings. So the board meeting becomes more live and vibrant. Raise the bar My simple expectation is that let the impeding forces overcome the impending forces and the picture would be a rosy one. You have to think how you can help your HR professional to raise the bar, so that we would have a better situation with regard to the talent challenges, getting the grip of the talent challenges and to take appropriate actions. With that let me just leave a thought with you: done is better than well said; not just knowing but by doing. I hope I have inspired you enough to go and do something different. Not just fill your head with ideas and ideas. Let us all thrive in turbulences. Do not expect a rosy path, there will be turbulence, there is turbulence and the world will always have a bumpy road. Let’s move and let’s achieve our talent challenges confidently. May the journey of tackling talent challenges be a meaningful one and enriching one and be a successful one in adding value to your institution, your industry and to the nation at large.