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Everything related to work

Are we getting the talent war right?

We are at war. A talent war. Every technology company claims that they are in it. At least that’s what we read, hear and talk about. Not sure if they are fighting to win or to defend. Not even sure if they know what they are fighting for or against. Yet, no one is reporting loss of revenue or dip in margin due to loss of people on board. Then, is this a no-impact war fought in closed rooms of a corporate? Point to ponder.

From the data, it is clear that people are leaving the companies. They must be taking up something they love a bit more. Or some genius tribe with more than one-job are settling for one they love. Some experts blame it on remote-working-induced-hesitancy. A few more say it is due to jobs becoming hyper-local-by-design. A few more say this is a normal phenomenon of next-wave-of-working. But, it doesn’t seem like war.

It’s true that the pools of people technology companies want on their roles is more or less the same. Is that pool shrinking? Every employment data over last 10 yrs say that only 30% new engineers get jobs. So, there’s a large pool of people. The issue may be the talent. Ability to perform as required and when required!

We associate performance with skill and willingness, among other things. There are several initiatives to skill, up-skill, re-skill. Then, where’s the issue? Are these skilling programs not delivering as expected? One has to check the performance of these programs and people who went through them. The issue then may be experience.

Experience – the art of learning from use of the skill. Unless you practice, how can you gain this? There are on-the-job-training, internships and apprenticeship programs. So, are they not delivering? One has to check if they have any active leadership in these programs. The issue then may be with willingness.

Willingness is a key aspect of performance. The hidden core of talent. Being desperate to get a job may hide this. But not to continue in a job which they are living on for a while. People already working in the company have their own talent nurtured over a period of time. If the issue is retaining people who are leaving within six months of joining, be watchful. Manage the native talent of the company well to safe-guard loss of new ones.

Experts know that talent management should cover selection-performance-retention-retirement aspects. Every company has a lot of people talking about this. Hardly any company has a designated talent manager. One who owns, cares and nurture the talent required for the performance of the company. Find and fix this responsibility. Talent war then might get a different twist.

Companies hire only a fraction of their existing population and retire smaller fraction. Then talent management effort should focus on retention of native talent first. Hire little of lateral talent and nurture fresh talent a-lot-more-than-usual.

If your business is suffering due to attrition or inability to hire new talent, then you may have a deeper issue. Analyse your business, business model and ecosystem. Seek professional help. All else may be fear-of-falling-short or fear-of-losing-out. You can fix them with right talent.

It is important for all businesses to stay-afloat and grow-well. It is the only way to keep-up-the-promises you made to yourself, your people and the world around. That is the talent, worth fighting for!

What job is there tomorrow?

We used to eagerly wait for a guest lecture during college days. It was a great opportunity to connect to the external world, away from books. If the guy happened to be an old-student of the college, it was more interesting. There was a possibility to find a role model, a future employer or at least a mentor!

One of the best I liked was when folks who came, painted the picture of tomorrow and described how we may be playing our part in that picture. When I started taking the stage as a guest/ industry speaker I continued the same. Made sure to study, prepare and then together paint a picture of tomorrow – a projection of what we see through the lens of technology advancement and societal impact.

Today’s session was very intriguing. It was comparing all the pictures I had used in last 30 years of working with technology, projected on a picture depicting next 10-15 years.

Interesting facts I noticed, include:

  1. Across generations, technology advancements have changed the society at large, workforce in particular. Level of intelligence / smartness of people, Wealth of Nations & Individuals, Economic Inclusion & Risk aversion are some indicators of the same.
  2. Interestingly, every step change in technology has created a lot of new jobs and displaced several of them at the same time.
  3. Similarly, it has increased labor productivity while widening skill gap at the same rate! Re-skilling, De-skilling, Portability – all are mainstream HR actions today. Average relevant experience within teams in any stream of work is continuously decreasing. Performance appraisals disappearing, attrition getting new definition, employee engagement is short-term focused.
  4. In almost every country, several highly-in-demand jobs never existed 5-10 years ago. Extending this further, may be over 65% of kids joining school now, may be working in jobs that are not yet defined!

In the current context, projecting and showing future job picture is daunting. But this is a routine challenge for Governments, Industries and Academia. Tracking trends and relating them back to how they impact in short, medium and long-term is critical. Over years, technology is helping here too. The paradoxical nature of technology advancement and societal good is best pivoted around the basic need of employment. Having a tool / dashboard, is very neat. Here is one such wonderful attempt: MyNextMove

Irrespective of a tool, mentor or own guess-work, it is important to stay current and close to changes relevant to our jobs. Investing in “personal” technology upgrades as routinely as that of your next OS upgrade for the mobile phone or computer, is very critical. After sometime, no one will support that, at any cost!

One simple strategy that works for your business, works for you too…

Be close, relevant and significant contributor in your field of work!

 

What to do when you feel stuck?

Mentoring is based on the premise that there’s at least one useful, bridgeable gap of experience or expertise between the two people in the relationship. With this comes the responsibility of making sure that the progress is multiple than normal course of journey. But, when there’s progress, it becomes that much difficult to show whether it was truly due to mentoring or was it natural if you are on the path of success.

True test of mentoring comes, when we are stuck.

It happens all the time with open roundtables. We neither have a background of the founder, nor fully aware of their current business situation. Last week, we had an interesting case – a seasoned engineer in his early fifties, ventured into a new business with a set of three friends from his earlier team. All are familiar to each other – their capabilities, behaviour and work culture. They came with their issue – unable to take their product to field trial. With signed up customers, lined up distributors and great review of the product by experts, there was nothing that seemed stopped them. But they were feeling stuck.

Careful examination of their status and diligent observation of their readiness threw open the most important issue – it was just that fear of failure wading in their minds. They had managed large businesses for bigger corporates and never launched anything of their own craft any time before. They wanted just an assurance from someone who had successfully failed in new ventures and still managed to sail through to upstream. A small push from inside.

Reminded of the saying “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way” that drove many managers to think same, but act differently to get better results.

Here, getting out of their own way was very important.

When we feel stuck, it is mostly the case – We should watch and just get out of our own way. Progress follows…