Attract. Retain. Develop. Deploy

Necessity is the mother of invention. While Indian businesses (particularly

IT & ITeS) have been growing at a healthy pace, the organizations have had

to grapple with serious issues related to talent acquisition, engagement, and

development. With so many of these issues being caused by macro-level

developments (e.g. shortage of requisite talent, attrition), organizations have

had to accept things that are not in their direct control. Hence, on an ongoing

basis, organizations innovate-to meet the talent challenges head-on. This is

reflected in agile recruitment methods such as referrals; work-life balance

initiatives such as the Concierge services; and rapid training through

e-Learning.

As elucidated in Mckinsey's 'War for Talent', most Indian IT and ITeS

companies do not suffer from a lack of a 'Talent Mindset'. Almost all the

CEOs and HR heads that we talk to, recognize the importance of human capital in

building and sustaining their knowledge organizations.

Key Challenges



Their challenges, however, are in shifting from reactive ad-hoc steps in

talent innovation to an integrated and proactive strategy-to help answer the

questions of the hour:

• How do we continuously enhance our talent-based competitive advantage?
• How do we build an agile talent acquisition and retention engine?
• How do we permeate the talent mindset to every employee (and not just with
  
  the HR or senior management)?

To help find answers to these questions, always quick to adapt to global

standards, many Indian IT and ITeS companies have approached the people

practices contained in the People Capability Maturity Model from the Software

Engineering Institute (People CMM).

The Solution



The People-CMM is a framework of global best practices that enhance an

organization's capability to attract, retain, develop, and deploy talent.

Based on research, the model presents these practices in an integrated manner,

so that the implementing organization inherits a scientific system in which to

deploy the same.

At the most fundamental level, the People CMM is an organizational change

model.

It is designed on the premise that improved people practices will not survive

unless an organization's behavior changes to support them.

The People CMM consists of five maturity levels, or evolutionary stages,

through which an organization's people practices and processes evolve. At each

maturity level, a new system of practices is overlaid on those implemented at

earlier levels. Each overlay of practices raises the level of sophistication

through which the organization develops its workforce.

The more mature an organization, the greater its capability for attracting,

developing, and retaining the talent it needs to execute its business.

Over 3/4ths of the world's People CMM Level 5 (the highest Maturity Level

in the model), are Indian companies! But unlike their successes with other

process model such as the CMM Integrated, this hold specials significance as

most of these companies have implemented the People-CMM based on their intrinsic

needs-and not because it was an explicit client requirement (eg in an RFP).

In Future...



Looking ahead in this talent strategy space

ala People CMM-mode, there's still room for further introspection and

system overhaul. The successes, so far have been limited in their organizational

and industry reach. Some key imperatives for the future:

• Widespread understanding of the fact that high People CMM maturity maps
  
  directly to a successful talent strategy, and its execution.
• Organizations that have already attained high maturity status need to
  
  continuously invest in sustaining the same. Pressures of growth and
  
  competition for talent can sometimes make us de-focus on the very driver of
  
  success.
• The high maturity capability needs to be attained by so many more IT and
  
  ITeS companies. Many of them are on this journey-they need to stay
  
  'invested' to reap high returns.
• India's prowess surely is not restricted to IT and ITeS. As other
  
  industries mature and come in the global/domestic limelight, they'll have
  
  to face similar talent strategy challenges. Why not start early? So,
  
  because, at the onset of next year's summer, we'd like to look back with
  
  pride and say: “In 2006, the pieces of our talent strategy came together
  
  rather well”.

Ajay Batra, consulting partner,

QAI, is an SEI authorized lead appraiser for People CMM.



He is Asia's first Software CMM and PCMM Lead Assessor. He spearheads the QAI
practice of Human Capital Management.



mail@dqindia.com