Reskill to Retain

Rapid changes in technology and the demands of the markets result in the need
for IT professionals to continuously upgrade their skills. In fact, the ‘half-life’
of a software engineer is said to be 18 months! Even for companies that go to
great lengths to hire the best available talent, retaining these people and
maintaining their ‘salability’ is a challenge. This is best done by re-skilling
employees.

On an average, an IT professional in India currently receives 40 hours of
training per calendar year. In large corporations, formal training averages 80
hours per year, with another 40 hours of mentoring and individual coaching to
refine current skills. The belief is that increased investment in resources,
including training for their best performers, results in increased productivity.

The next few years will see an expansion in the training philosophy adopted
by companies. The focus would be on enabling IT employees to broadly select the
skills to refine, improve, and receive reimbursement for. The trend is to let
high performers focus on what they do best for the firm and enable them to
innovate within their range of talents and that is what re-skilling is all
about.

At
Intelligroup, an ERP focussed IT company based in Hyderabad, the average number
of hours of training given to each employee during the year is 24 man-hours.
Campus recruits and employees with no ERP experience go though an intensive
training program. The duration of these programs range between 3-9 months.
"All employees go though training in technical, process and soft skills.
The traditional classroom approach, on the job training, conferences and
seminars are some of the methodologies adopted," says, MDS Bosco, COO, at
Intelligroup. Firms will continue to tighten their talent definitions, aligning
job descriptions with corporate missions, visions, and values. As a result, few
employees will receive re-skilling benefits within the first year of employment.

6-POINT AGENDA Reskill to Retain Re-skilling employees should be an ongoing process Re-skilling keeps top performers cognizant of new tools available in the market Let high performers focus on what they do best for the firm Conduct quarterly follow-ups with employees to accelerate skill development. One-on-one mentoring accelerates total personality development, especially with team leaders Training should avoid unrealistic expectations like creating superheroes or replicas of the boss

Sierra Optima, another Hyderabad based company focussing on application
networks has a target of 10 days of training per employee every year including
training in managerial skills, soft/personal skills, technical and quality
systems. "At Sierra there is a strong focus on client interface and account
management in addition to the requisite technical skills. We have 226 employees
of which about 12—15% are currently overseas. We ensure that all employees
develop those skills," says, Sanjay Khendry, vice president, Business
Development at Sierra Optima.

The war for talent continues as IT continues to play a strategic role in
business. Organizations hire for talent and nurture it to manage increasing
levels of ambiguity, risk, technical complexity, and organizational politics.

As opposed to just hiring smart people, experienced CIOs classify talent
according to specific skills required for success on the IT front, in addition
to the typical human resources activities of creating proper job descriptions,
educational prerequisites, experience requirements, and just-in-time
opportunities to learn key re-skilling best practices.

"We have adopted the methodology of reskilling our employees on an
ongoing basis. During the lean period for the ERP market in 1999-2000, our
employees were trained on JAVA and Internet related technologies. Currently the
employees trained on Internet technologies are being re-skilled in ERP related
areas," explains Bosco.

For Intelligroup, the average investment per year for both internal and
external training (employees sponsored for training conducted by external
institutions/faculty and conferences, seminars) is about Rs 30 lakh.

Smart organizations measure the proficiency of their talent against both
internal and external standards across hard and soft skills. Market or
competitive intelligence provides a skill baseline that is refined, taking into
consideration industry and organizational maturity (eg, CMM, Six Sigma), and
customer norms. At a time when the IT industry is trying to resurrect itself,
mature organizations are adding soft-skill requirements such as communication,
teamwork, and initiative to the hard-core technical skills required for
positions like that of a software engineer, database administrator and
architect.

Says Sanjay Khendry, "Apart from IT skill-sets, we groom employees on
social etiquette, business protocol, time management, inter-personal
communications, public speaking and presentations, how to conduct meetings and
record minutes, business correspondence and stress management."

Skill development

IT managers create skill development plans for each employee, including
themselves. Structured organizations divide their employees into A, B and C
level players with specific orientation (eg executive, management, technical,
and administrative tracks).

"We divide newly recruited employees into two categories - campus
recruits and employees with industry experience but no ERP experience. For
campus recruits, we plan an intensive 6-9 month training program and the
experienced candidates go through a 3+month training program within the
company," Bosco adds.

High performers (A-level players) with a good track record receive increased
capital to refine skills and increased latitude to enhance organizational
performance and innovation. Erratic high performers or average performers
(B-level players) receive biweekly management coaching to stabilize and
gradually increase performance to consistently higher levels. Subsequently,
mediocre or poorly performers (C-level players) are managed out.

Because different situations may require different skills, knowledgeable CIOs
ensure A-level performers know all the advanced techniques and skills required
for their current and future positions. Re-skilling keeps top performers
cognizant of all tools in their toolkits. Good IT managers conduct quarterly
follow-ups with employees to accelerate skill development.

Personality measures

World-class organizations holistically measure top-notch employees to
include personality, emotion, and aptitude. Many firms are not satisfied with
any type of high performer, because top performers can have fatal flaws.
Personality flaws that run counter to an organization’s culture are managed to
convergence (to harmonize with group culture), or managed out. Experienced CIOs
examine the root causes and apply organizational development techniques to
rapidly evolve behavior to acceptable norms. Experienced firms practice
one-on-one mentoring to accelerate total personality development, especially
with IT leaders.

"We provide training through instructor lead programs, CBTs, video
training films, on job as well as distance learning (leveraging the web). In
addition, we also have special longer term/part time training sessions like the
Sierra Leadership Program where people are identified and groomed in a host of
soft skills to take up the next level of leadership within the
organization,"says Khendry.

Because motivated and talented people are 4x more productive than average
employees, IT leadership teams purposefully strategize to increase
organizational talent. They use proactive human capital management indicators;
avoid unrealistic expectations (employees must become superheroes) and ‘be
like me’ bias (employees should be nearly the same, friends, or family); and
they purposefully build a human capital management center of excellence to
recruit, retain, and reskill talent.

Bottomline: Reskilling is critical in the management, development, and
utilization of a corporation’s greatest asset–its people.

Zia Askari/Cyber News Service