We prioritize the right mix of in-demand skills over specific degrees: Head of HR, IBM

In a conversation with DQ, Thirukkumaran (Thiru) Nagarajan, Vice President & Head of HR, IBM India/South Asia talks about talent transformation, issue of skilling and reskilling and the new kind of opportunities coming up.

How are you handling the issue of talent transformation?

While talent transformation is very broad, two areas of focus has been employee engagement and skilling of our employees for the future. At IBM, we believe that employee engagement is the foundation of transformational change. Our employees believe in IBM’s future because they are helping to build it. What is most interesting is that we are co-creating an evolved culture with our employees, using data to ensure our transformation is data-led. It is important to us to stay in conversation with IBMers so we remain in touch with what matters to them the most.

Our belief is that to grow our business, it requires skills, performance development and careers to be interconnected. We have been successful in putting skills at the centre, understanding what we need to remain market leaders and what our clients value most. We structured our talent programs and practices to prioritize skills, established transparent career development frameworks, and tied it to our employees’ career aspirations. In this way, we were able to transform our workforce’s skills to become relevant for the future. We have also found that another way to be effective is to lead with purpose and culture. This is yielding powerful and sustainable outcomes. It’s what motivates our employees to do their best work and enable everyone to bring their whole selves to work. As we focus on leading in hybrid cloud and AI, IBMers are co-creating an evolved culture in four key areas of growth, innovation, inclusion, and feedback.

What about the issue of skilling and reskilling? How do Emerging/Deep Tech skills fit into all of this?

At IBM, we are guided by the skills that our clients require across multiple industries, with primary focus on hybrid cloud & AI. We offer an enhanced skilling experience which prioritizes technical content and customized, role-based learning plans. For our employees, IBM is like a university which caters to infinite curiosity for learning & development. Given below is a glimpse into the skilling data for IBM India from last year-

• Total number of learning hours by IBMers in India was 5.1M (close to 12% increase YoY) thanks to an improved experience that prioritizes technical content and customized, role-based learning plans
  • Cloud, Industry, Analytics, Design Thinking & AI were the top 5 Tech learning categories
  • Professional Development, Leadership, sales & soft skills were the other behavioural learning categories
• More than 338K total badges were earned by IBMers in India with 66% under Strategic skills.
  • Top 5 badges were Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner, Agile Explorer, Cognitive Practitioner, Automation & Blockchain Essentials

We also focus on ‘Skills First’ hiring where we prioritize the right mix of in-demand skills over specific degrees when looking for talent to work in technology's fastest-growing areas. For some roles, it is not about their training background, as long as they have the necessary skills to do the job. This is what we call ‘new collar’ employees.

Furthermore, we are not just committed to skilling our own employees but also the youth & larger talent pool in the nation as well. As our Chairman & CEO Arvind Krishna mentioned last year, 100% of IBM’s CSR activities in India now go into workforce development and skilling. We’ve invested in programs that help people gain skills for a new era of technology across all levels of the organisation.

How have issues of hiring and attrition changed during the pandemic? How are you changing strategies?

IBM India is a microcosm of the IBM Corporation and almost every major business unit of our organization has a footprint here. While we continue to monitor the pandemic situation, however, as an organization, we have had minimal adverse impact on our hiring so far. In fact, we have embarked on an aggressive talent expansion strategy this year targeting high double-digit levels of hiring across all our key businesses. We are extending opportunities to skilled professionals across key cities (beyond the metros) in India for the benefit of our customers. With expansion of our various business units in Kerala (Kochi), Gujarat (Ahmedabad), Karnataka (Mysuru) and Telangana (Hyderabad), we are looking to our new hires to further help accelerate IBM’s hybrid cloud & AI strategy.

We are also scaling our university hiring this year and investing significantly in early professional hires. With IBM expanding its footprint beyond the metros and to tap into the immense talent pool in those cities, we will also look at hiring from leading local academic institutions.

Further, IBM has had work from home policies and flexible work culture in place long before the recent disruptions. Our flexible work culture is focused on outcomes, not activities. In fact, the digital transformation phenomenon that the pandemic has catalyzed in almost all industries has been a strong driver of our aggressive hiring strategy. Our objective is to acquire, develop & retain the best talent as we become the world’s leading hybrid cloud & AI company and deliver superlative career experiences for IBMers.

What are the new kinds of job opportunities that are coming up?

We are hiring and expanding our strategic domain specialists across a wide variety of areas. These include hybrid multi-cloud platforms, open-source technologies, product design, Java Full Stack, OpenShift, SAP solutions, AI, neural networks, natural language processing, automation, data sciences, cybersecurity, microservices, DevOps and business process services across all levels.