Post-Recession Challenges of Talent Management

October 12th, 2009 Gireesh Sharma

Recovering Economies

After a year or so the news on recession is taking a U-turn (not a V-turn though). Officially, analysts are reporting that recession is over, including Google CEO. While it will take some time for recession to pave the way for prosperity and growth for business in general, the prosperity is already on its way to certain economies such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

HR May be Caught Off Guard

Although this is good news for business operations, including marketing and sales, it poses new challenges for human capital. Businesses would no longer run on the old rules, but new out-of-the-box solutions, more comprehensive efforts, innovative thinking, and new skills and competencies would be required to grow and prosper. Needless to say, the demand for both the quantity and the quality of talented employees will grow worldwide. Companies that have fired employees in the past are already feeling the pinch, as they do not have enough bandwidth to execute.

Bloggers like Jon Ingham, who champion the cause of Human Capital Management, are being invited to speak on performance management. The need for performance management is pressing.

Talent Scenario During Recession

The law of demand and supply mercilessly applies to human resources, also. During the economic downturn, companies were able to downsize by getting rid of redundant work force and dead wood. They also restructured the employee compensation (mostly by decreasing) to stave off financial losses. Only those employees were retained who proved their worth. The employees had to accept all kinds of compensation-related compromises while maintaining the same or even higher level of efficiency and productivity. They could thus survive the financial tsunami.

These survivors got the opportunity to handle a variety of tasks that further sharpened their skills and made them multi-skilled. Thus, overall quality of talent has increased. At the same time, those who were out of job lost this opportunity to hone their skills in a new challenging environment. Adding to our woes, slashing of training and development budgets has led to a depletion of the number of skilled employees within the companies.

And a Difficult Road Ahead

Such steps from companies have created an altogether tricky scenario: The quality of talent within the companies has increased (raising the bar of the talent), while the quality of skills available in job market has dwindled. Now, recruiters can hire the required quality talent not from outside but from inside their competitors’ workplace.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Compensation Planning, Economy, Employee Appraisals, Employee Rewards, Performance Management | 9 Comments »

Case Study on HR Management in Retail Industry

March 5th, 2009 Gireesh Sharma

EmpXtrack HR Consultants team has released a new case study on the Human Resource Management in Retail Industry. This case study covers the challenges faced by HR in management of employees in an organization having chain of stores in multiple locations.

The organization in the study is one of the largest retail stores chains. They have around 100 retail stores in different locations and looking to expand further to more than 200 store across the country.

Organization has a centralized Human Resource Department located in Head Office. HR decision and process are controlled centrally. However, many HR tasks, policies and procedures are managed by retail Store Managers or regional offices.

The organization used excel sheets to exchange reports. Reports coming from various regional offices and stores were compiled in Head Office by a team of HR Executives and HR managers.

Keeping in view the nature of organization, the case study is equally applicable to organizations having retail chains in Consumer Goods, Health Care, Multi Locational sales offices etc.

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Posted in Case Study/ White Papers, Economy, Human Resources | 9 Comments »

The Ray of Hope in Recession for Human Resources

March 4th, 2009 Gireesh Sharma

While reading Jon’s Carnival of HR titled ”Carnevale delle Risorse Umane: 18 February 2009 ” I realized how much clouds of sorrow surmount the Human Resources domain due to recession.

And why not, after all it is the Human Resource Department that is bearing the burns. HR has to do the most disgraceful job of laying off people, because Businesses can no more afford to pay them. Employees that are chopped off curse HR, even though most HR Managers will be at no fault . HR that used to be hero at the time of a flourishing economy is now suddenly considered a villain making plans and strategies to show door to people. Adding to the sorrow, HR has also been ordered to chip off salary packages, incentives and benefits, making the life tougher for those who are fortunate enough to remain employed,,and to bear their blames and curses.

Sad, but it triggered me to search for the rays of hope that prove that Recession will not last long. Here is my list:

Hope 1: Determination of Leadership

There is a very strong determination amongst the political and business leadership to curb the recession. Never in the last few decades we saw such a global and massive effort to fight economic crisis. This determination is sure to find ways out of the recession and foray into another blooming decade 21st century. I think recession is the birth pang of human society into a new era.

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Posted in Economy, HR Technology, Human Resources, Performance Management | 6 Comments »