Business of Staffing: A Talent Agenda

BUSINESS

of STAFFING

A TALENT AGENDA

GANESH SHERMON & KAVITA SHERMON

Copyright © 2016 Ganesh & Kavita Shermon.

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-4454-3 (sc)

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Staffing Assessments

Chapter 2 Time For Talent Testing

Chapter 3 Understanding Market Context

Chapter 4 Tracking Talent Potential

Chapter 5 Making Staffing Work

Chapter 6 Emerging Trends

Chapter 7 Tool Book

PREFACE

Business of Staffing – A Talent Agenda, is the first of the series to be followed through with Business of Leaders – Axis of Influence, Business of Strategy – Keeping Scores and Busines of Organizations – Building Cultures.

Staffing is today’s Talent Agenda! Workforce Planning, Recruiting, Deployment, Placements are processes while staffing brings a person to life in an organizational – customer context. Clients see the real person staffed on the job. Not the plan that brings a staff in. A culture that helps identify, attract, develop, define, deploy competent top talent is the one that works, and let us call it ‘Customer Centric Corporate Cultures’. Policies and programs, vision and values, strategies and goals, risks and rewards, demand and supply, pain and gain, love and hate, all have to singularly focus on nurturing talent. In today’s generational context enterprises no longer have the ability / privilege to command and control, dominate or push talent, although old-fashioned firms still believe that fear, reprimand, forced ranking, negative feedback and reviews control staff while rewards, short term incentives, and bonuses energizes top performance. Today, some organizations may boast of low attrition, but can they be proud of their talent quality? Ask their customers and you will hear horror stories of performance of their staff on the job. Firms survive by playing the cost card, deploy ten in place of two and hope that (somehow) amongst them they will help solve a problem. Incompetent ten cannot do the job of a competent two. At best in the short term can there be a perceived commercial gain. Not in the long haul. Customers quickly catch up when they start hearing noise from within their enterprises in the audits of talent offering them service. But there are organizations who still believe that sheer headcount will ensure higher performance. For in the longer term enterprises need to staff themselves with high quality talent hired and retained after a rigorous recruiting – assessment – talent staffing and management process. It simply wastes time, resources and profitability of clients when high quality talent staffing is not treated as a customer satisfaction strategy, a SLA or an outcome KPI. But not to forget! It’s all about Supply versus Demand! Today talent rules! In a good way! When companies use metrics to hire quantity as against quality they are perhaps making short term gains. At least in the short – medium term. But long term staffing strategies need to go beyond sheer headcount based resourcing. The current organizational environment is changing as companies increasingly focus on human capital as a source of competitive advantage while emphasizing the need for staffing enterprises with high quality talent. To achieve business successes, companies are setting objectives and wanting their employees to perform at higher levels, be it customer responsiveness, demonstrate competencies, build efficiencies, raise productivity, be process-oriented, drive effective supply chains or build world class technologies. They focus on growth and market shares, with shared leadership, accountability and be responsible for creating a knowledge and capability based organization for increasing shareholders value. These organizations, meanwhile, are also becoming leaner, sharper, competency focused, performance and outcome driven using human resources to be a differentiator. They align themselves as one integrated set of businesses set to achieve their business strategy, establish customer centric structures, maintain core values while constantly looking for competent talent. These are iconic businesses of staffing with a talent agenda.

Chapter 1 on Staffing Assessments establishes a case for understanding staffing in a Socio economic client staffing context - meaning staff identified to perform in a customer management scenario. Today’s talent drivers for staffing, deployment, career planning etc should no longer be based on measurement of generic competencies assessed by assessors through standard processes but would now need to be based on a company /industry specific – custom built competencies identified as future competencies. This would help assess talent based on future organizational needs, expected consistency of outcomes, future readiness as a metric for staffing purposes, focusing on the concept of staffing competencies (For example - Ability, Change Versatility, Willingness, Ready, Sensitive, Understanding, Speed, Agility, Adaptability, Articulate, Self Starter, Culture Fit). This would also need to be defined by customer,by establishing its linkages to HR processes (For example, On Boarding Effectiveness, Dynamic Placements, Network Centers, Near Shore Capability, KPI Centric, Learning Drivers) as determined by hiring managers (specific to staffing needs) and the need for staffing actions (For example, Capability Placements, Global Readiness, On Board Flexibility, Flex Working, Diversity, Easy Mobility Deployments, Fast Paced Solutions, Low Maintenance) being followed as a consistent practice based on trending research, industry needs, functional best and published practices.

When we speak of staffing we are noting its variation from traditional workforce planning. Staffing is about obtaining talent and keeping them battle ready for immediate deployment. Its emphasis is on the fact that standard time driven traditional assessment centers are conducted through the deployment of tools, assessed by assessors and final reports are being produced while demonstrating the need for staffing models, linkages of HR sub systems to talent management considerations etc. But talent management of today needs more than that. They need to be assessed as a potential staff, on the bench or otherwise in a staffing context ready to be deployed in client sites at minimal notice. This would mean their state of readiness not merely through skill or competencies but their adaptability to a new client environment, their ability to become productive in 4 hours and their ability to deal with multiple cultures and resolve issues and problems all at once. They need to be 24/7 ready deployable on the job with skills that are the latest, completely marketable. All of the research reviews support the importance of Staffing Maps and Fit Gap Centers for organizations to ensure supply demand management. The concept of staffing is very vast and can be interpreted in various ways. As far as organizations are concerned, appropriate staffing competencies required need to be identified for specific roles. There after suitable competency models have to be designed, relevant tools, methods and simulation tools should be used to map and assess staffing competencies – ideally in a custom built staffing center. Some questions remain unanswered – Can resourcing heads think beyond merely hiring? Are corporations willing to deploy their best of HR professionals to play recruiting roles? Are recruitment activities beyond transactional for organizational priority? Would organizations be willing to invest more time and money to socialize staff before staffing? The chapter concludes with Expert Panel papers.

Chapter 2 on Time for Testing attempts to demystify psychometric testing for talent managers, on the basis that rarely are we most effective in identifying those personality traits that defines a successful CEO, VP, an Associate or an Intern. We discuss personality traits everyday, interpret them, and analyze them when we talk about other people. We may wake up in a different mood from the previous morning, but our basic personality is not changed overnight. But our experiences of the past have remained in the make up of our personality. A psychometric test is a standard way of measuring an aspect of mental performance. From a talent management perspective, tests identify our strengths, weakness based on an understanding of behaviors that can be worked on (tendency to plan in advance as against delay etc.) and companies use them to give an insight into some human behavior and the nature of relationships. The tests will help you make better selection, allocation of tasks, and promotion decisions. I do not think we should talk about efficiency, etc. as direct outcomes of tests. A test is a measurement device or technique that is used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding & prediction of behavior. The chapter deals with a wide variety of tests, aptitude, personality, integrity, vocational, interest, technical etc. specifically meant for talent mapping, its selection, application, administration, end uses and learning. Specific tests are provided as examples for a variety of psychometric needs. Tests are used for selection, either for short listing or final decisions, placement or promotion decisions, development, team building, counseling, out-placement and organizational development. Professional occupational psychologists and practicing human resources professionals with appropriate certifications who specialize in testing and assessment have a greater knowledge, insight and experience of the use of tests than can be gained from short training, certification or learning programs. Several examples from the market place on popular tests such as APT 6, MBTI, STRONG, 16PF, 15FP, CPI, PABST, SPT, VBAPP etc. are suggested. The chapter concludes with Expert Panel papers.

Chapter 3 focuses on today’s Market Context for Assessments illustrating how various combinations of simulation exercises and additional scientific assessment methods such as psychometric testing, staffing inventories, talent hubs, global mobility, job boards, peer to peer benchmarks, personality reviews, fast tracker factors, profiling, competency mapping and interviews are used to assess particular competencies in individuals. The theory behind this is that if one wishes to predict future job performance then the best way of doing so is to get the individual to carry out a set of tasks which accurately sample those required in the job and are as similar to them as possible. This chapter contains research findings on the use of assessment methods, simulation tools, types of psychometric tests relevant for talent mapping, maturity level of centers in various types of organizations, levels of management who take up evaluations, cultural challenges, unique types of assessments, the emergence of leadership centers, and end use of competencies in talent management processes. All the findings have been classified for specific sectors such as manufacturing, services and consulting.

For example, the chapter contains findings such as;

• Number of employees assessed every year in an organization is dependent on the size of the organization but also indicate that larger organizations cover a lower number [percentage] of employees in assessment centers compared to smaller organizations.

• Manufacturing and Service industry organizations have a lower percentage of employees assessed across all three levels of management – junior, middle and senior.

• Service industry tends to follow the sun model for its staffing purposes with larger numbers deployed in a globally vibrant context.

• Manufacturing is largely focused on bringing the supervisory levels on a scaled performance platform – peer-to-peer comparisons.

• Consulting organizations have a higher percentage of employees being assessed across all levels.

• Use of Assessment Centers and Development Centers are independent of the Type of industry.

• All the three industries conduct Assessment and Development Centers without much difference in their approach and methodology.

• Leadership Centers are dependent on the type of Industry.

• Consulting Industry has a higher frequency of Leadership Centers being conducted.

• The maturity level in an Assessment Center Process is the highest for the Consulting Industry.

• Consulting (62.9% in about 3 years) is the most mature sector from the point of view of greater years of experience in the usage of the centers

• Consulting companies have the maximum organizational experience in conducting Hierarchal / Pyramid Centers, Functional – Technical Centers and Cross Functional – Hierarchy Centers.

• Manufacturing companies have the maximum organization experience in conducting Cross Functional Centers and Centers for Heads - Leaders only.

The chapter concludes with Expert Panel papers.

Chapter 4 is about Tracking Stars emphasizing how a new set of rules of business of staffing changes in the context of Leadership Centers more variables have emerged to counter those of the changing business scenario. Times have indeed changed. Today star performers have redefined how time has changed by learning to work with ‘flextime’, home working, remote access, virtual meetings etc. For example, to set a context, staffs are now allowed to choose their working hours; their office location, their project type, work is thus being spread throughout the day and also into the night. Temp, Contract, Staffing, Off Shoring, Part-time jobs are in vogue and so is 24-hours banking. High caliber skills in executing a job and working with others are in great demand today, but they are hard to find in the same person. The chapter deals with the challenges in managing talent in the context of multi generational divide. The chapter provides a detailed explanation on the generational divide. There are 4 generations of employee typology working side-by-side in today’s workforce: people born in the 2nd world war years, (Baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964) baby boomers, generation Xers (Generation Xers born between 1965 and 1980) and generation Ys (Generation Yers born after 1980) – Millenials (Interchangeably used with Gen Y but with more emphasis on later years) and beyond) with varying attitudes and expectations about lives, jobs, longevity, employers and careers. In every corporation, the top management is constantly trying to raise the quality of their talent through advanced staffing processes and training programs, but it takes a great deal of perseverance as well as wisdom and resourcefulness on the part of operating managers to improve the caliber of their staff. Track Talent 100 is a program devised to identify the top performers of the company, train them with necessary developmental inputs to hone their skills and abilities and prepare them as citizens for the 21st Century Corporation. The process follows back to back from a Leadership Center. This chapter contains a How to build a Star Tracking Program. The Track Talenter will be the ambassadors for the future organization which will be knowledge based, Information based, Entrepreneurial in nature, Without any middle managers, structured around goals and highly performance driven with clear, simple objectives which will translate into particular actions.

Chapter 5 is about Making Staffing Work - In this demanding and changing work environment, the merits of an effective competency mapping process, appropriate assessment evaluation processes, sharply identified tools and techniques to build a competency based HRM system become even more valuable. Task and job descriptions are becoming less useful in describing the work of individuals. People attributes, functional expertise, business acumen and competencies, as demonstrated by behaviors, are proving to be more appropriate units of analysis for understanding and appreciating top performance and success factors. They are also proving to be a more appropriate method for describing work and the strengths and the weaknesses of individuals and organizations. In the future, organizations will need to be built capabilities and knowledge. But organizations need to develop the understanding, the ability and the willingness to experiment with the newer capabilities and knowledge based theories of the firm.

The chapter attempts to answer several questions.

• How can organizations reorient effective Use of Assessment Centers and its outcomes in a staffing plan context and how can that be best understood when talent needs precede other HR considerations.

• How do organizations attempt Workforce Staffing Assessment towards (a) identification of stakeholders who will benefit from effective staffing programs, (b) understanding of an organization’s current business goals/strategies and its influence on staffing plans, and (c) the foundational premise or hypothesis to link workforce actions (plan, deploy, move, exit etc) to the achievement of the business goals/strategies (d) Introduction of a Competency Mapping Framework and (e) Identification of an Assessment Process

• The development of a workforce ROI model includes the preparation of a competency framework by which the value of human capital can be measured (i.e. mapping workforce segments to the organization’s value chain.

This chapter covers concepts such as staffing and mobility, feedback mechanisms, staffing and succession planning, employee value proposition, talent markets, compensation and rewards, workforce supply demand economics, technology integration with talent agenda, building a business of staffing framework etc. There is an introduction to the practice of Leadership Labs, competencies to CEO pipeline, pivotal role analysis and concludes with expert panel comments.

Chapter 6 on emerging trends covers a wide variety of subjects pertaining to Changing Workforce Staffing Composition:

• Increased number of Generation-Y causing a demographic mismatch for skill deployment (Can also be seen as an opportunity)

• Scarcity of Talent: With talent acting as a source of competitive advantage for many organizations, war for market share is fast transforming into war for talent.

• The interplay of Technology and HR is leading to an extreme reliance of organizations on technology.

Many organizations are increasingly making use of technology and its linkages to HR function to deliver effectively on both, the transactional and the strategic aspects of people management.

For example;

• Employee self-service helps employees identify and build their own competencies.

• Re-organizing the HR Function to center around staffing needs: Traditional structures, roles, policies, programs for engagement are fast becoming obsolete within the HR function.

• Many organizations have incorporated the roles of Administrators, Talent Partners, HR business partners, HR shared services, change agents and employee champions under the portfolio of their respective HR functions.

• An evolving HR Body of Knowledge, influenced by social, cloud, HR technologies, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning is rapidly evolving in current time. Thus with rapidly shifting HR landscape, the expectations from the HR managers and the line managers have increased many fold.

• Technology Enabled Talent Management influences organizations to build Star leaders who turn out to be creative, visionary, charismatic, motivating, having a great zeal and drive.

• There is additional emphasis on HR Architecture to drive specific value for the business

• Ethical & Governance driven talent management practices, (For example – values training, cross cultural adaptation)

• Consultants, Experts and HR strategists are finding linkages to the economic and environmental – commercial pulse, to talent management considerations. For example – talent spotters, talent auctions, staffing bench cost, globalizing talent etc.

The chapter includes a perspective on the nature of labor and their unions and how they can differ in their attitude towards competence by geography and industry. For example, staff deployed on IT development or outsourcing jobs in a manufacturing company may have traditionally been defined as workman under the Industrial Disputes Act or labor code. A perspective on how skills and competencies required for achieving staffing business objectives have changed in the context of labor type profiles aspiring to reach supervisory positions and beyond. There is an overview on how the role of Organizational leaders and their need to recognize the changing approach to succession planning with a view that this is best achieved when leaders focus on the critical aspects of vision, culture process and behaviors that drive building competencies that support corporate performance. A write up by Mindtree Limited on their contemporary practices in Leadership Building is included in this chapter.

Chapter 7 edited by Anavir Shermon, is a Tool Book containing varying types of contingency games, BARS Scale based competency dictionary, simulations, administration manuals, management games, list of psychometric tests, tool mapping to competencies, case studies, role plays, in basket, competency dictionary, aligning talent needs to measurement of competencies, potential evaluation formats, Talent Gap Programs, Observer Evaluation Sheets, Behavioral Templates, BEI questionnaire, Evidence Based HR, Proficiency and Frequency Scale, Role Profiles including stretch profiles, Post Evaluation plans and development agenda, deployment sheets, Succession Plan and Career Path templates, problem solving checklists, psychometric tests, culture inventories, self assessment questionnaires, value clarification inventory, talent culture audits, work book inventories, formats, competency evaluation tests, templates, talent management center schedules, communication booklets for talent profiling, multiple tests for Tracking Talent Stars Program etc.

In summary, this book is an attempt to bring together a combination of research findings, leading practices, thoughts and ideas, contemporary perspectives, business drivers for a talent focused business of staffing organizations, the need to integrate it with HR processes and the task of establishing and managing a series of Hi Po Talent Attraction Centers – a la Talent Stars. Of great relevance to the readers would be to concurrently refer to our references listed along with the reproduction in the main text and as well cover works of McKinsey Consultants, Deloitte LLP, SMR, HBSWK and HBR. Of significance to our research and learning for this book has been the world class work, unique culture specific practices, promoter managed corporate transformation done in the area of talent building by organizations such as ABN Amro, Aditya Birla Group, Adani, AMWAY, Amazan Foods, Apeejay, Asian Paints, Astra Zeneca, AXA, Bajaj, BASF, Bank of America, Bayer, Barrick Gold, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bharath Forge, Bharati, Blue Dart, British Airways, BNP Paribas, BMO Canada, BP, BPCL, Bunge, Cadila, Cadburys, Cargill, CG, CIBIL, Citibank, Citigroup, HCC - Coca Cola, Cognizant, Deloitte, Deutche Bank, Development Bank of Singapore, DHL Blue Dart, Disney, Dishman, Dorma, EMCO, Essar, Essar Steel Algoma, EXCEL E Clerx, Group, Electrotherm, EY, Falck, Floriana, GAIL, GMR, Grant Thornton, GSK, HBL Global, HDFC Bank, Hewitt, Hindustan Coca Cola, Huntsman, ICICI Bank, Infosys, ING, IOCL, ITC, KPMG, KRAFT, Kotak Bank, Jet Airways, JP Morgan Chase, Leighton, Lalbhai Group, Lokmat, Macquarie, Mahindra and Mahindra, Manappuram Finance, Mead Johnson, Mercer, Mind Tree Limited, NDPL, Novartis, NPCI, NTC, ORC, OGC, Open Text, QUIPPO, P & G, PEPSI, Pfizer, P N Gadgil, Punjab National Bank and Housing Finance, PwC, Quintiles, Rajesh Wadhawan Group, Reliance, Royal Insurance, Rustomjee, SAIL, SERCO, Shapoorji, SJVNL, SPMCIL, Standard Chartered, Suzlon, Syngenta, Tata Power, TAKE Solutions, TCS Canada Inc, Thomas Watson, Tech Mahindra, TVS & Sons Group, Tata Sons, Tata Consultancy Services, UIDAI – Aadhar, UPL, Unilever, VALE, Vedanta, Vishwaraj Industries, WIPRO and YES Bank. Several other clients of KPMG LLP who extensively participated in using psychometric tests, staffing, recruiting, simulations and assessments administrated on their staff members or potential candidates or providing talent management insights and leading practices at a global level need additional mention. The leaders of all of these institutions have indeed demonstrated that active engagement with people matters is the true and dynamic linkage between their business strategies, core competence and for driver for world-class talent management processes.

We owe, many, our gratitude and obligation. The authors take this opportunity to thank some critical stakeholders who helped make this happen. First of all we are obliged to the several hundred organizations, our wonderful clients and leaders, participants, assesses, HIPO talent of such enterprises who participated in our research, actively engaged in the live centers, provided us access to their talent management programs, utilized our tools, tests and simulations over the last ten years to help us validate our hypothesis and write our findings. Followed by several Experts, Consultants, SMEs on whose extensive research work, thought leadership, global perspectives, cases and interviews did we rely upon from McKinsey Consulting, Sloan Management Review and Faculty from Sloan School of Management - MIT, Harvard Business Review, SAGE Publications, Journal of Management, AMA and HBS Working Knowledge – We are highly obliged. And our gratitude to several research papers, reviews from Emerald, other Journals and Publications, not to forget a big thanx to Ganesh Shermon’s People and Change Management Consulting team from KPMG LLP and Kavita Shermon’s Staffing Team, from RiverForest Connections Inc. who supported us through the many stages of this research, its material and this book over these ten years.

A special note of recognition and obligation to some world class professionals , human capital consulting partners, industrialists, Inspiring leaders, role models, business visionaries, researchers, teaching faculty, thought leaders, authors who we have come across at various points in time in our careers in these 35 years and who through their knowledge, wisdom, personal values, integrity and honor have made a difference to us and to the world of people around them. A big thank you to our Expert Panel Members, who shared their personal opinion, their experiences, knowledge through these many years of our research and supporting us with best practice papers, case studies, point of view documents, interviews, critical reviews etc. It’s amazing how these visionaries leave behind a lasting impression in you whether they met and interacted with you for a short or long time. Although in our forthcoming book, Business Of Leaders –Axis of Influence, we have sufficiently covered our learnings, we have tried hard to capture their specific insights and interactions in regard tothis book.

Of significance would be Anita Belani, Aditya Puri, Akhilesh Tripathi, Aidan Brennan, Armina Kapadia, Arun Lakhani, Benjamin Van Deputt, Bharath Ramakrishnan, Bhrigu Joshi, Bisi Lamikanra, Bobby Parikh, Boman Irani, Brian Yee, C.G. D’Lima, Claudia Saran, Chris Townley, Craig Ross, Daftuar C N, David Alexander, David Bolton, David Knight, Darren Faint, Edgar Schein (MIT), Eric Biegansky, Gautam Dalal, Greg Wiebe, Harshala Chandorkar, Heather Stockton (Deloitte), Ian Gomes, Ian Lithgow, Isha Arora, James Koenig Jean M. Phillips,, Jeff Smith, Jimmy Diamantakis, John Condon, John Smith, Jonathan Wai, John Van Maanen (MIT), Kashmira Patel, Kishore Poduri, K Krishna Kumar (MindTree), Laura Croucher, Lilian Gutmanis, Lorena Breda, Lorrie Lykins, Margot Thom (Deloitte), Mark Spears, Mark Smith, Mark Williamson, Mark Hutchins, Nidhi Gupta, Peter Outridge, Prasad Kurian, Priyanka Vanjari, Puneet Bharel, Rick Lamanna, Robert Bolton, Robert Eichfield, R Sridhar (spent a lot of time editing), N. Chandra (TCS), Pradeep Udhas, Richard Rekhy, Russell Parera, Raj Agrawal, Rohit Manucha, Richa Jha Arvind, Rinju Sarah Mathews, Sammy Medora, Sanjay Lalbhai (Lalbhai Group), Sanjay Kumar, Satish Pillai, Shapoor Mistry, Srinath Sridharan, Stanley. M. Gully, Stephen Beatty, Steven Hill, Swapna Desai, T V Rao, Tim Aldrich, Tim Payne, Torsten Krelowetz, Vangelis Apostolakis, Willy Kruh, Vidya Santhanam, Vineet Bhuwania, Vinayak Kamath, Vivek Aggarwal and Wilton Henriques.

Some true inspiration, prodding, editing and questioning by Anavir Shermon, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, author of chapter 7 on Tools. Of great significance to our work has been the dedicated commitment from the editors of Lulu Publications, USA, who consistently studied many manuscripts, provided professional direction, some critical and insightful observation and the drive to complete and move on to the next book. Thank you to all of you indeed. If we have inadvertently missed anyone, person or an institution or an expert or a reference in our acknowledgement, please take this, as our personal apology, for this omission is truly an inexcusable oversight.

We dedicate this book to our clients, contributors and star talent from across the globe, who continue to make it possible for folks like us to write a book based on their best practices.

Dr. G Shermon & Dr. K Shermon

Oakville, Ontario, Canada

2015

ganeshshermon@gmail.com

kavitashermon@rforc.com

CHAPTER 1

STAFFING ASSESSMENTS

Staffing is today’s Talent Agenda! Resourcing is a firm’s agenda! And the two will need to integrate. Staffing ensures placement of the right candidate at a client site at the right time – on time every time. Resourcing helps attract talent into the parent organizational context by building a culture that helps attract and retain top tal- ent to enable such placements in a customer site. Policies and programs, vision and values, strategies and goals, risks and reward, demand and supply, pain and gain, love and hate, all have to singularly focus on nurturing talent. For it’s a challenge to identify and attract talent who are willing to be a staffing talent across geographies. Why? Enterprises have lost their ability to command and control talent. Traditional models that works on basics of physiological, social and hygiene needs are no longer drivers of motivation for the new age talent. It’s all about Supply versus Demand! Today talent rules! In a good way! The current organizational environment is changing as companies increasingly focus on human capital as a source of competitive advantage emphasizing the need for staffing enterprises to focus on sustainable talent. To achieve business success, companies are setting objectives and wanting their employees to perform at higher levels, be customer responsive, demonstrate competencies, build efficiencies, raise productivity, be process-oriented, ensure effective supply chains, build world class technologies etc. This is possible when they are focusing on growth and market shares, while being actively involved in shared leadership, account- ability and be responsible for creating a knowledge and capability based organization for increasing the shareholders value. These organizations, meanwhile, are also becoming leaner, competency focused, performance and outcome driven as they align themselves as one integrated business to achieve their business strategy and maintain core values while constantly looking for competent talent. These are iconic businesses of staffing with a talent agenda.

In order to accomplish any of these objectives, CEOs’ and HR professionals must be able to help their organizations identify and grow required employee talent management competencies. It is now a leading organizational strategy, in some select organizations, to apply competencies in all major HR areas, including talent management, on boarding, recruitment, selection, promotions, performance management, potential appraisals, career – succession planning, learning, training, assessment, development, compensation and rewards etc. But this practice of utilizing competencies across the HR value chain has not been growing as well as experts would have thought and needs investigation. Radical changes in the nature of work, thanks to technology and social media and organizational culture – business-staffing models have far reaching implications for the practice of Human Resources Management. For instance, the transformation of HR from an administration oriented service department to a strategically oriented business partner and a function responsible for much more than the hiring and firing of personnel, has indeed become a reality or the reality of making virtual organizations and team productive and performing. And many such business oriented organizations are seeking HR to provide them talent with pre identified and measured competent talent who are useful to them from the date of their placement on the job. Staffing business managers expect employees to have been selected based on competencies, promoted based on competencies, trained based on competencies and so on. Businesses expect that appropriate evaluation processes be followed to assess competencies, bridge gaps and ensure appropriate fitment to a job. But this has not happened as effectively as experts would have liked. Staffing is essentially a business! In today’s context! Companies are growing by being in the business of talent – a global opportunity to staff talent across geographies.

In this demanding and changing work environment, the merits of an effective staffing talent processes, appropriate assessment evaluation processes, sharply identified tools and techniques to build a competency based HRM system become even more valuable. Tasks and jobs are becoming less useful methods of describing the work of individuals and organizations. People attributes, functional depth, business acumen and competencies, demonstrated by behaviors, are proving to be a more appropriate unit of analysis for understanding and appreciating top performance and success factors. They are also a more valuable method for describing work and the strengths and the weaknesses of individuals and organizations. In the future, organizations will need to be built around this form of competencies. But investigation is needed to check whether organizations have the understanding, the ability and the willingness to experiment with newer uses of competencies across the organization.

In keeping with this fundamental change in the orientation of HR activities, practitioners as well as researchers in the field have been constantly trying to evolve appropriate competency and assessment processes and structures around which every HR activity can be integrated and harmonized. But this intent has not converted into a wide spread movement. It is against this development that the Staffing Talent Competency Movement has gained ground. But the techniques and tools continue to be those that have been traditionally used. For example, In Basket, Role Plays, Group Discussions, Case Studies and Presentations are still the stable platform of tools. Newer and modern techniques do not appear to be a practice. And that is a cause for concern. Organizations today need tools to evaluate staff who are culture adept, pro adjust, client friendly, early learners, deep resilience, sharp uptake, mental math, language fluency, neutral values, diversity friendly. It is a similar issue with talent competency evaluation tests and psychometrics. Personality and behavioral tests are being used in select organizations and for limited purposes such as job role fitment, culture fitment or aptitude. More often than not psychometric tests have been used as a de selection tool, meaning to reject candidates based on a cut off score, rather than to select candidates. Tools, tests, methods need to be discovered to identify talent profiles.

The staffing processes have also followed a consistent practice based on past research and published practices. Standard time driven traditional assessment centers are conducted through the deploy- ment of standardized tools, assessed by assessors and final reports are being produced determining the critical need for identifying and establishing newer assessment models for staffing, its linkages to HR sub systems (Planning, Deployment, Resourcing, Appraising etc) and talent management considerations. But talent management of today needs more than that. They need to be assessed as a potential leader or a team player in a staffing context. They need to be 24/7 ready deployable on the job with skills that are the latest, completely marketable. With there willingness to be moved, shifted, deployed, transferred, relocated, abandoned and so on without notice. These are principles that go against the grain of employee engagement. And here lies the contradiction. HR priorities don’t necessarily align with those of their businesses. Businesses would like employees to be staffing ready and be able, willing and understanding of organizational need for deployment This readiness is irrespective of whether their family situation permits them to relocate or not. There is a need to study what innovations business organizations; specialist consultants, experts and HR managers are now practicing to help make staffing happen effectively enhancing employee engagement.. And the critical purpose for which staffing talent mapping has emerged today continues to be only performance and potential. And they continue to focus on only a few questions. For example, what aspects of competency mapping, assessment processes predict appropriate performance to help staffing effectively? What do organizations do to identify, nurture, build and plan for employees who demonstrate certain types of performance that fits well with changing customer needs? This has been the subject of scientific inquiry over time. Scientists have proposed a range of factors that determine intelligence, behavior and performance. Today this includes social adaptability. These factors include aspects of physical shape of the head, brain weight, social class, birth order, capabilities, handwriting, gender, religion, IQ, cultural heritage, and so on. Additional factors that have been used in attempt to predict performance in the workplace are technical skills, years of experience, education, industry skills and personality traits. But one thing remains constant, need for innovation and new ways to interpret human behavior that helps fulfill customer needs and wants.

Case Innovation - In winter 2014 SMR authors Paul J.H. Schoemaker and Steven Krupp state, In an interview on CNN, Elon Musk (TESLA) was asked where his forward-thinking, innovative ideas come from. He replied, Just trying really hard — the first order of business is to try. You must try until your brain hurts. The authors state, Ever since he was in college in the early 1990s, Musk had a vision of commercializing electric vehicles for the mass market and was questioning how this could be achieved, given the historic pushback against this idea. He mused that getting into the electric car business was probably one of the stupidest things you could do. (Even Toyota Motor Corp. chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, known as the father of the Prius, had reservations about electric cars: Because of its shortcomings — driving range, cost and recharging time — the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars. Musk saw electric vehicles as the future, but if their development was left to traditional car companies, he thought it would take a long time". Issue of innovation in a talent management context is quite fundamental. When between Google, Apple, EBay, Twitter or Facebook commence their hiring there are many other equally competent high performing companies having a challenge in getting such talent that they are competing for. And they see that differentiator as being innovation. Candidates seeking a formal career are surely looking for the innovation differentiator.

In Musk’s view, the industry was operating under two false premises: One, that you could not create a compelling electric car; and two, that no one would buy it. But the fact that an unknown want of a customer is always a business – product opportunity is best seen only on hindsight. The challenge was to demonstrate that electric cars can be a mainstream product and to reassure consumers that infrastructure can be developed to give them the freedom and reliability of a regular car. Well before others, Musk saw the possibilities and asked different questions. Although this tale is far from over, Musk’s vision has struck a chord with consumers and Wall Street. He expanded his enterprise to include global distribution and battery manufacturing shortly after the Tesla Model S was rated the number one car ever tested by Consumer Reports in 2013". Tesla’s ability to attract talent, in a otherwise depressed auto industry, is surely a success story in the making.

Concept of Staffing Talent Competencies

A talent competency is an underlying characteristic of a person, which enables him/her to deliver superior performance in a given job, role or situation. This characteristic may be called an attribute bundle, consisting of knowledge, skills, traits, social role, self-image and motive. The underlying characteristic manifests itself in the form of behavior, which helps identification, and measurement of the competency. Competency has two relevant meanings: The first, addresses the ability of an individual to perform effectively in a job-relevant area and be eligible for staffing. The second deals with what is required of an individual, for effective performance post staffing. These two are closely related but distinct and needs to be bridged. And forms the Business of Staffing a talent agenda. The first deals with the degree to which an individual does, what is important for a job and does it consistently, regularly and meticulously. The second meaning involves defining what is important to be successful in a job and performed in varying conditions, degrees of complexity and multiple cultures. According to Fletcher (1997), there has been, and continues to be, much confusion in the last few years regarding the competence movement. This confusion continues in the areas of how to map