Editorial

Dear Leader,

The theme, and sub-themes,  for this year’s snapshot, came from two different threads.

In conversation with business leaders, there was a strong emphasis on having talent and skills available when the need arose. And the agility of being able to fulfil these needs.

The other thread was from CHROs and Talent management professionals, who looked for agility in identifying, readying and deploying talent, but with a more ‘manageable’ process which could be scaled, replicated and did not add to their already demanding workload.

We looked to learn from our experiences with clients, and brought them directly to you through contributions from HR leaders in this Snapshots edition. You will hopefully find value in these insights from practical experiences addressing the four sub-themes in this issue.

One of the sub-themes this year was about data-driven decision making. Our reflection is that there is one step in collecting and managing the data, which can be accelerated with digital tools, e.g. talent assessment data. The next step is in drawing insights and acting on this data, e.g. development planning and learning initiatives.

The linkage between the two steps is crucial and this requires a more end to end approach to managing talent as against a purely programmatic or event based approach. Organisations are increasingly looking to strengthen this link, using digital backbones that cut across, and simpler but stronger processes.  

There may also be some merit in dialogue around widening the reach of talent processes to find ‘hidden gems’. This also allows for a wider pool of talent to be identified for specific capabilities and strengths that can be leveraged. This is becoming increasingly essential in pushing the ‘agility of talent deployment’ agenda.

Organisations are also tilting towards ‘make’ as against ‘buy’ for developing a cadre of leaders. This clearly makes intuitive sense,  especially where employee engagement, retention, and whole hearted employee effort are at a premium.

In many discussions, one extremely clear line emerged—how do we prepare for the future? This of course has been a continuing theme, not a new one, but the urgency in the question was more palpable this time. One of the sub-themes in this edition has some conversations on this theme.

A special thanks to all the contributors to this edition! We would be very happy to hear your views and receive feedback on this edition of Snapshots.

Bimal.