Being Member Of  The Advisory Council Of The India CHRO Forum  Powered By Sodexo India And Led By Paul Writer We Have Featured A Short Interview With Rajorshi Ganguli, Vice President & Head Commercial HR at Dr. Reddy's Laboratories

3 ways by which organizations can focus on talent development? 

In my view real talent development can happen only when the business leaders have a deep rooted conviction that people really matters in the growth of the business. Having said this, to me three simple ways which can go a long way in talent development are:

•  Stretch assignments: Real development happens when we test people on the ground through stretch and challenging assignments. While putting in people in these assignments it is important to clarify which failures are acceptable.  This way employees can seek out challenges where they can develop, without feeling like mistakes will set them back in their career. 

• Amplify and reinforce the importance of continuous learning: Managers need to go beyond the simple conversation about goals, to how they want to accomplish and what they feel their gaps are.  When someone completes an assignment it is good to celebrate both the outcome and the learning, especially if the assignment wasn't that easy. 

• Take bets with individuals: Put individuals in leadership/ unconventional roles even if they aren’t fully ready.  Help them by creating a truly supporting environment by coaching and mentoring and providing confidence.

Your advise to manage talent crunch?

 Talent crunch will be a reality given the complex changing business environment. To me the best way to manage this crunch is to remain flexible and always look out for alternate and non-traditional talent pools to meet the deficit. This can happen when we break the leadership mindset and stereotypes and accept diverse talent.  Apart from this, organizations must be open to re-design jobs to accept different talent pools yet retaining the deliverables expected from the job. Example- models like virtual work, part time work, inviting non-industry people to quickly get reskilled and deliver can help mitigate these perceived deficit. Lastly, talent development program needs to be agile and include both planned and unplanned learning to help overcome the crunch.

Example or your advise  to organizations to structure benefits to motivate their employees? 

 “What appeals to Gen Y may not appeal to Gen X”. Benefits to employees cannot be a one size fits all model. Benefits ideally to be structured according to age profile and career stage of an employee. For example, selling a retirement plan to a newly joined employee may not enthuse him/ her at all; whereas the same benefit can be interesting for a person who is away from retirement by few years. Having a diverse set of team members in the benefits team of an organization helps to challenge traditional idea.