All Things Talent, the forum for HR professionals powered by iimjobs.com and hirist.com conducted another HR event on July 21st, 2018 at Hotel Avasa, Hyderabad. The gathering aimed at providing an interactive and informative experience on ‘Talent Retention’ to HR and Recruitment Professionals. The All Things Talent community was there to assist their audience to learn and mingle with the experts of the field.
The session began with a brief introduction by Prashant Sharma (Marketing at iimjobs.com) who introduced to the audience, Talent Retention, as the topic of discussion, and took a moment to emphasise on the objectives of All Things Talent.
The event included a discussion of ideas of Talent Retention at the workplace, including good work practices, plans and strategies, employee engagements, along with concepts of hiring and retaining.
The speakers included:
- Subhashini Panyam – Country Director, Human Resources, Hitachi Consulting
- Deepak Gupta – Senior Director & Head Human Resources at DST Systems
- Deepak Taduru – Head, Talent Acquistion Group at DBS Bank
The Panel Discussion was moderated by Rahul Anandani Narayan – Senior Human Resources Business Partner, CA Technologies.
Deepak Tadaru was the first to reach out to the audience. According to Deepak, talent retention is all about hiring right. “When we hire people, we try to hire the best people. How long would the best hire continue? Today, tomorrow or the day after? The organization does not want to hire people for today, it hires for a long term”, he said.
Deepak discussed various problems of attrition, and offered solutions to fix them – be it by imbibing multiple cultures and embracing diversity, or by improving training and empowering leaders. He thought aloud whether an organization requires a retention strategy or a plan to hire the best in order to control attrition. “Retention strategies are important, but you need to have the right talent acquisition strategies because a person joining and ensuring he will not go, needs to be provided with the right culture and the best experience in the company”, he said.
“When I hire an individual, I don’t hire the best, I hire for the future”, he added.
Subhashini Panyam spoke next. She talked about the influence of technology on human life and its future. According to Subhashini, with technology upgrades every few years, talent seems to be re-defining itself every now and then too. “We are transforming. We are in the midst of digital revolution. We are getting to see how things were in the past, we are experiencing the things changing plus we are also getting to see the end product”, she said.
She felt strongly towards hiring right for talent retention and engagement. She spoke about the important aspects of hiring, the first being ‘expectation’, both of the candidate as well as of an organization. ‘It is important that their expectations match’, she said. Second being the candidates’ ‘Career Path’, she felt that it was important for the organization to support their candidates throughout their career paths. Final aspect included the concepts of ‘building emotional bonds’. Here, she spoke about providing employees with emotional support in order for them to happy and loyal when it came towards the company. “It is important for us to think early on these lines and hire for the future”, she said.
Deepak Gupta followed Subhashini, and started by comparing concepts from Mahabharata to the present day’s ideas. “Arjuna hired Sri Krishna not because he wouldn’t fight but because he’d stay by Arjuna’s side”, he said. “While Duryodhana got both the army and the people, he managed to be defeated by the Pandavas who won with Sri Krishna on their side”, he added.
According to Deepak, hiring right is the motto to retaining right. He shared some of his personal experiences whilst motivating the audience to be the right leaders in their organizations. “As a leader, it is my job to understand the capabilities of the people and engage them in the right discussions while hiring them”, he said. According to him, there is easy access to plenty of information in this world, but the only thing that it (the world) lacks is experience. Along those lines, he shared multiple steps to being the right guide to people around us, while delivering on their expectations. “What do we do if people leave? We don’t retain individuals, but provide the ecosystem for the larger retention”, he said.
The speakers’ presentations were followed by an interactive panel discussion moderated by Rahul Anandani Narayan, where the HR experts answered questions and queries that were bought up by our inquisitive audience. Questions on recruitment strategies, tenure issues, building relationships and retaining top talents were posed. One of them focused on AI and its increasing significance in organisation. The leaders were asked what how they saw the impact of AI, and the role it’d play on recruiters and the process of recruitment in general.
Subhashini emphasised on AI’s reliance and focus on using large amounts of data. “For us as individuals, today we use data to an extent, when we go for a meeting, what kind of data you carry? Data is existing for us today, but how do we convert the existing data to value becomes essential. AI would be doing that for us,” she said. She continued to explain how “AI would filter this out and give [us] the most relevant [data]. How effectively we use that data becomes very important. We need to have our arms around the data and ensure that we move from a data engine towards creating a value engine.”
Deepak Gupta addressed the next question, which happened to request some strategies used by top organisations to retain their top talent. Deepak said he focuses on hiring the best, and recognising the talent that needs to be promoted over time. “You would find out how you would continue to retain them. One is the work related aspect, enough good work should be given so that they flourish. Enough recognition should be given for them to flourish. They need to be recognized and thus they will gain self esteem. The high- performers are ready to give more time to the organizations to stay where they are. Give them more and more projects and involve them even at the organization level. The most important part is to recognize and involve them.”
Addressing a question on increasing the average tenure of employees, which currently hovers around the three year mark, Deepak Taduru said, “You have to engage people to the best possible way. You need to provide the people with opportunities and the organization vision. The culture has changed from a services culture to a start-up culture. If the organization defines a vision for a career growth, that would also help.”
Subhashini added that career pathing was an individual’s responsibility. “Career pathing needs to be started at a very early stage and it needs to be planted in the minds of the individuals. Retention becomes easier after the three years have passed.”
The speakers delivered some straightforward answers, providing some refreshing clarity to the audience. The interaction also had the audience members sharing experiences and opinions of their own, in turn providing an enriched discussion to all present there. We thank our audience, and our speakers for joining us for this wonderful session.
