Business Continuity is a key risk mitigation strategy that enterprises adopt to respond to adverse events. Business Continuity is considered an uncool governance activity due to its focus on infrastructure readiness centric activity i.e. planning for network redundancy, backups, RTO & RPO etc. There is detailed framework for risk evaluation and BCP planning. This will be discussed in the next blog.
The focus of this blog is to analyze the impact of talent on Business Continuity planning. Our experience at Talent Neuron indicates that organizations seldom think about talent risk as a key trigger point for business continuity initiatives. Based on our extensive experience in Global Talent Planning and Management we have identified the following key parameters as the ‘Talent Triggers’ for Business Continuity planning
- Interviewed All – This trigger is gradual in nature. Companies never realize when they have hit this point of saturation. Typically in an upbeat market, about 15% to 20% of workforce is actively seeking jobs (considering an average attrition rate of 15% to 20%). Which means within 5 to 8 years your organization would have interviewed or hired a majority of the eligible candidates in the market . However there will be a small set of passive candidates who would not have been interviewed.
- Hunting Ground – This is possible when a lot of new companies enter the market. This is the downside of being in a high growth market. When a new start-up emerges they hunt your organization for key talent. This is not volume attrition but focused hunting for key technical brains. Impact of such a hunt is huge and can make or break your organization’s success in the short term
- Big Fish in Small Pond – This is typical for companies, which become too big in a small market. Our benchmarks indicate that if an organization’s workforce is over 8% to 10 % of the total talent in the market then there is a huge risk exposure (This number can be higher depending on the market dynamics and Government support). Every peer company in the market would want to hire from your organization. This risk is similar to ‘Hunting Ground’ but here the hunt is in volume across multiple levels
- Shunted Growth – In this scenario, the talent pool in the city is not expanding at a steady pace. This may be due to the lack of a good university ecosystem, city losing its charm, unemployment in other verticals forcing talent to move out, rapidly increasing costs, infrastructure not keeping pace with development etc. Lack of growth in the overall ecosystem will create either a stagnant or shrinking talent pool, which increases the talent risk profile. This is a dangerous situation to be in.
- Hate the City – Deteriorating external market conditions changes the perception of the city making it unattractive for top talent. This again is not in within an organization’s control and happens over a period of time.
- Expensive – Cost of talent increases year-on-year making is less viable for your company to hire talent in the city.
Now that the triggers have been identified, how do you sense them and put in place mitigation strategies?
Triggers 1, 2 and 3 are internal to your organization. The changes will be gradual and sometimes unnoticeable. HR groups are best positioned to identify this early. If your HR can sense the early signals and trigger Business continuity initiative (Talent Availability Initiatives), then your organization can take control of the situation and avoid a slow death. Sensing early signals is the role of talent planning and acquisition stakeholders. Their role is to capture the right metrics and analyze the trend. Talent acquisition teams are your foot soldiers and can provide great insights about talent. Key is to have a well-defined Talent Planning Process in your organization so your HR leader is best positioned to own this initiative from the Talent Availability Initiative standpoint.
Triggers 4,5 and 6 are external to market. Organizations do not have much control on these triggers (baring few exceptions). The best approach is to consistently monitor the market trends. Being abreast with market is challenging and takes lot of talent acquisition/planning effort (translates to expensive dollars). Again this can be the role of either corporate planning teams or the HR teams. Corporate planning teams are best placed to undertake this at global level, while HR teams can lead the initiative at country/geography level.
Talent Neuron – Right Talent | Right Location
Talent Neuron can help you with an effective solution. Our understanding of the triggers has helped us define a solution, which can help you achieve your goals. Our data driven approach will provide ground level insights on the talent market, hiring trends, compensation, talent pool availability by skill, talent pool growth and university ecosystem (Triggers 1 to 3) which are important for talent planning and hiring. Talent Neuron also provides holistic view of a city by capturing over 200+ location parameters, which will help you to understand the slow transitions in the market (Trigger 4 to 6).
). More than we hear this, we do hear lot of people talking about how the ecosystem is constrained, a number of challenges that exist and that India is not yet a “start-up” nation. Sure they have lot of data to support these as well. I also had more or less the same picture in my mind for a long time, but this is fast changing as I see some quality action in this space. Below are my quick observations on the “product ecosystem in India”:
