Feature

The solution to staff shortages

The workforce is the foundation and stronghold of a company. Renuka Vembu on how to maintain a healthy pipeline of people to tackle any unforeseen staffing problem

The human capital is touted as the most important, influential and impactful asset of an organization. While excess of workforce is not only an organizational wastage of resources, it is also an idle reservoir of people’s knowledge capabilities getting depleted. Likewise, in case of shortage of people, productivity at the team level and individual level gets hampered. This leads to a negative impact on client relationships, and might affect the brand name and goodwill of the organization.

So, a company, must clearly at all times, be adequately staffed and have backups in place for contingencies.

Reasons for dearth of employees

Shortfall of skilled labor pool has been a perennial problem the IT industry has been facing and the gap is not expected to bridge soon. This may pose a concern for organizations that are involved in serving clients on specialized projects needing niche skill sets and hands-on experience.

In other cases, it may be because of a sudden project or a slew of assignments that a company has bagged for which there was no proper planning undertaken over the course of time. This might catch them unaware and render them weak to handle the unforeseen inflow.

The volatile market conditions and unpredictable client requirements may typically put companies in a fix over employee requisites.

Some of the other extreme circumstances might be if a group of people in an unexpected turn of events decide to quit and the team finds itself in isolation.

Debi Prasad Das, Head of HR, Atos Origin India, added poor planning as one of the key reasons. He said, “An ideal organization structure should be that of a pyramid starting with the least experienced at the base and moving up. To maintain this structure, an organization should plan its staff acquisition in advance and with the correct experience spread. During the periods of slowdown, the first action is to terminate hiring of fresher and junior staff and only focus on experienced staff with niche skill.” This though serving the short-term purpose, causes the organization pyramid to get distorted resulting in a bulge in the middle layer which takes years to rectify.

According to Joe Lazar, Director HR, Analog Devices India, lack of clear technology road-maps, a hazy picture of the mission and vision of the organization and HR related issues pertaining to hiring and retention plays its part in building a capable workforce, and these same factors can contribute to its downfall too. He said, “Such situations can be amended through a careful analysis of the situation through data collected through different sources and proper strategies, plans need to be in place and this would encompass a clear well thought out vision for the whole organization and appropriate implementation of the strategies.”

Assessment and planning

A host of broad initiatives can come in handy in case an organization finds itself in want of more people. The out-of-the-blue needs need not necessarily give them the blues. Some of the steps to abide by are:

• Proper projection, allocation and examination of resources
• Providing requisite training, reskilling and upgrading competency levels of the staffs
• Employee engagement and retention
• Periodical job rotation
• Cross-functional training
• Back-up and succession planning

Sankarlingam, Chief Operating Officer, Amtex Systems, mentioned, “In order to overcome such situations, proper planning in a systematic process is required to identify and address the gaps.” With a proper plan set towards achieving this goal, the existing workforce could then accordingly be asked to take more responsibilities, the need for multi-tasking could be stressed for, the employees could be rotated in the different departments/projects, temporary staff could be hired, some amount of work could be outsourced, etc.

Rani Desai, VP and Head, Human Resources, Geometric Limited, felt that a strong resource and competency management system helps address such situations. It is also extremely important to have a good project management system in place which helps identify such potential trends, synchronized with the competency management system. This helps get a good handle on resource and competency requirements trends. An effective assessment of what is in pipeline in terms of business also helps in planning for recruitment and training of technical resources. Therefore, it is prudent that there is integration between sales, operations and HR in the organization and that they work in close collaboration.

The repercussions

Not having the required number, quality or expertise of employees in a given function, role or level, is detrimental to organizational development. At the team level, the morale in low, productivity plunges, too much work pressure paves way for too many quirks and in grave cases, health concerns too. Too much pressure on employees over a prolonged time period can lead to attrition too.

At the larger organizational level, service delivery to clients suffers, and the company might take a hit on its brand name and goodwill. Its market position and standing, by way of word-of-mouth publicity and business standing, will be stunted.

Work hiccups, underperformance or delay in output is zero acceptable in today’s workplace. When the matter becomes worse, the worst affected is the entire organizational ecosystem.

Nitya Nivali, HR Head, Progress Software India, explained, “Having a common talent-pool approach to build the overall bench strength of the organization is an effective practice that can help any organization to sail through the situation of temporary staff shortage. The organization must effectively nurture and develop a pool of employees to draw from, for the deployment purposes. They must also have a set of in-house candidates ready to meet the challenge.”

A company needs to structure itself in teams with broader ownership than just individual tasks. This allows easy temporary redeployment. It needs to consider talents from every part of the organization as a possible successor for the positions and build a flexible team that allows for temporary redeployment, if the necessity arises.

As Desai pointed out concisely, proper project planning, robust processes, standardized quality control processes, and review mechanisms, help manage the situation with the given resources and available means.

Lazar reflected on the ways that can help ease the grim situation, “Working closely with the business groups and keeping an active talent inventory and effectively churning the internal employee database (from skills availability and referencing program perspective) is the key. In the end, it is all about having the right people possessing the right skills in place at the right time.”

Positive lessons to learn

Nivali explained, “An organization emerging out of the situation unscathed will become more agile and nimble. They will eventually grow out of their teams of engineers who tend to lock themselves into specific cubby-holes of skill sets. They need to be more dynamic and stay in touch with the technology trends and be prepared to take on varied activities as and when need arises.” As an organization, companies must also keep a forward looking watch on the shifts and business directions and be pro-active in identifying skill needs.

Sankarlingam gave a holistic approach. He asserted that from the company’s perspective, one should sharpen the business focus, define its customer base clearly, realize the true potential of the workforce and figure out ways to leverage the company’s high-performing products and services to the best possible extent.” Employees on the other hand, should understand and appreciate the importance of team work and cooperation, be prepared to take the onus of responsibility, seek to be updated with the current status of the domain of one’s work and get themselves well trained in their own domain, and if possible, some others as well.

Every hurdle throws up an opportunity. Similarly, a sudden scare can jerk companies out of the slumber. While in case of employees, flexibility, agility, out-of-the-box thinking, handling extreme pressures, being accommodative to team needs and on-the-spot demands, strong emotional quotient apart from mental stamina, are the needs of the hour. They have to be resilient enough to face trials at the workplace.

When it comes to an organization, proper planning, allocation, execution, timely assessment and revision, contingency plan, adaptable change management, succession planning, are the factors that would drive a sudden spur in demand and help adjust resources to accommodate these business obligations. A tough task emerging from these testing times will be a lesson for all future endeavors.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com