Global skills explosion - how the top companies are responding to the rapid demand for new skills in new locales

Abstract

Executive Summary Businesses today are operating in a new era of intense competitive pressure arising from global integration. These conditions are driving start up, expansion, and or relocation of offices and skills to new countries, provinces and cities around the world. This is turn is driving a spike in the demand for the right quantity and mix of skills in a local work force that was not previously required in that location. In this context, the project aims to benchmark the different practices adopted by organizations to meet their skill needs. The intention is to reaffirm the confidence of organizations with respect to their skill development practices, to spread the best practices and to suggest possible solutions to the skill shortage problem. The project started with a literature review based on which a comprehensive interview schedule was prepared on how organizations respond to the skills challenge. Data was collected after interviewing managers of 5 companies in the IT industry, logistics sector, worldwide supply chain arm of a global corporation and BPO industry. The results were collated and analyzed. It was found that most of the companies adopted similar mechanisms to deal with the skills shortage. They all believed recruitment, training, effective deployment, checking attrition, good forecasting of skill needs, mentoring/shadowing, job rotation and knowledge management as effective methods to develop skills. However, the way in which each of these systems was implemented differed in these organizations. Also the thrust laid on the different mechanisms differed and depended on strategic imperatives. 3 The skills are analyzed along six different dimensions in the concluding section of the report. A framework for the policy to be adopted is recommended, recognizing the inherent tradeoffs involved in choosing a particular mechanism. Further, choosing a right strategy is not sufficient and implementation holds the key for the successful tackling of the problem. A small survey was conducted to find out the effectiveness of the various skill development programs in one of the participating companies, as perceived by the employees. Surprisingly, a lot of the practices adopted by the company left scope for improvement with respect to their effectiveness, as revealed by the employee survey.