Let us look at some of the possible options before the management or leadership of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to mitigate the challenges in talent development of their human resource.

Mapping the available capabilities in the organization to the Business Plan by taking stock of them will enable SME’s to arrive at the required capabilities. This inventory assessment exercise need not be a time consuming one. Keep it simple and short will enhance effectiveness. The managers themselves could conduct such an exercise or else use the services of external consultants or tools like the one in training orbit. Similarly, identifying the required capabilities as per the vision and the business plan will help in identifying gaps in the capabilities inventory.

The inevitable priority of the day- to- day operations may take precedence over the long- term goals, leadership is as much interested in building a strong managerial workforce with adequate capabilities, which would take the organisation to the next stage. A particular SME, diversifying into news products, services or market segments will require expertise in business development. A SME, moving into a phase of consolidation and organisation building would be interested in putting operation processes and systems in place. This would mean that identifying the personnel from within the organisation, who can be trained and then training them on these responsibilities. Thus, narrowing what is required for the future and picking up the right people for training, in these areas will help the SMEs. At the same time, it may be prudent not to attempt “the” right person for training in these capabilities but choosing a “set” of most probable personnel who could be trained in these areas. The risk of focusing on just one person can be detrimental. The person may leave or may not prove to be the best or ideal fit for the responsibilities.

Sponsorships to outside programmes may be better option for SMEs rather than opting for house programmes, where a certain critical size of participants is required. However, in such cases input on the upcoming relevant programmes become critical. The challenge is finding the sources, which inform about upcoming training events. Portals such as the Training Orbit feed this challenge, as they give a calendar of the programmes, coming up in the different areas and the different locations.

The constraints of time- do not have enough people to spare a sizeable number for an external programme and space - do not have training room to accommodate 20 odd people at one time. They can be overcome by doing simple things, such as breaking the programmes into smaller modules, of one to two hours and conducted within the work area, or shop floor. Using experienced and qualified resources from within the organisation, to take such courses is a good option. If it has to be an external faculty then it is preferable to have someone from the same city or town so that the faculty can come, a number of times for short durations.

SMEs need not to fret over the difficulties in developing their resource, because of the size. There are mature options if there is a will to help in executing the development plans.

Unlike large firms, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face a big challenge in training their staff. However, good planning will help meet this challenge successfully.

SMEs employ over 80% of the workforce across geographies. At the same time, they face enormous business challenges including their difficulty in scaling up, investing in innovation and research and maintaining growth. One of the reasons for these, is the lack of development of the human resources. Finding and hiring talent for SMEs itself is a big challenge. However, developing them to deliver the long term vision of the leadership is an even bigger one.

SMEs, given their size and other business challenges, face many issues related to human resource development. The problems come from number of factors including the size of the workforce, the (lack of) maturity of the HR function and (limitations in) execution of development plans.

The size of the organization poses very simple operational issues. Large companies can afford to release their staff for training programmes given the support mechanism available (absence of an employee can be covered up by the others in the department), the less dependency on individuals (given the strength of the processes) and predictable and planned business operations. SMEs do not have these advantages. Given the small number of staff, releasing even one person for a training programme can hamper the day to day operations. Similarly given the small size organising and conducting an in-house training programme would be difficult, where typically around 20 participants would be ideal.

The lack of HR function is another contributing factor to the efforts in training employees in SMEs. HR function when available in SMEs are mostly operational in nature which takes care of the basics such as payroll, statutory compliances, benefits administration and others. They may lack either the bandwidth or the capability to take care of the higher order activities of human resourceurces development such as as capabilities assessment, identification of gaps in capabilities of the workforce vis a vis that required as per the business plan and planning for the fulfillment of the gaps.

The leadership often understands the need for the human resources development and would like to focus on it. However, they are constrained in executing their development intentions. This could be due to factors such as lack of dedicated personnel for human resource development, as we saw earlier, priority of the immediate business goals taking over the priorities of the long term, inability to adequately invest in the development effort or being able to inculcate the spirit of human resource development in the second line. Thus the intention of the leadership remains unfulfilled to the detriment of the organization.

In the next posting we will examine some ideas by which SMEs could manage these challenges.

We have today incorporated a new feature in Training Orbit. Users can now indicate their proficiency levels against their skills when constructing their tDNA. We have kept the proficiency levels to three levels (Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3). We have defined the levels such that the user can relate to the same irrespective of which skill they choose. This is significant simplicity.

While researching how levels of capabilities are being notified, I found that there is too much of text which are given as indicators for different levels of proficiency. One tends to get lost in the process of reading the text and relating to the actual real life scenario. We have instead tried to define the levels in a manner where any user can relate to them with no difficulty and is practical. This is the way I believe it should be - simple and real. Let us take a real life scenario. Lets take the case of language proficiency. We can create a ten point scale for the proficiency with various kinds of indicators at each level or create a simple level which is practical. When asked whether we know a language. These are the normal responses - "I know little bit", "I can speak with difficulty", "I can speak very well", "I am fluent", "I am an expert", "I write very well".

We have created the three levels from these kind of real life responses to skills -

Level 1 - indicates beginning stage, learning phase, not so fluent, error prone etc.

Level 2 - indicates fluency, flawlessness, something which has become natural to oneself

Level 3 - indicates mastery, expert level, higher levels of depth etc.

We have also consciously stayed away from branding the proficiency level like beginner, expert, master, and so on. In my experience such branding diverts the attention of the user to analysing and judging whether the words are correct. Further, such branding also has an element of value judgment attached to the words which makes an individual uncomfortable. We have thus refrained from using words which individuals can associate their skills in the most simple yet appropriate manner.

This is a very important article re-emphasizing a significant trend which we have been noticing for years now and are seeing accelerate even further. The analysis is primarily from the prevailing scenario in the US. However, I feel there are points which have implications or are indicators of things happening and to come world over.

Some of the key points made in this artilce include:

- recession has accelerated the process of finding alternates to permanent jobs including automation, temping, outsourcing and so on

- "diminishing job security is also widening the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers

- "....26% of the US workforce had jobs that were in one way or another "nonstandard". That includes independent contractors, temps, part-times, and freelancers."

Read:

The Disposable Worker - from the Business Week

My comments:

The fact that we are in turbulent times when change is accelerating the changes in the engagement model between the employer and the employee. This phenomenon of temping is not new. It has always been there. Labour was hired during the harvest season (seasonal workers). I worked in a PSU and notice that 30% of the labour was on contract (this was twenty years back). However, what may be new is that the so called temping and alternate models of engagement are happening at skilled and managerial levels too. Well, maybe we thought these levels were permanent. It is not. Alternate modes of engagement will increase for many reasons. Only one of them is the recession or the consciousness to reduce costs of labour. The other reason is also the changing attitude of the individuals to the engagement patterns of the yester-years. Many are opting voluntarily and consciously out of the corporate permanent regimen which would then force the corporates to find alternate engagement models if they desire to engage this pool of talent.

Whichever way it may be - whether the alternate engagement models are a consequence of changing behaviour of human beings or is driven by the organisations due to economic necessities, one thing is clear - the individual will have to take responsibility for one's career. And this includes career from a holistic perspective i.e. what is expected from work, how one wants to manage ones life for now and the future and so on. The era of individualisation demands maturing of individuals to take responsibility for their selves.