We go to a doctor when we are unwell. What does the doctor do? First, the doctor asks us several questions on the state of our health, how we are feeling, etc. If required the doctor then asks to get some tests done such as X Ray or blood diagnostics and so on.

The same is true for a financial counsellor. When one goes to a financial counsellor to take investment advice, the counsellor first analyses the “as is” position – current earnings and current savings and then analyses our temperament – our risk appetite, our lifestyle etc. He then uses his knowledge of the various financial instruments, their behaviour, pluses and minuses and makes us recommendations.

In short any consultant or a counsellor does two things – one diagnosis and then prescribe solutions.

The same should be or is true for HR specialist. We are expected to diagnose and prescribe solutions to individuals and organisations. When an individual approaches a HR specialist for advice on career development, the HR specialist should be diagnosing the “as is” state of the individual’s career and its related aspects. These would include the kind of progress the individual has made so far, the capabilities one has built, the aspirations of the individual and so on. Then the HR specialist is expected to prescribe solutions for the individual. The prescription comes from the HR specialist’s knowledge of the talent market, the pros and cons of various options, industry analysis and so on. The prescription has to be tailor made to the individual’s psyche or personality and specific to the individual. What works for one will not work for another. For instance, one who is looking for security and stability and is risk averse maybe advised to look for options within one’s industry or even company.

1. Good analysis of the individual’s as is state – hard (for example achievements, experiences) and soft (temperament, aspirations)
2. Good understanding of trends and behaviour related to the market dynamics and
3. Tailor making prescriptions for the individual or organisations

HR personnel need to be real custodians of latest trends and market behaviour. In my view there is little conscious investment by HR folks in this area because of which they are not able to assert themselves in the same manner that medical professionals are able to do in the field of medicine and financial counsellors do in the field of finance. Talent should be nurtured as the core domain of HR folks and if they need to establish themselves as such then their richness, comprehensiveness and awareness of latest trends should be as it is for specialists in other fields.

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.