People are the most important assets in any organization – one of the most repeated corporate mission statement in industry and business , more so in the knowledge economy . But , how many of such organizations invest wisely in this important asset who may walk out of the door on any particular day ! . Not very many , I feel , in spite of all the hype and branding done to attract talent .
Today , training and development is generally taken as a cost , part of the SG&A {Selling, General and Administrative } costs,at least in accounting practices. No one talks about investment in people and show it as a future revenue stream and work in progress . In fact , there is a conscious effort to bring this cost down when the chips are down as it happened during the global recession.
Every organization wants job ready freshers from the colleges as if colleges do customized teaching for them . The primary objective of a professional college is to make a student employable by imparting the right knowledge and application skills and not to get he or she employed by a particular company . The potential will be there but the job fitting has to be done by the company during induction and familiarization phase . This is a critical stage for any employee or the organization where not only job readiness is achieved but cultural integration also happens .
The first steps need to be revisited periodically as and when necessary to re-skill employees for different roles in their career progression . Those who has the potential for managerial roles need to get streamed for further development through on the job apprenticeship , mentoring and trial assignments .
Another neglected area is the lack of coordination between performance appraisals and employee development . In many cases, appraisals are used only for salary administration and promotions . This is a very narrow and self defeating process . There should be a constant dialogue and feed back built into the performance appraisal system duly linking it with the potential and aspirations of the employee. Many a times , the absence of such a process leads to attrition and avoidable separation of good and promising employees .
Investing in people is a top management priority job which cannot be relegated to any HR Department . The department can creatively design processes to enable the growth and development of people but the overall responsibility should rest with line managers at all levels .
A fully integrated and carefully orchestrated investment policy and plans for people is a true force multiplier in today’s competitive market place.