Past 20 months show need for cos to reshape hiring process

By Sunit Sinha

As the world continues to live under the threat of new variants of concern, businesses emerging from the Covid

pandemic

have adapted to the changes brought about by the sudden disruption. Tackling head-on the evolving challenges around inclusion, diversity and equity (IDE) in the workforce, and understanding what this means for employee experience, culture and, most importantly, the talent pool of the future is vital.

Businesses are having to challenge existing approaches to talent management and embrace a new ‘total workforce’ philosophy that fills talent gaps, going beyond the high-performers, and focusing on everyone for both current and future skill needs. That said, several trends have emerged over the last 20 months, compelling businesses to reshape talent hiring, while focusing on accelerating employee performance.

Talent hiring trends

One of the biggest impacts of the pandemic on the hiring process is the shift to the hybrid mode. This, in a way, helped expand the talent pool businesses can deep-dive into, going beyond geographical boundaries and finding the most suitable talent for the job. According to a report by a leading recruitment website, one in every two employers in India hired virtually amid the crisis. Moreover, the report also suggests that remote jobs grew 966% between April 2020 and April 2021.

Technology-enabled hiring has also diverted attention to digital skills of

employees

, wherein an employer is now increasingly looking for tech-savvy people who bring much value to the remote working nature of most jobs.

The hybrid form of working has given much-needed space and choice to employees (who can now work from anywhere) and employers (who can now hire from anywhere in the world).

Furthermore, the hybrid working setup has accelerated performance and productivity, wherein employees are adding much more value than before. As indicated in the ‘

KPMG

2020 CEO outlook: Covid-19 special edition’ report, nearly 3 in 4 CEOs (73%) confirmed that the ability of people to work remotely has widened their potential talent pool and has led to positive results.

This has also meant that the new workforce will have to be managed differently and organisations will have to ensure that employees remain inclusive to the organisational culture and values. Performance and productivity measurement will remain an integral part of the talent nurturing, even for hybrid organisations.

For us at KPMG in India, hybrid is not just about segmentation based on the ways of working determined by working on-site or remotely. It is also about looking at a hybrid family of roles including liquid, solid, flexi, gig and neo-gig. To this, there are two major indications — First, we are now dealing with a far more heterogenous workforce role segmentation, where one standard PMS methodology cannot fit all. Second, the task at hand is to effectively manage the employee experience, be respectful and, at the same time, manage the performance and productivity of employees. Coming to employee engagement, companies should make safety and well-being of the workforce a top prerogative. To that effect, KPMG in India has been organising meditation sessions, mental health awareness sessions and regular townhalls with leadership, which we believe has have helped instil a sense of togetherness as all of us traverse through crisis. Gauging the current trends, companies will surely continue to pay more attention to role and skills-based hiring. While they are already reaping benefits of being an inclusive and flexible workplace, there is no doubt or debate that the future of work is hybrid.

Skilling, reskilling & upskilling talent

A lot has changed in the last 20 months. The future of work is already here — the changes that most businesses anticipated would take at least five years have made headway into the workforce. Business leaders have practised the art of striking a balance between reskilling and utilising the existing skills of employees, thereby increasing efficiency. Digital training modules (in-house and outsourced) have come as a boon for scaling up the skilling game.

Moreover, allocating talent more dynamically has been immensely beneficial. For starters, it has broken silos to encourage both inter- and intra-team exchange of ideas, thus fuelling knowledge-sharing to approach problem-solving collectively.

Having a diverse group of people working in a team has further scaled employee output. With the new-generation (Gen-Z) entering the workforce in the last couple of years, employees have also had to upskill them for the job.

As digital natives, they have been quick learners, who are more than willing to skill up compared to the learning habits of the previous generation of the work force.

Companies across sectors have learned and unlearned processes to build back better. By adapting to the trends emerging out of the pandemic to honing existing talent, they have realised the importance of nurturing talent right from the point of hiring.

The writer is partner and head, people, performance & culture, KPMG in India


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