Delivering serendipity, at scale

How organizations can consistently hire the right people at the right time at the right cost

Piyush Mehta, CHRO, Genpact

Are some people just born lucky? What got me started thinking about this was a (supposedly true) anecdote I recently read about American author Anne Parrish. She and her husband once walked into a quaint second-hand bookstore in Paris. Spotting a used book that she’d loved as a child and casually handing it to her husband, she told him how it had been a favorite of hers. He flipped open the book, and to their amazement, found that the first page of the book had Ms Parrish’s name and the address of her childhood home, written in her own hand. Are you convinced that was just serendipity? In my career, I’ve seen too many instances of the right person being at the right place at the right time to believe in mere coincidences.

?I feel like even serendipity rewards those who are prepared. Most often, the right person for any job is the one who accurately predicts the skills required for the ever-changing world of work, presciently upskills before the need even arises, and is resilient and unfazed until a goal is achieved and the right job is found. Think of the American romantic comedy ‘Serendipity,’ and instead of Kate Beckinsale meeting John Cusack, imagine your dream role or company reaching out to you. (Yes, rom-coms are my guilty pleasure too!) You can get there by working at being the rightly-skilled person present at the right time and the right place.

?But what about organizations? How can they do this? Here’s what I think.

Internal-first

When building a resourcing strategy for our organization’s demand for talent, our first port of call is ‘internal-first!’ We buy talent only when we need complex and new skills that cannot be found internally. And even in that case… we work to ensure that our internal upskilling engine caters to future demands of the skills that we’re buying today. ?Remember, too, that our greatest assets, our people, have hopes and dreams of their own. And it is only at the intersection of their career aspirations and our client problems that a winning outcome can be created for all. We are fostering a culture that prioritizes un-learning and re-learning and rewards curiosity and incisiveness. As the skills needed for the future rapidly evolve, our focus is to empower our employees to reskill and upskill rapidly. This also enables us to prevent the negative spiral of constantly letting go of redundant skills and buying newer skills from the market.

At Genpact, our significant investments in Genome, our industry pioneering learning platform inspired by work done at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, really helps. Our internal learning framework enables all our 90,000+ employees to learn skills that are highly relevant to their current roles and their future aspirations, allowing them to apply for open positions anywhere in the organization across the globe. This also helps make our people accountable for driving their own careers with the reins to their individual learning journeys firmly in their hands. And they then – often and consistently – raise their hands for new opportunities that help them pursue a better career and life. In turn, having these thinkers and doers onboard empowers us in our relentless pursuit of a world that works better for people.

Technology everywhere!

Whether we forecast demand for talent or push for supply visibility, we leverage technology and data analytics to re-shape our people supply chain. Our aim is to create a robust, scalable, resilient talent pipeline designed to meet business objectives while being agile to adapt to future demands, invest in the right tools, technologies, and reporting and visualization solutions. We use data mining and analytics to capture insights from multiple touchpoints and leverage them across the talent supply chain. Think about automation-led experience and efficiency boosters in areas as diverse as candidate screening and assessments, onboarding, and demand-supply matching, among others. We leverage the power of data, analytics, and six-sigma to drive visibility and reduce variations across the chain. Organizations today can also use tool-driven data on the supply side to push rotation plans for employees before time and then match the two with intelligent algorithms to help make informed bets on high-potential talent.

Also, the goal is to make everyone in the company own these metrics! In our organization, our demand forecasting and talent strategy are led by our global COO and yours-truly. Driving resourcing strategy is not just an HR job! For us, it is everyone’s job. To realize the benefits, everyone signs up for the operating metrics regardless of their direct control. This also requires new ways of working and discipline across functions for everyone to work in harmony with end-to-end visibility from Demand to Supply. When everyone in the organization is engaged and motivated, organizations will see managers embracing new policies and managing attrition easily.

It all boils down, as always, to our people and technology. And making the best of both can help deliver serendipity at scale, helping your organization and your people have the happy accident they always wished for!