The hard times are not over - I sure hope that stock market knows something that my clients don’t. But it’s clear that the worst is behind us. The demand destruction means that companies still have some overcapacity but I think the HR community needs to start getting ready for the next high tide. The many personal and corporate tragedies of low tide have blurred our memory of what high tide as like but India’s long term trajectory means that our ability to find skilled people at the right time will again, at some time in the not so distant future, become the binding constraint for company growth and expansion. The Skill crisis has not gone away; it has just been deferred and it is coming to bite us with compound interest.

The question for the HR fraternity to introspect about is do we pass the two tests of Noah? The first one is that predicting rain is not worth anything but building the ark is all that counts. The second is that the best time to build the ark is when it is not raining. In other words, have we taken any specific actions to build our supply chain? Have we used low tide to prepare for the next high tide? Timing is everything in life and things that are possible in low tide seem impossible in high tide.

I agree that there is probably no viable, sustainable and scalable business model for Corporate India to manufacture its own employees; it is very hard to get clear financial returns on training investments at entry level skills. Even if a company invests the money there are three holes in the bucket; the first is when candidate goes through training but does not qualify for the job, the second is when the candidate get training, get the job but is not productive and the third is when the candidate goes through training, gets the jobs, is productive but leaves. So I think the privatization of skill development may largely refer to private delivery but we will have to find other solutions to funding. There have been a lot of public policy initiatives in skill development; Modular Employment, National Skill Development Corporation, ITI PPPs, National Skill Co-ordination Board, etc but these have taken longer than we thought for them to show up in outcomes where the rubber meets the road. But there is nothing more powerful than idea whose time has come and education and employability reform are ideas whose time has come.

Our ability to get the right person at the right time in the right place became the speed limit to taking advantage of high tide last time. India is getting ready for its next next high tide and this will be broader, deeper and more ferocious than last time. The global crisis has made India more attractive and what is happening in India is not once in a decade or once in a millennium but once in the lifetime of a country. Those in the HR fraternity that will take the time and attention to build an sustainable and scalable people supply chain will be putting themselves at the heart of their companies corporate strategy. Because if strategy is defined as the art of creating an unfair advantage, there will no unfair advantage for companies in India like a people supply chain that is able to match qualified candidates, repair last mile candidates and prepare their pipeline candidates.

Uncategorized Manish Sabbarwal