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NASCOMM organised a HR forum on ‘Unconventional Talent Management – The New Normal for 2012’. This forum was sponsored by TalentSprint.
Planning Commission member Narendra Jhadav was the keynote speaker. Dr Santanu Paul, CEO & MD, Talentsprint; Ravi Shankar, senior vice-president, HCL; Gouri Gupta, strategy lead, NSDC; Sujith Kumar, location head, HR, Infosys; and Venkat Subramanian, founder & CEO, eFarm; were among the panelists for the discussion.
Education is one of the pillars of India’s ambitious growth plans. India’s youth population is its opportunity and challenge. Currently the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education system is at 15 per cent which has to be substantially improved to meet the growing job markets in key industries.
A large pool of untapped talent needs to be unlocked by providing accessible and quality education. The 12th Five-Year Plan, which will commence in 2012, has listed education as one of the priority sectors in addition to skill development, infrastructure and healthcare. About 3.5 per cent of India’s GDP is spent on education which is expected to increase to 6 per cent in the next Plan.
Conventional Talent creation/management initiatives such as the Bharath Nirman flagship programme to rejuvenate higher education; technical education; support for Centrally-funded institutes; national mission for teacher’s training will give way to new and flexible educational programmes that will promote higher education.
India Excellence is one such initiative which is aimed at creating and fostering innovative universities with greater degrees of freedom of operation. Information and communications technology will be used extensively to connect all universities and laboratories to foster multi-disciplinary research. Research and development will be the key agenda and transcend time and space limitations through flexible courses with access to any university.
Investments will also be directed to special Ph.D. programmes with highly-liberated eligibility criteria. Senior citizens will be given a platform to share their knowledge and experience. The government aims at creating 500 million skilled people by 2020 who are technically-trained copying international standards.
The panel discussion emphasised the need for vocational training, public-private partnership to foster innovative talent, introducing learn-earn continuum across educational disciplines, bridging the disconnect with tier-2 & 3 cities through cost-effective ICT solutions, enabling talent-building by identifying individual’s strength, and recognising & realising the true potential of physically challenged individuals.
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