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Saurabh Singh

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Saurabh Singh

National Head

Pearson TalentLens

Saurabh Singh is a member of:

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Briefly Tell Us About Your Company and How Your Business Helps Organizations Shape HR Strategies

We are a talent assessment company which develops and publishes assessment and solutions to identify and develop the right mix of talent for an organization, supplemented with critical skills and behaviors which are shaping the next generation managers and leaders.

What, according to you, is the biggest pain point for HR?

Managing diverse talent across generation, encouraging and engaging them to work together and off course collaborating with different businesses, translating & understanding the business goals, and transforming talent into assets who can fulfill that vision. Controlling attrition and contributing to low operation cost to the company.

How do you help organizations Motivate Employees and keep them engaged?

Know their pulse that drives them. It could be work related, people related, idea related, it could be a hobby-but you should know what it is and see if that driver has a scope to be included in the job function that any individual is supposed to perform. We recommend organizations to understand and map motivational drivers and include it into the job role in a way that it becomes one of the deliverables. There are different ways to engage employees. Our globally popular personality assessment, SOSIE is used by organizations to measure personal and interpersonal drivers of workplace motivation. Organizations use the SOSIE to develop programs to engage and thereby retain talent.

When organizations hire people what are they essentially looking for?

Pearson TalentLens believes there are four essential skills that all organizations need in their workforce to stay afloat and be profitable in today’s rapidly changing business environment. These are the Four Cs- Crticial Thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration.

Brief some of the leadership development programs where your assessments have been used and the results obtained.

1. Accelerated leadership program in India's largest business conglomerate in petrochemicals and retail, where Pearson TalentLen's Watson- Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (W-GCTA), that identifies critical thinking skills and Raven's progressive matrices, that identifies learnability and problem-solving skills, are deployed to identify the right talent which is then exposed to a series of fast track sessions to create future leaders.

2. Assessment and Development centres at organizations in ITes and IT industries- Pearson TalentLens conducts the assessment centre process for these companies for IJP and high-pot identification. Applicants are taken through a series of assessment intervention where multiple observers evaluate for various leadership and functional competencies that they are required to display in future roles. This leads to highly objective and valid analyses that are fair to applicants and the company. Pearson TalentLens uses assessments such as its SOSIE personality test and Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, and techniques such as case studies, in-basket, role play, and BEI in the assessment matrix.

How does Pearson TalentLens help identify leaders and promote them to the next level?

We believe when you are trying to identify leaders across any level, the key is to find that one critical trait which differentiates them easily. A higher order thinking skill like a Critical Thinking becomes an important differentiator, apart from other key behavioural traits like influencing, creativity and effective communication. Organisations have unique leadership DNAs and we try to understand what stands out in their leaders in terms of critical behavioural and functional competencies for that particular organization. Following this analysis, we also understand what makes them unique and successful- aligned with their organisations' vision. Then we look at defining these success factors, make it measurable through an assessment matrix which can be used to assess the aspirants in a close setting by different testing approaches. This way we can put aspirants through a process where we can compare them with the role to analyse their fitment. People with the best overall fit qualify to be considered for promotion and greater responsibilities.

How do you help recruit and retain the diverse and ambitious Generation Y?

Gen Y is a unique and iconoclastic bunch of today's workforce. They can be young, smart and brash and tend to prefer working in a flexible setting as they demand better work-life balance . They are ambitious and they question. They find solutions and have methods to their madness. Identifying and retaining them could be both easy and difficult depending on the organisational culture and lifecycle. They tend to flourish in transparent and go getter settings. Some of the top wish list for employment that Gen Y carries:

•   Work/life balance
•   To be heard and valued
•   Regular recognition
•   Work in a fun atmosphere
•   Motivated by challenge and a collaborative environment

Again, Pearson TalentLens's SOSIE personality test helps identify workplace motivators for Gen Y, that an inform engagement strategies in organizations.