Hiring, firing and nurturing: The Indian boss' routine
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 14:32 IST
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Hiring, firing and nurturing: The Indian boss' routine
Kolkata: Is the growth and profit margin of organization the immediate concern for the CEO. Well, if you are an Indian boss the priority seems to be a bit different. It goes like - hire fire and retain talent as quoted by Writankar Mukherjee of ET. Vishal Bali, CEO of Fortis Hospitals, testifies that almost 50 percent of his working hours are spent in creation of a talent pool, growing it, strategic recruitment, retention and evaluating training opportunities. "With the high growth trajectory that Indian companies are seeing, talent management and creation are emerging as key responsibilities. A good talent pool is a must to create a cycle of high growth," says Bali, who administers 4,300 employees. Indian CEOs spend 60-70 percent of their time planning on recruitments and talent retention as per a recent study. However, their global equivalents are more worried about sustaining their organization's growth rate. The study, 'Are CEOs expected to be magicians?', done by senior executive search firm BTI Consultants, part of the global HR consultancy Kelly Services, says for Indian CEOs, talent management is increasingly getting linked to performance. "Indian CEOs have realized that to meet growth targets, they need to retain talent within the organization and hire good quality people. If human capital is in place, other responsibilities of the CEO like meeting external challenges and building a robust organization will fall in place," says BTI Consultants director and business head (India) James Agrawal. The study which sampled 30 top-flight CEOs for the Indian data, says Indian CEOs estimated to play the different roles of leadership, project management and coaching with key competencies like operational management skills, financial acumen and last but not least, the most sought after good HR skills. "In India, expectations from CEOs are much higher. The kind of pressure put on them is not realistic," says Agrawal. He says companies in India give CEOs one to two years to prove themselves, but globally, their average tenure is three to four years. He also added that in new economy sectors like IT, ITeS and telecom, the average time to prove oneself is even lower.

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