Strategies for recognizing good talent and rewarding employees | Deepak Shanbhag | CEO | Property Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. (PSIPL)

One of the most relevant principles of leadership strategy is to create more leaders. This is one of the strongest quality indicators for a leader to identify promising talent. It is pivotal to strategy implementation, organizational evolution and sustained business growth.

Today, the business landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace. The margins of trial and error for ideation, validation, planning and execution are almost negligible for organizations in any industry. Interestingly, there are also equally promising growth opportunities if organizational strategies are executed efficiently and successfully.

Human capital will always be a key facet of any organization’s growth despite technology driving a major part of solutions and services. At Property Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. (PSIPL), human capital is the core inventory and its harmony with all other aspects of service delivery is key to client satisfaction. Providing growth opportunities to our employee base of 15,000 is at the core of our company’s values. We have conceptualized marquee training programmes to enhance the skillset of our employees. Our site lead training programs include Facility Manager Development Program (FMDP) and Operations Manager Development Program (OMDP). We have curated programmes for training onsite, such as Workplace Coaches (WPC) where sets of trained site employees conduct an incentive plan based training for their co- workers. With the rapid pace at which technology is taking over daily repetitive activities, continual upskilling of human capital is now more critical than ever before.

We offer training and development programs that are on- going during the job tenure of the employees, which enable them to consistently develop their skills and deliver better value to clients. Today, leaders not only have to create business strategies but also align their teams with these strategies with equal focus and precision in order to achieve objectives. The non- alignment of employees’ vision with the leader’s strategy right since the execution stage certainly leads to process deviations and exceptions mismatch. Essentially, this may result in the company’s inability to meet its objectives as planned.

At the crux of any organization is its ability to recognize and recruit the right talent that can align their values and strategic aptitude with that of the company’s. Industry- specific skill requirements are not the first qualification criteria anymore. These skill requirements can be taught if the talent has the right aptitude for the job. Talent screening by companies also includes how the talent views the organization. At PSIPL, we use tools for psychometric assessment to assess if the talent is the right fit for the job through objective based technology interventions.

Leaders are responsible for the critical deliverable of percolation of organization’s goals and values to each employee, across levels and work spheres. While this is communicated at the time of recruitment, it usually loses its significance post employee on- boarding. Whereas, the outcome of such initiatives is largely impactful and yet entirely intangible.

At PSIPL, the organization’s goals and values form an integral part of the interactions at both formal and informal levels. We conduct innovative interventions such as ‘Skip Level Interactions’ and ‘Mid- Year Appraisal Meetings.’

These critical engagements are key activities for me and my team at PSIPL to ensure that the team is steered in the right direction and gaps if any are filled on time. A sustained effort to execute these two initiatives sends a very positive and strong message to every employee at PSIPL. The initiatives have been appreciated by our employees and have resulted in seamless communication across employee levels.

The key to achieving business efficiency is to streamline processes at all levels and meticulously prepare a robust and qualified developmental plan, followed by its effective outcome- based implementation. Assessing the impact of such interventions on the client’s end is the final testimony of the effectiveness of such programs.

A concerted effort with the above aspects allows organizations to hire the appropriate talent and then develop them in a direction that is aptly aligned with the goals and vision of the organization. This also aides in offering a well- defined career path to high performers while rigorously training the ones with identified improvement plans.

Such a holistic ecosystem ensures that the employees are rewarded well through better roles and training plans as they grow along with the organization. At PSIPL, we are curating a quality index for interdepartmental Net Promoter Score (NPS) to ensure that all efforts are guided towards the organization’s goals. Facility Quality Index (FQI) is one such metric to measure and gauge the overall service quality of PSIPL at sites.