HR SPECIAL .................Looking for change? Try your co's job platform

Looking for change? Try your co's job platform





Firms Help Staff Crowdsource Inputs On In-House Networks To Boost Careers

When employees need career advice, they usually turn to the HR manager or the immediate line manager. If that doesn't help, chances are they will look outside and may even land new jobs, resulting in loss of talent. Such situations can be averted if organizations channelize career advice to employees.

An internal job marketplace is one such tool where advice can be crowdsourced to help shape employee careers. Such a system breaks down the barriers between HR or reporting managers and employees, who can openly seek career advice from in-house “counsellors“. This gives organizations a greater chance to retain employees.

HCL Technologies, which has launched `Career Connect', believes the best people who can give career advice are those who have charted out new paths and career directions for themselves. While employees can rely on such people for advice, it also helps the organization understand people's aspirations.

Prithvi Shergill, chief HR officer, HCL Technologies, said, “We realized we have to make such a system available to employees. So we enable a platform virtually on Career Connect and physically run internal career fairs, which help people aspiring for particular positions to seek advice and connect with those who can add value to their career path as well as talk to the hiring managers for those positions. We see this as an internal career marketplace so it is easier to find a job inside than outside.“

Shergill said there are more than 45,000-odd conversations going on at the moment, with people creating their own networks, taking ownership of their careers and managing it themselves.The system also ensures people don't sit on a single project for long. “This way we ensure people rotate assignments after 18-36 months in a project. With the kind of changes taking place at the workplace, employees need to constantly reinvent themselves,“ said Shergill.

Some companies engage in crowdsourcing for select employees through the referral route. Jayanthi Vaidyanathan, director-HR, PayPal India, said it hosts career development workshops, mentoring and personal branding sessions across the year.“We ensure talent visibility for our employees across the APAC region through our `talent council', which identifies and recognizes exceptio nal work produced by emplo yees. Through our talent leadership programme and structured job rotation schemes, we create opportunities for top talent to gain work experience with different technology and business teams across the region as well as around the world,“ said Vaidyanathan.

Prasenjit Bhattacharya, CEO, Great Place to Work Institute, India, said career fairs and crowdsourcing career ideas is catching on because “employees believe they have a career when they see role models“.

Intel, said Bhattacharya, has a career adviser network that provides employees with a platform to reach out to colleagues to build a greater understanding of any topic, professional or personal, or explore more on any geography or business unit for future job potential. The objective of the tool, he said, is career exploration and planning.

NamrataSingh

Mumbai:

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