It is party time for the infrastructure and real estate companies. The Centre is going to pump in $ 500 billion in infrastructure projects over the next five years. The realty sector continues to grow throwing open a lot of business opportunities for small, medium and large infrastructure and real estate companies.
But this time, the HR managers will not be able to hit the dance floor to rejoice as they are bogged down with the problem of talent crunch in the industry.
This is not the first time the industry is facing the music, but this time around, it is pinching them really hard as on the one hand the government is talking of huge investments in infrastructure development, and on the other hand there is no constant flow of talent. It is increasingly becoming a huge challenge for the HR guys to woo and retain talent. This is primarily because the talent pool of civil engineers available in the market is very limited and the quality is no where near what the industry needs right now.
Till sometime back, civil engineering was the last preferred discipline opted by the students as IT was in thing. And the educational institutions were not able to produce quality talent because of outdated syllabus, lack of training facilities and good lecturers. So the pool of talent has shrunk over the years. The demand, however, has not come down over the years creating a huge demand supply mismatch. Today, since all the growing sectors including services, manufacturing, infrastructure and real estate are attacking the same pool of talent, the same set of talented workforce gets circulated within various organisations.
This situation has started giving sleepless nights to the head hunters. They keeping working and re-working on the pay packages and increments to ensure the fresh flow of talent and also to check the attrition rates. Infact, to cope up with this talent crunch, some of the players in the infrastructure and realty sector are giving pay packages bettering even the IT industry and increments of 30%-35%, which was never heard off in the industry.
While some others are extending training and retraining programs to sharpen the skills of new recruits and existing employees, in addition to hefty salaries . Industry experts feel, ??higher salaries, good increments are definitely a draw for professionals. But instead of looking out for talent within the civil engineering discipline, it is better for the infrastructure and realty players to draw talent from outside the stream like manufacturing, services and even IT.??
Executive director (HR), Lanco Infratech Ltd, KP Kumar agrees to the fact that today there is dearth for talent across all-levels. The attrition rate has been 15% to 20%. ??But this is because right from 1995, Information Technology has drawn young technical talent meant for the core sectors. The greatest challenge for the industry is making the talent available to accomplish projects. Most of the organisations are gearing themselves to meet this challenge through short term strategies. And the most reliable and long term strategy is to develop the internal talent to meet the requirements at all levels.??
Indu Projects, vice president (HR), V Pardhasaradhy echoes Kumar’s views and adds “civil engineering was not very popular with the students. But today, especially after the government started giving lot of focus for infrastructure, things have changed. People want to take up civil engineering. But this set of fresh talent will come into the market only few years from now. But, I think it is high time, the educational department, government and other concerned officials prepare a five or a 10 year plan for the industry. They should sit together to study the requirement of the industry both in terms of quality and quantity of talent. They should evolve a kind of syllabus which is suitable to the needs of the industry today”.
“At Indu, we are trying to give a eight week long training program for the fresh talent selected through campus interviews, before even putting them on job. We have has also chalked out a retraining program to the existing staff to sharpen their skills to be used as land surveyors, planning people and quality controllers. The curriculum for the training and retraining program has been prepared with the help of experts in the industry, retired professors and SBU heads”, he added.
TP Anand, head – strategic planning of the Chennai based Marg Group points out that “the business opportunities are plenty in the sector and many big corporates have started getting into this business. The industry is becoming much more organised now. Manpower shortage which is felt in the civil engineering side will change drastically if there is better awareness about the job opportunities and the future role of civil engineers in building the nation. At Marg, the attrition rate is at 3%. We have rolled out attractive schemes for the employees on the “Pay for Performance” mode and this really helps us to keep the talent pool in tact”