Attrition: Biggest challenge for the future

GOA & BANGALORE, INDIA: Even as businesses are dogged by talent crunch, Accenture, a global management consulting company, has come out with not so sweet news for them. The company’s recent survey has foreseen top 500 companies losing half of their management personnel.

Speaking at "Dialogue", an event organized by Accenture at Goa recently, the company’s Managing Director, Sadeesh Raghavan, observed that workforce management was the most critical issue with enterprises. Quoting the survey with the top CEOs he said, “Attracting and retaining talent being the need of of the hour, talent management agenda is becoming imperative.” Citing tough challenges the future posed, he called upon the HR wing to work well with business.

With the attrition rate on a steep rise, big companies are destined to face manpower shortage with half of their management personnel going for greener pastures. With a higher floating workforce, change management would be another concern, Sadeesh said.

Dwelling upon the leadership challenges, Deepak Malkani, Partner, Accenture said, “With the changed workforce demography in developed economies, generation values are shifting, and how companies manage workforce is becoming vital.”

According to Malkani, a leader must posses three qualities, which he called the three pillars of leadership – visionary evangelist, manager of execution and relationship builder.

Speaking on the current trends of Supply Chain Management (SCM), Sanjay Dawar of Accenture, said, “Retail segment is emerging as a separate segment, and it must be treated distinctly.” He welcomed the trend of Indian companies going global, while the MNCs are clambering to invest in India.

Sandeep Datta from Accenture, who spoke on the changing roles of IT in Indian businesses, noticed that small and medium businesses (SMBs) are drawing more attention as far as IT deployment is concerned. Powered by IT, he said, the Indian SMB segment was poised to get stronger.

The top notch from leadership group of Accenture including Sanjay Jain, Anish Gupta and Fillippo Moroni spoke on various industrial issues.