“Why don’t they line up for DRDO job interviews ?”; “Lack of original work, sarkari salary, promotion structure, and miles of red tape: 1,400 have left in the last decade.” ; “Researcher couple leaves Biocon with ‘critical’ molecule, joins Dr. Reddy’s”.
Newspaper headlines like these show the challenges the HR managers of R&D organisations have to face today, and the future will be even more challenging.
Manpower: The real power that drives R&D
The words of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power,” said in 1597, were never as relevant as they are today. And the future does not look much different. Increasingly, the fortunes of companies and, indeed, of nations depend on their abilities to proficiently apply new scientific advances, develop and adopt new technologies, use new knowledge, and commercialise sophisticated and robust new products, processes, and services. A well-educated, skilled, and flexible force of R&D workers—scientists, engineers, and other technical people—is essential to the success in such an advanced technological environment. Managing human resources is an extremely important part of making organisations work. Managing human resources means acknowledging that the humans in the organisation are the most important part of getting things done.
Research and Development is an area in which the organization’s most important resource is its human resources. This leads us to the fact that the creativity, innovativeness, knowledge, and skill of your employees are your important assets. How to manage these assets is the challenge that the R&D industry is facing. It is not capital, finance, or marketing management that gives you the competitive edge, but rather how well you are able to manage your human resources, whose intellectual applications drive your business.
The 3 Rs : Recruit them, Retain them and Realise their potential
Recruitment has been and will remain to be a major challenge for HR managers. The success of R&D organisations depends on their human capital, this boils down to recruiting the best, managing the best, and retaining the best. A booming economy has resulted in a multitude of job opportunities, fatter pay packages, and a higher standard of living. The R&D industry in India may not be one of the high paying industries. The phrase “when you throw peanuts, you will only get monkeys” aptly applies to the recruitment process in R&D organisations, which are finding it very hard to hire intelligent manpower. Recruitment represents the first contact that an organisation makes with potential employees. The recruitment process should inform qualified individuals about employment opportunities, create a positive image of the organisation, and generate enthusiasm among the best candidates so that they will apply for the positions. Recruitment should involve finding a person with the required skills and experience and also judging his suitability for the organisation and research temperament. Last but not the least, more women should be encouraged to join the R&D sector in the near future.
“Given the surge in the demand and the limited size of the talent pool, in the current scenario, retention is becoming a major challenge.”
– Vineet Kaul, VP-HR, Philips Electronics India Ltd.
Since researchers are highly qualified, knowledgeable, and dedicated, they will be very much sought after by the competitors and the private industry, so offering the best possible compensation package to the researchers may turn out to be a big challenge. With a large number of employees leaving research organisations, the writing is already on the wall for HR managers. Signing bonds will not bind the researchers to the organisations; gelling individual and organisational aspirations will do. The organisations will have to satisfy the monetary needs of the employees by paying them comparable salaries, perks, research allowances, travelling expenses for attending conferences, etc. In the age of high salaries, if monetary expectations are not met, the attrition rate will only increase. A sense of attachment needs to be developed between the employees and the organisation by ensuring employee welfare, providing health programmes, lending them loans, etc.
Even if the best retention policies are in place, there may still be some people leaving the organisation because of burgeoning opportunities in the future. R&D managers and their HR partners have to anticipate the loss of key talent, identify possible successors, and plan for the systematic transfer of knowledge to the new guard. If a researcher leaves the organisation, it should not make the associated project fall like a pack of cards. He may have been an important member of the project team, but it is the duty of the HR managers to breed redundancy in the system so that the project sustains the loss and somebody else is there to take up where the task was left.
Napoleon observed about his soldiers that, “They are able because they think they are able.”
The challenge does not stop with recruiting the right person but with how you are going to manage the performance of your employees. The challenge would be to create a performance culture wherein opportunities are provided for enhanced performance and where giving out optimum performance becomes a way of life. Each individual should be assigned a job that suits his skills and interests. A person caught in the wrong job is a potential deserter. An organisation’s goals can be achieved only when people put in their best efforts. How do you ascertain whether an employee has shown his best performance on a given job? The answer is performance appraisal. In an R&D organisation, appraisal serves many purposes: promotions, assessing the training and development needs of the employees, determining whether HR programmes have been effective or not, minimising job dissatisfaction, letting them know how they are performing, and lastly, guiding their careers.
Motivation, Recognition and Team work
In the research arena, ideas have long gestation periods ranging from a few years to perhaps even decades before they get translated into tangible deliverables. Setting up milestones for measuring success and sustaining the motivation of the researchers for such long durations will be a tough task. Promotions, rewards, more responsibilities, recognition, and appreciation are some of the techniques that can be employed to keep the researchers motivated.
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
Research is an area fraught with many failures and setbacks. When a researcher fails, he may feel devastated. It is a Herculean task to motivate him to take up a fresh challenge. Every failure should be closely examined and the necessary lessons learned. It should be ascertained whether it was the failure of the system, the people, or the process itself.
The devil of stress has already started raising its ugly head, as is evident in the high incidence of suicides and increased workloads. In the future, research is going to be a very stressful job. Training can increase an individual’s self-efficiency and thus lessen job strain. Redesigning jobs to give researchers more responsibility, more meaningful work, more autonomy, and increased feedback will reduce stress.
Employees often complain about a lack of recognition for their work. They would like to receive salary increases and promotions while continuing on a research career path. They also want more recognition from their immediate supervisor and from the management team.
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives.”
– Andrew Carnegie
The R&D workers are considered to be individualists and egoists given that they often prefer working on their own and often develop a significant attachment to their research work rather than their organisation. Pursuing a project is like playing a football match; all the players have to play well and cooperate with each other in order to succeed. The roles and responsibilities of the team members should be defined. The teams should have a flat structure with one or two levels of hierarchy; this will result in more equality and coordination between the members.
Technological challenges
“Noticing small changes early helps you to adapt to bigger changes that are to come.”
– Spencer Johnson, ‘Who moved my cheese?’
The organisations of tomorrow will be “learning organisations”—organisations that have developed the continuous capacity to adapt and change. The future is going to witness changes in technology at a much faster rate. To ensure that the R&D workforce keeps pace with the ever changing technologies and techniques is an uphill task. HR managers have to design training programmes in such a way that the employees don’t become technologically and professionally obsolete; their skill sets are in sync with the advances in their respective fields. It will not be just identifying training needs and giving the required training. It will foresee and anticipate the requirements and develop suitable training so that the employees are well equipped to handle the challenges ahead. Training encourages self-development and job satisfaction and eliminates the fear of attempting new tasks. Employees can be trained through participation in conferences, courses run by academics, specially designed courses, e-learning, etc.
The age of Ideas and Information
“It is amazing how much people can get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit.”
– Sandra Swinney
Ownership of ideas is going to be the single most daunting task for the HR managers of tomorrow. They say that an idea can change your life, but it can also ruin many lives. An unsuccessful idea is an orphan, but a successful idea comes with many fathers. The HR managers have to put a credible system in place so that people can share their ideas and jointly work on them. The originator of the idea should be given recognition through the filing of patents and acknowledgement of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Once a new idea is developed, idea champions can actively and enthusiastically promote the idea, build support, overcome resistance, and ensure that the innovation is implemented.
The future will be the information age; having the right information at the right time will make the difference between success and failure. The researchers of the future will demand the most recent information. Knowing what is happening in the outside world will broaden their outlook on the topic of research. HR managers will have to ensure the dissemination of information. The flow of information will demand the attendance of conferences, the exchange of technical expertise, and collaborations between the organisations.
Take up the challenge
Joseph Campbell once said “Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging“. The future is already knocking on the door. So it’s time for the HR managers of the R&D organisations to be prepared for the future challenges and come out with flying colours.