CASE ANALYSIS

Accentures War for Talent in India

Submitted to Prof. Ranjeet Nambudiri

Submitted By: Group 5, Section E Ankita 2013PGP052 Annimalla Vaibhav Ananya 2013PGP057 Anthony Murmu - 2012PGP054 Bhuvneet Raheja 2013PGP106 Karthick G 2013PGP179 Salil Aggarwal 2013PGP338

ABOUT ACCENTURE
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company offering services to worlds leading corporations. It started recruiting in 2001 in India when it first moved to scale up its IT offshore service operations. Due to its innovative hiring practices, the head-count had grown from 1000 in 2002 to nearly 37000 by end of summer 2007. In 2007, Accenture was considering a pioneering push to enhance its management consulting work in India. Accenture was one of the first global IT service providers to arrive in India to set up a global delivery centre. Hiring at scale in India for Accentures IT Services and BPO businesses had already created a perception of Accenture India as an organization with a focus on hiring IT and Outsourcing professionals, now the company had to make the Accenture India brand appeal to management consultants. Accentures business objectives were to continue to deliver value in defining, discovering, and deploying high-performing talent across IT Services and business process operations, as well as management consulting.

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS
Offshoring and Global Delivery Network
Offshoring refers to relocating a companys work activities from one geographic location to another. The process of Offshoring was motivated initially by the low cost advantages provided by low-cost economies and later by skills availability in those markets. India became a leader due to technological advancements like Internet and also due to a large number of highly educated, English-speaking technical workforces. Also the Indian programmers were conversant in older software languages. Global IT service Providers set up their own delivery centers in India. Indias trade-body for off-shoring was Nasscom. In 2001, Accenture also implemented a global expansion of its delivery capability by creating a GDN( Global Delivery Network). GDN is a scalable and flexible network that could deliver technical skills and services in low-cost economies to its clients in high-cost economies at emerging market wage-rates. Regardless of the locations, the centers served global rather than domestic clients. Moreover their focus solely was on delivery. The push to move delivery to locations around the world came from Accenture clients, who wanted the benefits of a global network.

New Recruitment Model

In traditional recruitment models, a single set of HR professionals gathered hiring requirements from various in-house businesses.

Candidate sourcing from online job portals and headhunters

Conducting interviews and making offers

Getting New Hires on board

These models were not capable of hiring of large number of people hence the new model was conceived to address the need for a specialized workforce. The new functional model took an innovative approach.

It applied the concept of Supply chain to deliver new hires. This model provided qualified candidates to meet the business requirements. The recruitment process was broken down into 4 strategic components and also Accenture made sure that at the front-end of the recruitment process, each candidate had a personalized and engaging experience. The company gave successful senior hires Accenture Souvenirs or gifts accompanied by personalized cards to welcome them. The diagram demonstrates the New Recruitment Model comprehensively.

Candidate Management

Candidate Sourcing

Identification and initial screening of candidates based on the submitted resumes.

Standardized selection processes. Administering levelappropriate tests to candidates and scheduling & executing interviews by both business and HR Managers

On-Boarding

HR team and line managers remained in touch with the candidates to ensure that they joined Accenture after accepting the offer & have a speedy adoption of their new roles

Capabilities: This is a support pillar for the overall model, focused on metrics processes, compliance and training. A software dashboard also was developed to breakdown the hiring process by number of technical and HR interviews

Adapting the Model for BPO Hiring

By 2003, Accenture began to move BPO service delivery to India for which it needed to hire a completely different and diverse talent pool as compared to IT services employees. This required adaptation in candidate sourcing, candidate management and on boarding processes. BPO hiring also meant competition with multinational firms in addition to Indian IT off shoring firms for talent. Attrition rate was very high as candidates switched rapidly when a company offered higher pay than the other. To address this, adaptation in the on boarding phase of the model was carried out wherein every newly joined candidate was assigned a buddy to help the hire settle down in the organization smoothly. Events like pre-joiner parties were organized and 60 day/90 day check points were set up to integrate them.

Restructuring HR
From 2003, work was carried on to develop an HR service delivery model along functional rather than business lines that involved restructuring of HR into three components: 2

Business aligned HR Responsible for executing life cycle processes such as induction, resources staffing, training , performance and career management, employee retention

Centralized HR service architecture team Requirement of experts in key HR processes such as compensation, capability development, policies and compliance

Centralized HR service back office Atlas To perform repeatable administrative tasks such as personnel file and data management

The new model helped to control costs and industrialized HR processes as head count and scale of deliverables grew. Service architecture teams helped to build deep capabilities and provide best solutions. By 2007, scope of HR service architecture grew largely to inculcate sourcing, entry level hiring, senior executive hiring, automation of HR processes and leadership development. Centralized services increased integration of HR processes and eliminated duplication. Centralization ensured effective business critical services. In order to meet the demand of HR talent Accenture worked with top B-school in order to develop a joint program on human capital management for present employees and potential new hires.HR control systems used three set of key metrics that measured: Recruiting it included overall scores of demand fulfillment, turnaround time, cost per person hired, person hired per recruiter, quality of employee hired and noted earlier candidate experience. Effectiveness attrition rate that included voluntary and involuntary attrition Employee engagement it assumed that increased engagement meant improved performance. It had three elements - initial say level, stay level and strive level and an employee displaying all the three levels were supposed to have a positive impact on the business.

Upgrading Performance PCMM

As head count of Accentures employees grew in India, it was important to maintain a high level of process maturity for its high-performing clients who needed a robust maturity framework that accounted for both people and processes. The fact that the prevailing Capability Maturity Model (CMM) tended to emphasize much on process rather than on people, made the team at Accenture to resort to People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM). As an organization progressed from lower to higher levels of maturity, PCMM framework specified 5 stages of organizational maturity to capture the following To identify and eliminate people-related problems To ensure professional development through training To increase objectivity in compensation decisions To build predictability into people process To usher in a culture of continuous improvement

Thus PCMM helps companies at top level to constantly evaluate and adjust existing systems according to technological and HR innovations. And this will result in a culture of continuous improvement within the company.In 2004, when Accenture India chose to apply PCMM to institutionalize its HR process, it met with a favorable response from their clients. Their inherent focus as a company which relies more on people, functional recruitment model and continuous evolution of HR organization played an important role in achieving this five level certification within a record time of 15 months which would otherwise require 36 months. Following the successful implementation of PCMM in India, Accenture pursued the certification for all of its technology delivery centers around the world.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Find, assess and hire 2000 people for GTIN within 1 year Set recruitment model and HR organization structure so as to define, discover, develop and deploy high performing talent in Management Consulting

CHALLENGES
Perception of Accenture India as an organization with focus on hiring IT and outsourcing professionals: Since 2001, Accenture had been in expanding scope and scale of its IT and BPO services by introducing GDN, GDC across continents including India. This gives perception that Accenture is more focused in hiring IT and outsourcing professionals in India which will bring a challenge for them when they hire management consultants. Hiring Industry specific management consultants to look after different business functions: Accenture India had a mammoth task of finding, assessing and hiring 2000 of Indias brightest consultants within a year. GTINs varied functional areas of specialization needs industry specialists, PHDs in statistics, economics and social sciences, CAs, Cost accountants, etc. which makes the process even more challenging. Challenge to implement existing functional recruitment model: As Accentures functional recruitment model was mainly designed to handle rapid hiring of large number of people, this model will not be enough to industrialize the hiring of management consultants as it requires an entirely new method to assess them. Inherent difference in recruiting for IT and Management consulting: Typical IT projects have a duration of 1 2 years which makes it possible to keep some skills ready and hire project-specific skills towards the beginning of the project. Also there will be enough lead time to staff the team before the project. In management consulting, there will not be any lead time and the projects are of much shorter duration. Hence there is an inherent need to accurately forecast demand for different types of skills.

Identification of correct sources: Existing sources like Internet job portals and print advertisements works well with IT and outsourcing environment. But it is not equally effective in attracting management consultants because of their varied profiles and also because such candidates rarely rely on such sources to look for alternate job opportunities. Hence its a challenge to find the right sources to attract management consultants. More promising value proposition: Accenture needs to offer distinct value proposition to the required talent pool of highly skilled management consultants in-order to attract and retain them. Difficulty in implementing PCMM for consultants: PCMM is easier and effective to implement if the employees work in the same location or in a location that operates with consistency every day. Therefore it is difficult to implement PCMM to management consultants as they move around to different locations when working with clients.

ANALYSIS
Internal Factors Recruitment of Management Consultants

External Factors - Excessive Competition - Dearth of Managerial talent

- Present Functional Recruitment Model

- Sourcing Channels - Forecasting Demand

- Perception- Brand Image

The analysis above shows the present external and internal problems Accenture can face while hiring management consultants. These problems have been explained above in challenges.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Change in the Recruitment Model
Since the present Functional Recruitment Model wont be applicable to the present situation of hiring management consultants hence we are suggesting a new model which is described below: In the new model we have divided the Candidate Management into specific business function i.e. 7 functions. Since the hiring needs to be based on industry specialization it makes sense to divide the process into discrete functions. Each of these consulting domains would have a separate HR team which would take care of candidate management and on boarding responsibilities. The structure and responsibilities are given below. Apart from the industry specialists since Accenture would require general employees like PHDs in economics, Cost accountants etc., these would be taken care of the specific business functions according to the project needs. Since the Candidate Management and on boarding team would take care of the scheduling aspect of the consultants as well, first internal resource openings would be checked for these general resources before external recruitment. The third 5

strategic component of recruitment model i.e. Capabilities would remain as is and instead of the dashboard which was used by Accenture for IT hiring there would be a scheduling software which would help analyze the present scenario and help in internal transfers and would also give idea of the future pipeline of projects and the projected number of new hires required for each business function.

Capabilities

Candidate Sourcing This would be a centralized function and the sourcing would take care of understanding of the requirements in terms of total number of new employees needed, the skill sets required and the joining date for all business functions. They also need to gather the relevant resumes and align them according to the business function. The sourcing team also needs to take care of Managing various recruitment channels Conducting initial screening and validation of sourced resumes Campus hiring

Candidate Sourcing

Candidate Management & Onboarding

Customer Relationship Management Finance and Performance Management Foundation Offerings Industry Programs

They would be evaluated on basis of the conversion rate metrics, ability to meet deadline and quality of candidates recruited. Candidate Management and On-boarding This is divided according to the business functions. All these functions would have a separate HR team. This team needs to work closely with the business function lead to assess the requirement and forecast demand. They need to decide the specific job profile and the skill set required. They also need to take care of the interview phase and the on boarding phase. The interview phase would include initial HR interview, deciding the business representatives wholl take specific interviews. Boarding responsibilities would be smooth transition for the candidates from the time they accept the offer till they come on board, managing background checks of candidates and ensuring recruiting is in compliance with country laws. 6

Sourcing

Strategy

Supply Chain Management Talent and Organization Performance

HR Organization Chart
The present HR Organization chart which was given in Exhibit 8 of the case mentions HR Lead of Global Talent and Innovation Networks. We have extended the chart specifically for that function to match the recruitment model stated above.

HR Lead, Global Talent and Innovation Network

HR Lead: Customer Relation Management

HR Lead: Finance and performance management

HR Lead: Foundation Offerings

4 HR Leads: For other business functions

As we see above under the overall HR Lead of GTIN there would be specific leads for all the 7 business functions. Under them would be a team of HR representatives who would take care of induction, resource staffing and scheduling, training, performance and career management, employee retention, assessing requirement of new hires etc. This team would have to work closely with the functional heads to assess the requirement and understand the future pipeline projects. They would also have to work closely with the Talent and Recruiting teams (under HR Service Architecture) to update them with the new hires required and the projected forecasts.

Present Requirement of 2000 consultants

The GTIN center requires 2000 employees within 1 year. These need to be industry experts in 7 business functions which Accenture plans to launch in India. Apart from industry experts, PHDs in economics, statistics and social sciences, CAs and cost accountants are required. To make this possible Accenture can follow the action plan stated below: 1. Hire top executives wholl lead the business functions. These people must be industry veterans. Eg: For business function Finance, executives from multinational banks can be hired. Apart from looking at an external pool, Accenture can also look at internal pool wherein it can bring in business heads serving in US, UK etc. Since Accenture India is developing new capability in Management Consulting hiring of top executives is of utmost importance. These top executives would not only bring in industry specialization but also a great network which can be utilized to hire consultants. 2. After top executives are in place, middle managers for each business division need to be recruited. Not only would they help in enhancing the business capability required by Accenture they would also for an important group which would help in recruiting consultants and analysts.

These middle managers can be industry experts from specific industries or managers or senior consultants from other Consulting organizations. 3. Along with functional managers, laterals with few years of experience in relevant industry or senior analysts or consultants from other consulting firms also need to be recruited. 4. Since its November 2007, Accenture can look at hiring fresh graduates from top management and engineering institutes. They would form the bulk of hiring as it is around this time that the campus placement starts. Since the work is mainly research and analysis engineering graduates would also form an important part of campus hiring. 5. Lastly, general resources like PHDs, CAs and accountants need to be recruited.

Sourcing Channels
Since normal sourcing channels like Internet job portals and print advertisements would give low conversion ration Accenture needs to look at channels like: Employee Referrals, leverage industry network of senior executives within the firm, external staffing agencies experienced in hiring management consultants, social networks like LinkedIn, direct emails and company sponsored events and competitions can be used. Accenture needs to improve the brand perception (basically considered as IT and Outsourcing firm) to offer distinct value proposition to the new talent pool. It needs to release public article in business newspapers, hold public conferences regarding its entering into the management consulting domain in India. Apart from this it needs to clearly communicate the difference between the job profiles and also clearly state the future roadmap of GTIN in India.