Yardstick for Talent Pipeline in Oil and Gas Industry in India

Abstract

Abstract Talent Management is the method of nurturing the employees' potential, aptitude and ability towards the betterment of the self, keeping in view the goals of the company. The talent crisis facing today's corporate world including the hydrocarbon industries in India, is an outcome of the competition amongst different business houses to tap and retain the best. In order to nurture and build talent it is necessary to interface and pass on knowledge from more experienced employees to less experienced employees. The components of this talent pipeline are Management Development Programs (MDP); On-Job-Training (OJT); Interfacing Knowledge (IK); Talent Search, Relationship, Skill and Trust Building (TRUST); and Inspiring Leadership Qualities (ILQ). In this paper we propose a new quantitative measure called Pipeline Index to judge the progress of the talent chain and provide a methodology for its measurement. This is calculated as W × H where the weightage W is highest at the top level of management and H is the number of hours per week being spent by an employee in talent pipelining. A questionnaire was prepared and distributed to compute the Pipeline Index for a large oil and gas company in India. The response to the questionnaire is used to compute the Pipeline Index over the last 5 years for this company. Evaluation of the results shows both the key areas of strength of the company and the areas where the talent pipeline needs to be reinforced. The analysis shows that this company suffers a slight decline rather than a desirable growth of the talent pipeline over the 5 year period 2004–2008. We consider ‘Giving’ and ‘Receiving’ as two ends of the talent pipeline. The shortfall between ‘Giving’ and ‘Receiving’ is defined as the Talent Gap. Our study reveals that the talent gap is the result of employees spending time in guiding others but where the guided persons do not believe that they have benefited. The proposed definition of Pipeline Index and the questionnaire based method of its evaluation could be applied to any company and may be used to compare the talent pipeline for different companies.