Demand and Supply of HR Professionals

 

I am back after a long hiatus for the past month or so J

 

CII conducts a national seminar on HR Challenges each year……representing knowledge partner for this year, Hewitt Associates, as well being member of CII committee, I have been a bit occupied lately. However the forum gave several of us opportunity to talk about interesting times ahead and people challenges in wake of such scenario. The theme of the forum was aptly “The Winning HR Strategies”.

 

While in some of my later blog I will talk about summary of the discussions, one interesting challenge is demand and supply situation of HR Professionals themselves. Unless there is enough of this community (in terms of both numbers and skill sets), several of larger people challenges will remain unaddressed. Let’s have a closer look at this aspect.

 

Supply View

1        If we look at all Tier 1, Tier 2 and decent Tier 3 Business schools together and the number of HR professionals they are churning out, the number is likely to be in the range of 600-800 at best.

2        Worse if one looks at number of people with skill sets adequate to match the challenges of current environment, its likely to be 150-200. The reason I say so is because most of the others are still in traditional HR/IR mindset/skill set mould.

3        Given the reality that several of these students comprises of women, there is a drop out rate of about 10-15% out of this from active work life post marriage or children

4        Almost 15-20% of these go on to join recruitment firms or open their own recruitment/training firms

5        In nutshell we are left with about not more than 60-65% of the total 600-800 overall population and 150-200 of what you can call as premier mass available

 

Demand View

1        The demand per organization is atleast an average of 8-10 HR professionals for the Top 100 companies on BT 500 list (Top 500 organizations of country by various financial parameters), in addition to what one can probably classify as administrative staff

2        Demand for the next 400 on the BT list is likely to be around 3-4 on average

3        Demand for the next 1500 organizations is likely to be atleast 1 HR professional on average

4        At the moment it’s probably a safe assumption in organizations over the Top 2000 list, Promoter/CEO mostly or in some cases Finance person assumes HR role as well. HR in these organizations is mostly about salary increases and promotions.

5        In addition to this domestic market there is a huge demand created by multinationals operating in India. That number is likely to be close to 3-4 for around 500 multinational organizations given their more organized set up.

6        Hence purely speaking demand is influenced by Top 2000 domestic organizations and about 500 multinationals in market today.

7        By assumptions above we are talking about a demand for about 6000-7000 professionals

 

 

The overall situation looking at numbers above does not look too good for sure. Perhaps the most important element of this demand and supply situation is the fact this demand is maximum at the middle and senior level in most organizations. Gap is even more acute at that level.

 

One of the solutions to this problem in my view is “HR for Non HR”. We need more and more business and cross functional people to be trained on aspects related to people challenges. In my view not only will that improve the situation, many of these ‘inside business’ guys will go on to become more successful HR professionals J

 

What are your views on the current demand supply situation and means of improving the same?

 

~~Rohit~~