Talent Management Strategies with Reference to Salesforce in Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Talent management is indispensable for survival and sustainable development of any organization. Talent is probably the most precious resources of any organization. Today’s Human Resources departments cannot afford to ignore the talent management in the highly competitive and dynamic business scenario.

In the battle of talents, organizations should use Talent Management as a Strategic weapon, if talent has to be won in this battle.

Talent management has become the buzzword and every organization are adopting and implementing the Talent Management. The organizations overall working has gone through changes, in both the idea of work and the rise of new types of work, which result from advancement, the improvement of new information, competitive markets, and different variables.

As per the Indian Economic Survey 2021, “the Indian market is expected to grow 3 times in the next decade. India's domestic pharmaceutical market is estimated at US$ 42 billion in 2021 and likely to reach US$ 65 billion by 2024 and further expand to reach ~US$ 120-130 billion by 2030”.

Indian Pharmaceutical industry is the foremost contributor in growing Indian economy. Pharmaceutical industry is facing major problem is higher attrition rate. “Pharmaceutical industry in India, the average annual voluntary attrition rate is 17%”. Researcher wants to study the Talent Management Strategy adopted different pharmaceutical companies and their impact on employees and organization. The talent pool with the required skills and experience is very low. So, pharmaceutical companies are finding difficult to attract competent staff and retain them. Employee perception plays important role in reducing attrition rate.

Pharmaceutical industry has developed its business operations across different countries. Now in this pandemic situation the pharmaceutical products are having huge demand from all over the world. For the purpose of the study, area is confined to 84 pharmaceutical companies. The study comprises many parameters of Talent hiring, training, development activities, career path, reward management and talent retention. To ensure the availability of right talent and retention of this talent is necessary for sustainable organizational growth. The organizations are trying to adapt various measures to fulfil their talent needs and reduces attrition rate.

Research Objectives: 1. To understand the status of attrition, sales and growth rate in the organizations where talent management practices are established. 2. To study the impact of ‘age and tenure of employees in a particular type of company on their perception of ‘awareness of roles and responsibilities’ in their organization. 3. To study the impact of ‘age and educational qualification’ of employees in various zones on their perception of ‘defined career path’ in the organization.

Research Hypothesis: 1. Organizations with established Talent Management policies have low attrition, higher sales and growth. 2. The level of awareness of roles and responsibilities in a company of particular type is related to age & tenure in the current organization of employees and / or total experience in the industry. 3. The age groups and qualification of employees in a particular zone viz. North, East, South, and West & Central do not have a direct relationship on the perception of employees regarding the defined career path.

Overall the results of this study reveal that pharma companies shall think positively and consciously plan for their employees’ career development, especially entry level field staff. HR and Talent Management teams of Pharma companies should deliberately think of designing the activities for the career development of field staff so as to increase the respect to the work. Constant dialogue with the employees and regular feedback for improving their performance remain to be critical factor in managing salesforce.

It can be concluded that pharmaceutical companies having established Talent Management policies have low attrition and high sales & high growth. The level of awareness of roles and responsibilities in a company of particular type is related to age & tenure in the current organization of employees &/or total experience in the industry. Hence it is imperative to develop and retain the employees, especially for the freshers and entry level jobs. There is no relation between the age groups, qualification of employees and the zones or territories they work with their perception about the defined career path in their respective organizations.

Pharmaceutical Sales Professionals have defined capabilities in terms of skills, knowledge, ability and behaviour. Through this study, researcher has been able to establish the result oriented approaches followed by different organizations. Talent Attraction, acquisition, development are critical issues in talent management which can be developed by rising the culture of the organization so as to retain talent (by nature of the job which is most tangible (sales numbers), many organisations resort to Hire and Fire Policy, which may not work), this research will help to identify the best practices pertaining to these.