Similar modules likely for key markets to fill skill gaps as the Group’s spread takes new and bigger forms.
After producing an elite corps of managers for the group for 53 years, Tata Administrative Services (TAS), the in-house leadership training and management development programme, is getting exported to China, one of the group’s four strategic international markets.
Three postgraduate Chinese students will be selected and given multi-disciplinary and multi-nodal training as part of a five-year Continuous Education and Learning Programme. For some modules, they will also be brought to the Tata Management Training Centre in Pune.
Just like their Indian peers, these potential Chinese managers will go through training in finance, marketing, human resources, community and rural development and are likely to even follow the new TAS syllabus’ ‘village-and-the-world-in-120-days’ break-in drill. That would mean being dispatched across group companies around the globe for a 360-degree master class. They will eventually go back to China to lead the group’s businesses.
The ‘Tata China Management Training Scheme’ is a pilot project but is to gradually expand. There will be five recruits next year from the current three and it will grow.
More From This Section
The intention is clear. As the group evolves into a global conglomerate, TAS, which has spawned leaders like R K Krishnakumar, P M Telang, S Ramakrishnan, N Srinath and Mukund Rajan, needs to reinvent itself to tackle the new talent and skill requirements. From being just an ‘elite’ club of Indian managers, it also needs to internationalise its outlook and outreach.
For the past four years, there has been an operational in-house stream for TAS candidates, and the group has been encouraging the global Tata workforce to join that programme. But the response has been subdued. “We are yet to see a diversity of applicants. In many geographies, global mobility is not as appealing as it is in emerging markets,” admits Satish Pradhan, executive vice-president and chief of group human resources of Tata Sons, the group holding company .
Tata Group is currently a $67-billion Indian conglomerate spread over 80 countries across six continents. The international businesses contribute 57 per cent of its total revenues. Its global workforce of 395,000 is growing. So, a global pool of trained managers is critical. WHY CHINA?
Why start with China? For one thing, group companies are already involved in $5 billion of trade with China and it’s growing. It’s a key market for Jaguar Land Rover, where it sold 20,000 units last year. Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Autocomp Systems, Tata Refractories and Tata Steel all have growing operations there.
“It is essential to create a cadre of Chinese managers for the group who have a global outlook and work experience. Language and culture have been traditional barriers and it is important to overcome that,” R Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, told Business Standard.
China will be the test case to create this new template for the talent coming on board. Over time, a global TAS model is to be replicated in strategic international markets like the US, UK and South Africa — the key hubs for the group.
Added Pradhan: “There has to be a ground-level need which will be instrumental for these programmes. The need has to be articulated by the operating group companies. There has to be a pull factor, as these are long-term investments.”
Skill development and training, along with associations with renowned educational institutions worldwide, has been an ongoing effort. Flagship TCS, for example, emphasizes on its role in job creation in places as far apart as Cincinnati, Ohio or Hangzhou. It has a large state-of-the-art facility in Cleveland, while Tata Steel Europe (formerly Corus Steel) has a centre in Ashorne Hill (Warwickshire, UK). “Going forward, these centres can well become hubs for excellence across the group” said Gopalakrishnan.
MINDSPACE
Tata Group watchers say it’s a sensible strategy. In many international markets like the US, the locals equate Indian companies, especially information technology services ones, with outsourcing and retrenchment. So, job creation and tangible skill enhancement programmes create a natural sense of empathy among all the stakeholders. It also reminds people that when Hurricane Katrina razed New Orleans to the ground, it was TCS engineers who played a key role in creating software for the emergency services to respond. If trust is Tata’s watermark, a humane approach has a direct link to building brand equity as well in newer markets with low brand visibility.
The involvement percolates to young international students as well. The idea is to capture the mindspace of the thought leaders of tomorrow early on. So, Havard Business School – Ratan Tata’s alma mater — and Cornell University have each received a $50 million ‘gift’ from Tata trusts and companies in the recent past.
Similarly, in association with London School of Economics, the University of Cambridge, and University of California, Berkeley, the group has designed a two-month internship programme — Tata International Social Entrepreneurship Scheme — for foreign students at the corporate sustainability projects of Tata companies in India. In collaboration with three of Singapore’s leading universities, Tatas invite management students to take up assignments in the group under the programme.