PSU brass get a makeover

Leading consulting outfits are imparting special lessons in leadership and better customer care to about 3000 top executives from public sector oil companies to help them reach a variety of targets "" from spotting the right talent to achieving growth.

These executives, from companies like National Thermal Power Corporation, Gail India, Bharat Patroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and Indian Oil, are receiving training from consultancies like AT Kearney, Grow Talent, Mercer, Accenture and Ernst & Young so that they develop their technical and behavioural competencies.

As these PSUs expand both at home and abroad, they realise that their top management should have adequate leadership bandwidth, and that each of them needs to be more customer-friendly.

"PSUs are seeing a need to be more competitive, and investment in human capital is being rated as one of the important catalysts for growth," N Sanker, India Head of Mercer said.

She added, "The focus is more on senior executives as companies expect a trickle-down impact on junior executives."

Anil Sachdev, the CEO of Grow Talent, which is working on a project with Bharat Petroleum, felt that the exercise also helped these PSUs to zero in on the right talent as they suffered from the problem of overstaffing.

"They have been facing huge problems tackling huge manpower. So, now they want to identify the right people, " Sachdev said.

Mercer, which has been hired by two major oil companies, is currently assessing the technical and behavioural skills of oil sector employees and will shortly conduct training programmes for them.

"First we will chalk out the action plan and then the employees will be trained at the assessment centres for the next one year," Sanker said.

Indian Oil, the country's largest oil company, has chosen Ernst & Young for a similar exercise.

For the first phase of the programme, Ernst & Young has drawn up a map of behavioural and technical competencies required for the company to achieve its growth plans.

In the next phase, Ernst & Young will run development centres to assess the current competencies of about 300 executives of the company.

The company will also identify where exactly these executives are falling short of the required competencies.

In the final phase, the consultancy will create a "development calendar" for each of these executives aimed at raising their competencies to the required levels over a period of one to three years.

This could involve training programmes, mentoring, special tailor-made courses and job rotation. These calendars will start falling into place in the next financial year.

Along with Indian Oil's, Ernst & Young has also bagged a project for developing competencies and making a 360-degree assessment of NTPC.

"Nearly 300 top executives in the executive director and general manager level will be tested for competency. "The company is planning to extend the programme to the junior level as well," N S Rajan, partner, Ernst & Young Human Capital, said.

Hindustan Petroleum has signed on Accenture for succession planning, strategies and recruitment policies.

"The stress is more on re-orientation of the top executives as they are at a more functional level. The companies are asking us to integrate performance development with specified business outcome," Sanjay Jain, managing director, Accenture, said.