The manpower planning-making it 'pipeline effect' proof

It felt sad to be at IIW 2001 this year. Especially since last year's memories of the show are still very fresh in my mind. The level of participation, the enthusiasm and the festive mood-nothing was the same as before. It was almost as if the inhabitants of a city had deserted it, fearing plague.

But that is not to say that the never say die optimists were not around. 'This time there are only serious visitors. That's a good sign.' True. Just wonder how serious one would like it to get! I am sure no one wants to extend the logic. The fact is that times have changed. We need to accept it and move forward. It is not anybody's fault. Just that, somehow Internet and dotcoms got rather tightly coupled in people's minds. Well, nobody complained as long as it helped, but I guess the industry now would like to go about setting perceptions right.

Like some one said, we went to one extreme earlier and now we seem to be going to the other. The truth is obviously somewhere in-between. Where exactly, is the question? Apart from those who earned a livelihood from the rise of the dotcom phenomenon, it is the students for whom its collapse seems to have been traumatic. Unlike the year before, students were conspicuous by their absence at this year's IIW. Last year there were hopes. This year they need to search for newer pastures.

The question is what will those new pastures be? What will their potential be? How long will it take for the same level of opportunities to develop? On the other side, one may wish to debate whether it is worth such waves to sweep across? It does feel good when these waves develop. It does generate business for many. It does create employment opportunities like never before. But it is not sustainable. At the end of it all, someone's money has gone down the drain. How do we measure the net result of this catastrophic growth?

We are concerned that the computer education business is adversely affected. We despair that all the investments in building IDC infrastructure has come to nothing. But who is concerned that the millions of students who have spent the hard earned money of their wards in the hope of sustainable livelihood is not worth anything anymore. At the end of the day, 'make hay while the sun shines' seems to be the philosophy. If it does not work out, too bad!

For all the business planning, for all the risk mitigation techniques touted by management gurus, for all the projections of business potential by experts, we probably tend to get swayed by our inner feelings and conveniently adopt what we feel comfortable with. And then find ways to justify what we want. Rationalizing to oneself is the easiest thing to

do.

So where do we go from here? One hears of biotechnology as the next wave. But when will it happen. How many organizations will get into it? How many people will this new activity need, and at what levels of qualification and experience? Who is to carry out manpower planning at the macro level so that we know where we are headed?

The input-output analysis is fundamental to any process planning. If we are to get anywhere near to manpower planning at the macro level for the nation we will need to engage in some kind of selective technology forecasting and the potential application of these technologies to application environments. But that is easier said than done. When we are unable to put a program in place for limiting population growth, achieving manpower planning seems a far

cry.

And so it is that we will stumble along from one technology to another, from one growth area to another. Or from one spurt of development to another, in some endless drift without consolidating on the gains of yesteryears. Like a herd, newer generations will flock to the latest craze not knowing that the road ahead is about to cave in. Thousands, maybe more, will be stuck in what one could call a 'pipeline effect', before someone at the end decides to turn away and seek an alternative path. How is it that we measure the loss on the investments made on this pipeline generation? Is it possible to reduce this pipeline in some way and make the system more adaptable?

The pace of change has become so hectic that the conventional education system may not guarantee a lifetime of employability. The symptoms are already acutely visible. Higher levels of specialization are bringing in higher levels of compensation, but also resulting in higher risk of obsolescence and possibly shorter employment cycles. It may be time to seriously evaluate the pattern of education system and evolve a formal mechanism for continuous learning that alternates between classroom and industry exposure. More than ever before, there is a need for the universities to tightly couple with the industrial work environment.

It is time that our policy makers, universities and industries seriously look at ways of reducing the impact of the pipeline effect. Just like the education system provides for successive stages of decision making with respect to choice of higher learning platforms, so too must the work environment develop methods of providing career options at successive stages. In a world where it is difficult to predict the events and trends of the next three months, how does one expect a career decision taken at a point of time to see you through a lifetime?

Manpower planning at the national level may be difficult. But it may be the only solution. The question is do we have the will?

Sumit Sharma is VP, Microland and the author of the book titled 'The

Corporate Circus.' The views expressed in this article are of the author's and not of Microland.