Major HR Projects for the Back-to-School Season
10 June 2009
Read by 2685 persons
Recruiting, retaining, and motivating employees in a highly competitive HR environment: major concerns for businesses. HR managers are increasingly convinced of the value of skills forecasting.
Today, with its Emergence program and its proactive offshoring strategy, Morocco is attracting more and more businesses. As a result, the job market in the new technologies sector is booming. But all other sectors of the economy are experiencing strong growth, and among the most dynamic are banks and insurance, hospitality and tourism, and construction.
As a result, large companies and SMEs, national or multinational, are facing real human resources problems. The challenges are therefore enormous and multiple. Recruitment, support for reorganizations, skills management and retention, control of HR costs, remuneration policy, social compliance… these are all issues that will need to be managed.
The list is not exhaustive, but we have selected those most often mentioned, namely the scarcity of skills, the issue of salaries - always in the spotlight -, the retention of executives and anticipation of human resource needs.
Six months to a year to find the right profile
One of the priorities for all HR managers is recruitment, which has become a permanent project due to the increasingly frequent turnover, aggravated by the scarcity of good profiles. Today, all companies are looking for them and must redouble their efforts to find them. On average, it takes between six months and a year to find the right person. Salim Ennaji, HR manager at Veolia Environnement Maroc, knows the problem. "The objective is no longer even to find the right person, but a person, period," he points out.
The same observation is made by another manager of an SME in the plastics industry. He emphasizes the difficulties in "keeping good employees who are often poached by large international groups." But first you have to have them! "Thus, we are struggling to find a quality manager or good technical sales representatives. It took us four months to find a good management controller. This shows the problems we encounter each time we need a specific profile.
This is also true for management in general," he confides.
For large projects like the Renault-Nissan project in the north of the country, 6,000 skilled technicians and workers will need to be found. This will inevitably have repercussions on all other companies in the same field or working in related trades. Companies in need will not hesitate to poach from the competition to meet their needs, while waiting for the training sector to catch up.
The salary issue remains unavoidable
Another major headache for HR managers: salary inflation. It is clear that companies are becoming increasingly structured, meeting international standards, and also giving themselves the means to recruit highly qualified profiles for management positions, in all areas: finance, marketing, human resources, sales… But since skills are scarce, it is necessary to offer a little more to attract them. Moreover, the establishment of several foreign groups, within two years, has exacerbated the bidding war.
There has been a lot of poaching, and as a result, candidates, especially young experienced ones, are charging a high price for their collaboration. Some of them, particularly engineers, change companies once or twice in just three years.
Generally speaking, salary increases have affected several jobs or positions, but in a very contrasting way. The increase varies according to the quality or scarcity of the profile. For example, currently, integration engineers and project managers are in high demand and their salaries are rising.
The sales function is also highly valued. Regardless of the level of experience, for all functions combined, the salaries offered to sales executives remain the highest.
This situation worries HR managers, and some point the finger at companies that are driving up bidding.
According to Omar Benaini, a consultant at LMS ORH, "many companies, in response to these difficulties, offer additional elements to the salary (benefits, allowances…). In the banking sector, the bonus system is widely used." In short, it is necessary to be imaginative to put in place a high-performing remuneration strategy to attract and retain skills.
Career plans are increasingly being put in place to retain executives
Retention means better pay, and vice versa. This is how organizations today place more importance on career management. The expectations and concerns of executives, especially younger ones, are becoming increasingly pressing. "After three to four years, if the executive does not see any evolution, he leaves the company," points out Omar Benaini. How to motivate them? "By implementing more cross-functional management," he suggests.
In other words, by playing on the bridges between positions or on functional or geographical mobility in order to allow the employee to develop his skills and therefore his employability, even if he does not climb the hierarchy. Career planning is becoming increasingly important.
At Accor, for example, high-potential management programs aim to prepare future managers for positions of responsibility. At GlaxoSmithKline Maroc, a program for high-potential executives, called "Talents," has been operational for several years. Three types of talents are identified.
First, junior executives capable of filling middle management positions in the medium term, senior executives chosen to fill central director or site director positions in the medium term, and leaders called upon to assume positions of responsibility internationally.
The public sector, in particular, is using employment and skills forecasting to correct past practices
With the massive retirements in the coming years, the question of knowledge transfer and replacement of employees arises. Companies are considering several solutions. Mentoring, training, diversified recruitment, mobility… But, to have more visibility, they are putting in place what is called employment and skills forecasting (GPEC).
Note that GPEC is much more widely used in the public sector, where the challenge of optimizing resources is more important and significant than in the private sector, given the legacy of past practices. It is also widely practiced in banks, insurance companies, and some industries.
Other measures are being put in place in some companies, including improving social dialogue, implementing a social management policy, involving management and employees in HR management, implementing or improving an HR information system…
brahim habriche
Published on September 12, 2008
Posted online on September 29, 2008
lavieeco.com
Today, with its Emergence program and its proactive offshoring strategy, Morocco is attracting more and more businesses. As a result, the job market in the new technologies sector is booming. But all other sectors of the economy are experiencing strong growth, and among the most dynamic are banks and insurance, hospitality and tourism, and construction.
As a result, large companies and SMEs, national or multinational, are facing real human resources problems. The challenges are therefore enormous and multiple. Recruitment, support for reorganizations, skills management and retention, control of HR costs, remuneration policy, social compliance… these are all issues that will need to be managed.
The list is not exhaustive, but we have selected those most often mentioned, namely the scarcity of skills, the issue of salaries - always in the spotlight -, the retention of executives and anticipation of human resource needs.
Six months to a year to find the right profile
One of the priorities for all HR managers is recruitment, which has become a permanent project due to the increasingly frequent turnover, aggravated by the scarcity of good profiles. Today, all companies are looking for them and must redouble their efforts to find them. On average, it takes between six months and a year to find the right person. Salim Ennaji, HR manager at Veolia Environnement Maroc, knows the problem. "The objective is no longer even to find the right person, but a person, period," he points out.
The same observation is made by another manager of an SME in the plastics industry. He emphasizes the difficulties in "keeping good employees who are often poached by large international groups." But first you have to have them! "Thus, we are struggling to find a quality manager or good technical sales representatives. It took us four months to find a good management controller. This shows the problems we encounter each time we need a specific profile.
This is also true for management in general," he confides.
For large projects like the Renault-Nissan project in the north of the country, 6,000 skilled technicians and workers will need to be found. This will inevitably have repercussions on all other companies in the same field or working in related trades. Companies in need will not hesitate to poach from the competition to meet their needs, while waiting for the training sector to catch up.
The salary issue remains unavoidable
Another major headache for HR managers: salary inflation. It is clear that companies are becoming increasingly structured, meeting international standards, and also giving themselves the means to recruit highly qualified profiles for management positions, in all areas: finance, marketing, human resources, sales… But since skills are scarce, it is necessary to offer a little more to attract them. Moreover, the establishment of several foreign groups, within two years, has exacerbated the bidding war.
There has been a lot of poaching, and as a result, candidates, especially young experienced ones, are charging a high price for their collaboration. Some of them, particularly engineers, change companies once or twice in just three years.
Generally speaking, salary increases have affected several jobs or positions, but in a very contrasting way. The increase varies according to the quality or scarcity of the profile. For example, currently, integration engineers and project managers are in high demand and their salaries are rising.
The sales function is also highly valued. Regardless of the level of experience, for all functions combined, the salaries offered to sales executives remain the highest.
This situation worries HR managers, and some point the finger at companies that are driving up bidding.
According to Omar Benaini, a consultant at LMS ORH, "many companies, in response to these difficulties, offer additional elements to the salary (benefits, allowances…). In the banking sector, the bonus system is widely used." In short, it is necessary to be imaginative to put in place a high-performing remuneration strategy to attract and retain skills.
Career plans are increasingly being put in place to retain executives
Retention means better pay, and vice versa. This is how organizations today place more importance on career management. The expectations and concerns of executives, especially younger ones, are becoming increasingly pressing. "After three to four years, if the executive does not see any evolution, he leaves the company," points out Omar Benaini. How to motivate them? "By implementing more cross-functional management," he suggests.
In other words, by playing on the bridges between positions or on functional or geographical mobility in order to allow the employee to develop his skills and therefore his employability, even if he does not climb the hierarchy. Career planning is becoming increasingly important.
At Accor, for example, high-potential management programs aim to prepare future managers for positions of responsibility. At GlaxoSmithKline Maroc, a program for high-potential executives, called "Talents," has been operational for several years. Three types of talents are identified.
First, junior executives capable of filling middle management positions in the medium term, senior executives chosen to fill central director or site director positions in the medium term, and leaders called upon to assume positions of responsibility internationally.
The public sector, in particular, is using employment and skills forecasting to correct past practices
With the massive retirements in the coming years, the question of knowledge transfer and replacement of employees arises. Companies are considering several solutions. Mentoring, training, diversified recruitment, mobility… But, to have more visibility, they are putting in place what is called employment and skills forecasting (GPEC).
Note that GPEC is much more widely used in the public sector, where the challenge of optimizing resources is more important and significant than in the private sector, given the legacy of past practices. It is also widely practiced in banks, insurance companies, and some industries.
Other measures are being put in place in some companies, including improving social dialogue, implementing a social management policy, involving management and employees in HR management, implementing or improving an HR information system…
brahim habriche
Published on September 12, 2008
Posted online on September 29, 2008
lavieeco.com
