General understanding of managers should be crystal clear. They have to know what they are doing.

Managers have to play an active role and involve employees to engage and retain.

If the employees do not get the right feedback, they do not get close to the organization.

It makes a difference when managers think about each employee.

Ms. Jo Verde stressed on the importance of HR as a business function. According to her, "HR is not fluff, it is a critical business process involving three critical areas; job, leader, and organization." She stressed on the importance of all the members of the team having similar values which would result in business engagement driven by passion saying, "Any system you put in place is as good as the people who use that system and are administering it."

Mr. E. Balaji talked about approaches to employee management and on the menace of post-offer drop-outs. Emphasized on the poll of 23,000 employees cited in Stephen Covey's - "The 8th Habit" - where only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve.

Mr. Rajeev Kumar believes that 'retention is a day in and day out process'. Speaking on the role of HR software in retaining talent, he said, "Technology can be an aid to overall management." He talked about the effective working of a differentiated HR pattern and gave a 10-20-70 module - 10% on classroom training, 20% to mentorship and coaching and 70% on job program. Using these tools, he emphasized that, "We must become as good at developing great people as we are at developing great software."

According to Mrs. Lekha Sista, the goal of strategic talent management is to ensure that 'every individual takes a lead to move forward'.

The gist could be summed up in Mr. Derrick Burton's words to managers that it is extremely important to "make work count for the individual' in order to retain talent in your organization.

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Student Public Relations Cell,
Batch of 2006-08,
Goa Institute Of Management, Goa.