In an effort to withstand the downturn and to boost sagging bottomlines, Tata Sons – the holding company of the Tata group – has drawn-up an HR blueprint for the middle and senior level management to combat both external and internal crisis.

According to Tata group sources, the major drawback which is said to have contributed to the downturn of the group companies is "non-availability of total leadership" in the middle-level management and "less sensitive" to crisis.

Substanting on this, these sources pointed out that there is thus an urgent need to strengthen "crisis management." within the group companies. The Tata group companies include Tata Engineering, Tata Steel, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, Tata Power and Trent among others.

The group is now undertaking a new HR initiative to incorporate creating leadership skills in the middle level management and developing "sensitising programmes" for senior managers. This is to enable managers to combat external and internal crisis as part of the core people initiatives. These are the core human resource areas where the organisation plans to strengthen its base so as to withstand the current turmoils.

The group has created training modules for leadership that would be imparted at the Tata Management and Training Center (TMTC), Pune. The training center would incorporate specific and focussed modules that demonstrate the methods to cope job challenges. Subsequent to the training, managers would be put across geographies and functions to cope up with varied business circumstances, sources added. These training initiatives are aimed at enhancing the functional expertise and enforcing leadership thinking, sources said. The leadership development in middle level management is to create a visionary direction among the managerial workforce, as the group believes that making employees the visionaries of the corporate objective is the key to evolve managers as leaders. The strategy is integrated and evaluated on the parameters of the extent to which they are scientific, participative and involving.

The non-availability of a relevant competency model, according to sources, may have acted as an indirect deterrent to the group companies' progress.

Hence, Tata Sons has also evolved specific competency models on the basis of certain competency domains. The competency model stresses on creating strategic capabilities, where one of the competency is credibility, living by commitment and accuracy in operation. In line with the initiative of developing a competency framework and leadership abilities, another major people-driven move is to equip employees to cope with crisis by means of "sensitising programmes".

Crisis for the organisation can be from the external and internal environment. External crisis could be the crisis of reputation and the internal crisis could be a people related failures, sources elaborated. The objective of the programmes would be to alert employees of the actions and solutions that they should be ready with to confront such crises. The programme, said sources, is tailored to attain immediate action by the constant readiness to act