Snapdeal has embarked on a programme to create a pipeline of future managers. The need for such a programme — called Emerge — was felt after a flurry of high-profile exits in the e-commerce industry.
With this, Snapdeal wants to ensure that there is a ready pool of talent in the company that can take over at a time of crisis without impacting the day-to-day operations and overall business. The programme, started a few months ago, has already identified 50 such people, who are being groomed and mentored for senior roles.
“We have hired lot of executives from outside in the last 15 months from across sectors. But at the same time, we realised that as we grow and mature as an organisation, we need to build capabilities from within the company,” said Saurabh Nigam, Vice-President, HR at Snapdeal. “It is practically not possible to sustain the growth by getting leaders from outside as it is a time-consuming exercise and impacts the day-to-day performance of the business. This is also a very expensive affair.”
It takes almost 6-12 months to find a replacement at the top management and then another 3-6 months for the external hires to understand the organisation’s culture, businesses and their roles.
Snapdeal will mentor 50-100 people every year under the programme to counter talent crisis.
“At the beginning of this financial year, we realised that we have been growing very rapidly for over the last two years. Our team has grown six times in that period from just a 1,000 employees in 2014 to a 6,000-strong company. In such a scenario, we also realised that we need to bring in capable leaders in middle- and senior-management levels who can drive various new business initiatives,” Nigam added.
The programme will also be a major talent retention drive for the company. Those identified will be rewarded in terms of tangible monetary rewards, differentiated monetary plans — retention bonus, ESOPs and differentiated pay bands — among other things.