I just returned from an 8-day visit to India organized around the theme The Future of Work. We traveled with a group of  executives from North America of which many were from the areas of talent sourcing and HR. The visit was organized by the Human Capital Institute in Toronto and DNL Global in Dallas. It was fascinating even for one who grew up in India. The delegation visited the EDS BPO center, Microsoft’s largest development center outside Redmond, various schools and attended the National HR Conference on the Future of Work.

What does this have to do with Procurement, you ask? The operative word is ‘sourcing’ as in sourcing of talent. This word seems to have entered the HR vocabulary as a broad substitute for ‘recruiting’. I like the usage. It implies having to actively search for a source of a company’s primary asset – its people – rather than simply greeting them at the front door when they apply. Sources are increasingly diverse – internal markets, passive candidates, alumni, overseas workers, headhunters, contractors, free agents, staffing firms, part timers, shift workers. It seems logical to think of recruiting as, at least, partly a sourcing activity.

Notes from the trip:

• The central equation of employment has changed, perhaps forever. In the old equation, employees offered their loyalty in exchange for security. Now they offer their talent in exchange for meaningful opportunities. This is a Daniel Pink (“A Whole New Mind”) observation and oft quoted at the conference in New Delhi. I believe that sourcing this talent will go far beyond traditional notions of recruiting. It will extend to the redesign of jobs to maximize their appeal to the knowledge workers everyone is trying to attract.
• Anything that can be done at the end of a wire will probably be outsourced sooner or later. This includes voice and data dependent processes. We visited the bustling EDS/Mphasis BPO center in Mumbai. The range of outsourced processes handled here has grown far beyond simple call center support. Work increasingly doesn’t have a specific location.
• What’s good for the goose... Many firms that previously spent huge amounts on third party outsourcers are setting up their own captive offshore shops in India and other low cost locations. This is putting a huge premium on attracting and retaining the right types of workers. Turnover in some places runs 60-70% a year and some multinationals are resorting to mutual non-poaching agreements to stem the tide.
• Progressive companies are creating positions such as ‘Chief Talent Officer’ to acknowledge the changing nature of HR. One such executive from a major multinational pharmaceutical firm was traveling with us.
• Microsoft’s largest development center outside Redmond is in Hyderabad, India. We toured the beautiful campus with its pristine buildings, a standout in the Hyderabad landscape. No formal office hours, people in the gym mid-morning, energetic people everywhere - a lot like what you’d expect at a startup. This type of energy was typical at the places we visited; a palpable sense of excitement at the possibilities that the country is just discovering.