Take Solutions: Business Strategy And Role In The Organization

1. What is the business strategy to achieve its goals?

2.  What is your role in the organization? What are your daily tasks?

Business Strategy to Achieve Goals

Take Solutions represents an internationally recognized domain leader in the Life Sciences and the Supply Chain Management (takesolutions.com 2018). The firm leverages its innovation driven technology, domain expertise, best practices and employee strength and offers the clients transformative services across the clinical development and the point services towards the supply chain. By the year 2020-21, Take Solutions wants to become a 500 million dollar company. The company wants to be a life science leader and life science technology company. Therefore, for the growth phase, the company is primarily focusing on the US and the Europe Market

Take Solutions is planning to do various things. Firstly, the company is trying to strengthen its global reach and is looking forward by exploring through acquisitions in the North American and the European Market (takesolutions.com 2018). The company is also having an organic growth plant but to achieve the 500 million dollar mark it needs to have certain acquisition done. Take Solutions is managing funds for that and looking to acquire few companies in North America and the Europe market. This will enable the company in achieving long-term focus. The company also wants to strengthen the clinical practice that would contribute to the entire revenue. There are however, various practices within the life sciences for example, the regulatory privy and safety are one of the practices. If one observes, the company has a huge contribution on the clinical domain from Phase 1 to Phase 4. Almost, 70 percent of the firm’s revenue comes from the clinical practice and balance comes from the generics, regulatory and technology services.

2.I play a strategic role where I try to align with the business partners. Take solutions is one of the business units amongst the lot many business units across the globe so my role where is to make sure that I align with their vision and try to set up long term human resource strategy. I also build and forecast the increasing work force need across the globe by building performance management system in place and creating globalized policies. Until now, we have been operating as the localized Human Resource (HR) functions. Although, all geography have their human resource policies but right now the HR department of the company is getting into a globalized workforce team  and therefore many process needs to be strengthened as a globalized process.

Presently, I am working on globalizing human resource process and involve in strategic hiring process across the globe to ensure the fulfillment of right kind of talent for reaching the long-term goals. We are however, the regular HR teams who undertake the functions of the operational HR on a day-to-day basis.

Role in the Organization and Daily Tasks

I have been doing this for close to two decades now. Although life science is a tough market but an interesting area to work on since you get to interact with the various professionals like clinical research associate, scientist and doctor. Therefore, one tends to achieve lots of learning.  In spite of it being challenging, it is quite interesting as it comes with loads of learning.

How you do staffing in different department?

We have different channels of staffing.  For  example  in the  Indian market campus recruitment is  one of the source that help us recruit talent from University who are them provided initial training before being allocated any specific projects. The other one is the referral programs. Here, we share our requirements to all the employees within the organizations. On referring the right talent for the requirement, they are allotted performance bonus. The third represents the job portals, the various job portals that the company has (Sinha and Thaly 2013). Fourthly, it would be the in house recruiter where they create a team through their database (Corrigan 2015).  The fifth one is through the various partners, the vendors, the consultants, executive placement consultant who will be working for us. Therefore, it depends on the criticality of the requirement and the number of requirements the company receives at any point of time. In fact, we decide on the sources and based on that channels are used for closing requirement. If one considers the UK, Europe and the US market, then staffing predominantly have to be through in house recruiter or have to be through the vendors or the partners. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to know the reference done by the employees. We have to use either our in house recruiter using linkedIn or some other job portals like Monster or else we have to partner with the manpower placement vendors and close the requirement.

How does it align with business strategy?

To reach the 500 million mark and look for the expansion in the Europe and the US market would imply an increase in the number of head counts. Therefore, we need to develop an acquaintance with the kinds of projects in these geographies. Moreover, based on the information from the business development team we also need to develop an idea about the type of skill set that needs recruitment. The firm should be ready for handling projects that comes in as the newer client.  The company should also consider whether there would be expansion possible for the existing client. Therefore, it depends on the skill set based on which we do the work force and recruitment plan and thereby try to execute such plans.

Staffing Process in Different Departments

How do you do training?

We have created a template for man power plan.  It is a kind of PCM model where P stands for People, C for Capability and M for Maturity model. It refers to a maturity framework with focus in the constant improvement of management along with the development of human assets within an organization (Hopkinson 2017). The model helps in describing an evolutionary improvement pathway from an inconsistent performance of practice to something disciplined and matured. The model also ensures constant improvement in the development of skill, knowledge and motivation of workforce thereby enhancing the strategic business performance.

If one gets into it, he or she will be able to see that level 3 has something called the man power plan. So we  have created  a man power  plan  template  at  the  beginning of  the  financial  year. We then send the template   to the entire business unit who tend to fill all the details including the skill sets. We can however provide training to the bench staffs by training them and by recruiting them in certain projects. External recruitment only takes place when there is no availability of the internal talent. Therefore, every requirement from the mandates to the  time frame everything remains captured in the form and  shared  by the  business  unit post  the  approval of  the  management team.  Based on the plans on whatever we have received the recruitment team will start working on the monthly structure of the number of required skill set necessary for recruitment. Again, as I mentioned earlier they will refer based on their criticality. They will use proper sources and channels for recruiting the right candidate.

How about performance and compensation management, what do you usually do to motivate people?

Our Performance Management Plan follows a balance scorecard method that has goals set for the top following a top down method (Adams, Muir and Hoque 2014). For example, as a HR global operation head I have my goal sets defined by the managing director or the vice chairperson of the company. This includes the expectation from us on a global scale and the key focus areas. Once, I get that my goal sheet it is translated to my direct reportees who then receive their goal sheet from my direct managers. So based on the type of function and the alignment of goal weight age gets distributed. So basically we have  four   parameters in the goal sheet, the first one is the financial parameter , second is the customer parameter, the other one is the  internal forces parameter and  the  fourth one  is the training and development parameter . Weight age is distributed against all the parameters. For instance, either 100 percent weight age can be distributed evenly by assigning 25 percent to each parameter or the distribution can be uneven like 40 percent, 30 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent based on the level of employee and based on requirement. This is because the financial parameter does not hold valid for some employees so the preparation of the goal sheet depends on the band and the grade of the employees. Once the goal sheet is ready and signed by respective managers or team heads, the approved goal sheet is assigned to the respective employee via an online HRMS system. We have an annual calendar that we will open for them to do the self-rating. Once they do the self-rating, the mail trigger goes to the direct reportees and the reporting manager does the evaluation but he does not share the score because he needs to first present it to a committee called Continuation and Compensation Review team (CCRT)(Ghafran and O'Sullivan 2013). All the practice heads are part of the team and the HR drives the meeting. All the  managers who has  team will come  and  assign the  best performers  from their  team  which will undergo scrutiny. This is to ensure that there is a transparency in performance management system followed without any bias in the system since there will be some managers who might give biased rating to the some compared to the others. Heads from different departments remains   part of the CCRT committee to whom the respective managers comes and presents their case. After the approval of the committee, the manager goes back and submits the scores of his team members. This is how we evaluate the performance management system.

Alignment with Business Strategy

How can HR practices help business goal?

The business goal is something that is distributed by our goal sheets and if one consider all the points in the goal sheet and collectively compare them then he/she will be able to see the overall goal of the firm. As per the distribution, the clinical division will have an allocated target of close to fifty million while the regulatory division will have a twenty five million target. Both of them put together will have a target close to 75 million for this year. Another, fifty million will be distributed to various managers across the geographies. Out of which, some people will have 10 million target for this year to ensure that his management of the work force and delivery to the client and client satisfaction is good thereby leading to business improvement. So the goals and the performance are directly linked to the overall vision of the company which lies in achieving the target of 500 million dollar.

Are there any HR issues and business issues that you need to handle and how to handle?

Look my strength lies in crisis management (Sparrow, Farndale and Scullion 2013). The main challenge of the HR department in my industry lies in the retention of the critical resources. One has to understand that the market is competitive and is open every year during the month of June and July that is post appraisal. The market practices at a different level and is always challenging once one gives their performance increment. There are existence of Tier one, Tier two and growing companies. I often find the challenge of our resources moving towards the Tier one companies or such companies attempting resources of our companies. As tier one company refers to one of the key members of the supply chain thereby ensuring the direct supply of the components to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) who initiates the chain (Malshe and Biemans 2014). The Tier two companies also represent suppliers and are vital to the supply chain. They have limited production. Such companies are comparatively smaller and have lesser technical advantages compared to the Tier one companies (Gaynor, Ho and Town 2015).

To stop them from doing we came up with a strategic program called the Star talent program. It is nothing but a firsthand program designed for the critical talents. Employees groomed for a long term for transforming them into a leader will be part of the star talent. They will also have financial and non-financial parameter where they are given special projects to work on. Therefore, we are trying various options for retaining critical talents.

Training Process and Manpower Plan

If many people leave the organization, do you have any plan for retention?

There are lots of reward program available but at the end of the day, it depends on the individual’s requirement. Some people might require a different technology to work; some might require an opportunity while some might like to work for a particular brand, so it depends on the individual requirement. We need to find out and this varies from case to case. Overall, we do many engagement activities for the employees. We do not strictly believe in only 9 to 6 jobs and therefore  incorporate lots of calendarized  and  sports  activities so that they feel relaxed and comfortable  and feel encouraged to come to office.  We try to create a different work culture by ensuring that there are some things happening on the floor every month. Our motive is to make sure that the work ambience is not boring. The company also offers many training programs that help the employees in increasing their capabilities on the current trends.

Take Solutions also follows an Open Door Policy instead of a hierarchy kind of thing. It is a communication policy where the supervisor leaves their door open for encouraging the transparency and openness with employees of that particular company (Bowe, Ball and Gold 2017). As per the policies the employees can anytime ask questions address problems and discuss suggestions or any type of concern with the management. Open policy is implemented for fostering an ambience of higher performance, mutual respect and collaboration between the management and the employees. Its purpose lies in encouraging feedback, open communication and discussion of important matters of an employee (Miles and Mangold 2014).

Here people can voice their opinion through the lots of forums. This helped us in bringing in transparency into the HR practice across the globe. We make sure that the managing director travels and shares his vision along with his plans not only for this year but also for the long-term. We also invite leaders from different geographies to come and share their experience. We even tried technology knowledge sharing through a common social portal that helps in creating an ambience similar to Facebook (Panahi et al. 2013). Here people share what they do from their practice, project, a team, a group, or a unit. They can even create a group and share their information. They also share personal things like the experiences of a trekking trip or vacation trip. People can also explore different places through the eyes of others. We also do lots of things offline thereby encouraging the employees to share their knowledge and talent. Thus, apart from the monetary benefit we also ensure happy equation for all the employees. Wherever possible we do the maximum for the employees. Still we face challenges when it comes to the retaining of the critical talents because their demand is high in the market. What we do now is tie up with various universities where we start training resources thereby creating talent pools so even when some talents leave us we are left with enough talents for filling the gap thereby making sure that the operations does not suffer.

Performance and Compensation Management

Do you think business issues and HR issues are related and do they have any connection?

The only challenge in both human resource and business lies in driving the right talent at the right time. Nowadays to overcome this we have adopted the forecasting methodology that informs us about the market that we are moving along with the skill set that requires grooming for a particular year (Ord and Fildes 2013). The method makes everything available right from the past data to the present market data. Therefore it boils down to recruiting employees with the required skill set within the firm so that it remains in a position to allocate the right resources for a concerned project.

Business challenge can however be explained from a different perspective. For instance, suppose to reach the 500 million dollar target we need to acquire a company but is unable to find  a proper one then it becomes a business challenge and has nothing to do with the humans resources. But suppose if one gets a project in phase 1 stage in a European country and do not have the required talents for handling the projects then it is both HR as well as a business challenge. Although this seems manageable one but the situation mentioned earlier is difficult to manage since they depend on the industry and the availability of the right kind of companies. This makes it a critical area. On the other hand, although HR deals with multiple things but their challenges remains manageable. The duties of the HR involve getting the people at the right time, getting the right resources at the right time and retaining the critical talents. Besides, the HR also makes sure that they have the best environment for the resources by ensuring creation of knowledge sharing. Provided these things are managed properly, I believe the HR field will not face much of a challenge.

What is the business context of the organization?

Here I will provide an insight about Navitas, the life science wing of Take Solutions (Louie 2018). The company primarily concentrated on the domain intensive services related to lifescience and supply chain management. However, in recent times, the supply chain management has reduced and now the overall share and the growth percentage of the firm are mostly derived from the life sciences wing, the Novatis. There are various wings of Novatis and the revenue is primarily generated via the consulting wing. Besides, the company is also concentrating on the Technology and functional area. However, the broad spectrum lies in focusing on the clinical, regulatory and safety area for creating innovative products and services and thereby addressing the needs of the life sciences industry in a very unique way. So Take Solutions aims at becoming one of the leading life sciences company handling the top five Pharma company of the world

What is the relationship between the business context and the HR context of the organization?

The context is very simple here. The business context lies in hitting the target of 500 million by the year 2020-21 while the HR context lies in managing the current global workforce. Therefore, for reaching such a business context we need to create workforce in the different geographies. HR partners from the different geographies have already started working on the kind of workforce by the business. Take Solutions have a good HR framework on a global scale which we try to collectively implement since the firm has now acquired new companies which are presently in the stage of collaboration.  At the same time, we are trying to synchronize the various processes if the acquired companies and thereby bring along a globalized process. This is what is taking place on a parallel basis. In other words, it is basically a collaboration of the business functions. This is in fact a day to day job and not a one time job since we need to closely work with all the business units on a day to day basis. Here, I am basically involved in the discretion zone and need to attend the  senior level leadership  review meeting held every month which provides me with an overview  of the happenings of  the business and  the kind of  the support the HR provides. Thus, we basically share the challenges and try to understand what businesses the different geographies require and how to fulfill them. Therefore, the HR plays a role where it needs to partner and collaborate.

Are there any external issues faced by the business for example any social, technological, legal, political issues?

Luckily it is not there because we are a service industry serving the life science domain. The political, economical, technological and other issues come for the pharma companies who are basically our clients. For example, if Pfizer wants to release a drug into the market, it will face a lot of challenges from the political, economic and the government sector (pfizer.com 2018). Our role on this part is a bit different. There are various phases that a drug goes through before its release into the market. The service towards implementation of the phases is provided by the life sciences wing of the firm. Thus, we aid a pharmaceutical company with a clearance to release the drug into the market. Thus, in helping the pharma company in reaching various phases for a product make us face no challenges from the external environment. However, when there is a declaration from the government regarding the slack phase of the health care industry then we do get affected. This is because, it is a time when most of the pharma companies will stop their outsourcing activities, reduce workforce, they will not manufacture drug. Although think the increasing prevalence of newer type of diseases will never welcome such a situation in the healthcare industry and thereby it will show steady growth. Hence, the growth of the pharma companies will directly enhance the business of Take Solution thereby defining a massive growth.

Do you think these issues have an impact on HR function?

At the international level, the issues that impacts the HR functions includes the technological advancement and the international economic conditions. At the national level, it is however the economic, political and legal circumstances, cultural and demographic factors mostly influences the HR practices (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). Now if we look at the individual factors one can find that the introduction of the compliance standards of a newer workplace constantly keeps the HR department under pressure to keep up with the law. This kind of regulatory measures influences all the process of HR department including the training, hiring, compensation and termination. Lack of adherence can impose extensive fines on the part of the company. The economic conditions also act as the biggest influence on the HR function. In addition to affecting the talent pool, it affects the ability of the HR department in the process of hiring. To be aware of the economic conditions one must be aware of the happenings taking place across the world which will help them in creating a plan for dealing with economic slowdown. Technological advantage is another external force that directly has an influence on the HR function. This is because with the introduction of the new technology, the HR department might look for ways to downsize and find means for saving money. A job that initially required 2 to 4 people can be cut down to single person. Technology helps in revolutionizing the manner in which we carry out business. Workforce demographics are also a key factor that the HR department needs to consider. With the recruitment of the newer generation and the departure of the older generation, the HR department must look for ways of attracting newer set of candidates. The hiring process and the compensation packages must be decided based on the preference of the younger generation. They must also ensure a work ambience aligned with the needs and likings of the newer generations.

What are the opportunities and threats for your Organization?

Take solutions offer lots of opportunities in the form of automation of the process. Since our firm primarily offers functional, technological and consulting services so it has a vital role in all the Pharma companies. However, to ensure automation, Take Solutions can ensure knowledge consulting. Besides, if the Pharma companies want to create a product our firm can do that too since functionally we are capable enough to understand the requirements of the pharma companies. We belong to the right areas of expertise with Navitas, our life science wing, implementing various changes with respect to the health care and the pharma sector. We also involve in various types of network forums, undertake various research and development on the happenings across the globe which helps us in equipping ourselves on specific areas. This helps us in meeting the demands of the pharma clients.

What are the organization’s strength and weaknesses to deal with those threats and opportunities?

Take Solutions is a unique company that adopted a business model way before other life science company made a beginning in India. For example, the company has the largest regulatory submission team in India. The resources of the company have a better understanding of the regulatory submissions of different geographies like Europe, US, India and Asia via electronic formats. Thus, the strength of the company lies in this area. Besides, the strength of the company lay in its unique product known as SAP (Seidel et al. 2014). These products helps in supporting the client’s needs and the transactional needs related to the product.  The uniqueness of the company also lies in easing out the process.

In comparison to the big Contract Research Organization (CRO), Take Solutions still faces various gaps which the company will soon meet up through acquisition of different companies (Anand 2018). Fulfillment of the gaps will determine the concerned firm as one of the strongest competitors within the life science industry.

What the business strategy requires of the people in your organization (such as number of people, where they are, skills, and abilities)?

If I had to recruit some people then I will look for someone who can fix our functional service, possess knowledge on Pharma and have some experience of working in a life science or Pharma company. These are the basic skill sets that I will require. We have a limited skill set and know from which company we need to acquire it. Our skill set will preferably match with the skill sets of the CRO or a Pharma company. We never go outside the domain which makes it easier for picking up resources.  

More than the skills we believe in enhancing those skills. As a life science company we need to have certain skill set and we believe in honing those skill set. For instance, we started as a Pharma co-vigilance team in Europe but now having businesses one of the largest pharma companies in India. Presently, Take Solutions is building a pharma co vigilance team based out of Karnataka. So it is about enhancing their skill sets across multiple geographies. The skill set of the company includes doctors, microbiologists, science graduates, MDs and scientist.

Does your organization currently have this? What are your HR strength and weakness?

We do have all the required skill sets that is why we are targeting to become a 500 million dollar company. With respect to human resource, we are trying to create lots of competencies.  We are trying to understand each role and basic role based competency. On finding gaps we are trying to grain those and strengthen those skill sets. We also try to review the skill matrix. Things like enhancement of newer skill sets are repeated and used as and when needed by the business development team for the functioning of the business. In addition, Take Solutions also follows a robust training calendar from the time of implementation of newer resources. They are provided lots of training before a new resource is allotted a project. Thus, the human resource remains well collaborated with the business unit and we have the right methodologies to enhance the skill set of our employees.

We however do not have a weakness for human resource. Weakness is something which we should not be telling because weakness acts as a negative force. I always believe working on the strengths which will eventually help in fading the weakness. So there exists nothing called weakness. Moreover, weakness diverts our attention and leads to wastage of time which could have been fruitfully spent on enhancing the available strengths. Like for example, supply chain management used to be our strength earlier but later we neither found market share nor market from that business. Instead of concentrating on it we considered Life sciences as strength and put up an effort to grow the business. Today we are able to see the result. No matter how small a weakness we won’t b talking much about it.

Does your organization have higher levels of integration of HR into business strategy?

The answer is yes since the entire human resource management is actually being headed directly by the vice chairman and managing director who remain at the highest level in the organization. So the integration starts from him. The HR department reports to the managing director who also heads the various operations. This keeps us informed about the course of the business. In many companies, the HR department either reports to the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) or chief people officer who then reports to the higher authorities (Aswathappa 2013). We consider ourselves lucky to be able to report directly to the MD and so we have high visibility of the business and also know in which direction it is growing. In fact, we get the first hand information directly from the vice chairman so we remain ever ready to collaborate and help the business function in achieving their goals.

We have separate human resource department in different geographies. There is also a corporate human resource department based out of India that actually manages the globalized policies. Apart from that we have HR department at different offices over different geographies who manage the local requirement, compliances, policies, processes and the regular operational activities of human resource.  

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