ACMA’s HR survey reveals many pressing issues

April 30: ACMA, the apex body of the automotive component industry in India, has revealed the findings of its first survey on Human Resource Practices and Remuneration Benchmarking for its member organisations.

The survey was conducted by Deloitte India and is aimed at gaining strategic insights into the critical human capital challenges, HR practices and remuneration trends in the industry. Over 90 ACMA members across the country participated in this exercise.

Commenting on the initiative, Arvind Kapur, president, ACMA, said: “As the auto component manufacturing industry in India steadily becomes global, the business strategies adopted by individual companies will be shaped to a great extent by workforce challenges. To be competitive, the industry will not only need a perspective on the best HR practices but will also need to benchmark its own HR systems and policies against the global best”. Some of the key findings of the survey include:

• Talent attraction and retention: Anxiety over retaining talent has emerged as a key concern and challenge across all management levels; it is relatively steep at the entry, junior and middle managerial levels. High turnover for lateral hires at the junior and middle management levels is also a cause of concern.

• Workforce capability development: The industry cites a critical need to constantly enhance employee skills in line with the changing business environment. Organisations are increasingly feeling the need to focus on the critical needs of employee skilling, re-skilling and redeployment.

• Managerial bandwidth: Currently a lot of organisations lack leadership and managerial depth at the middle management level and there is a dire need for developing effective business and HR processes which will facilitate knowledge management and transfer. Limited cross-functional exposures too emerge as an obstacle in developing managerial and leadership competencies.

• Labour and industrial relations: Industrial relations, labour availability, wage levels and productivity are pressing issues for the industry that need immediate attention.