CR Team

The Indian coal mining company, Coal India is gearing up to face some testing times ahead as its senior executive members are nearing retirement, leaving behind an inexperienced workforce.  This has been the primary motive behind Coal India’s increasing attempts to take the services of the right consultants. Looking to completely revamp its recruitment and training organization, consultants would provide an idea on the optimum number of management cadre employees and then an aide in succession planning."High rate of superannuation, around 750 a year, from the middle management and senior management positions, is a serious threat to the knowledge base of the organization that has been created over years," said R Mohan Das, director human resources and industrial relations at Coal India. Mohan also voiced his concerns over the attrition rate, which he imagines, would move upward with the opening up of the mining sector and increased economic activities in the country

The organization, in the ongoing year, is projected to bring in skill development avenues like competency mapping and assessment. It envisions tapping into the pool of retired company executives and utilizing their experience to enhance the skillsets of fresh recruits. The company is in the process of hiring about 1,000 people to replace the retiring executives. Consultancies are willing to help Coal India in this procedure. Some of them have already offered innovative solutions, most widely, succession planning. Mohan consents  to the need of having a leadership pipeline ready. He says, “The executives selected as successors can be subjected to accelerated learning programmes of advanced general management, transformational leadership and enterprise management, among others.” Besides that, Coal India has also decided to overhaul its training policy by July 2015 and has tied up with National Skill Development Corporation for training one lakh employees in two years.