The war for talent is the number one challenge for the IT industry given the huge mismatch between demand and availability, and organisations across the industry are putting in efforts at multiple levels to hire and retain employees, Wipro Executive Chairman Rishad Premji said on Tuesday.Speaking at the Microsoft Future Ready event, Premji said hybrid work models are here to stay and companies across different industries are experimenting with it amid the pandemic.”I’ll be so bold to say that the number one challenge for the industry is just talent.

Companies who win the war on talent, win the game at some level, there is such a huge mismatch today between demand and availability of supply. So there’s a lot of effort being put at multiple different levels,” he said.Premji added that an inordinate amount of time and money is being spent in reskilling and upskilling people at an industry level.”The other obsessive focus is on retaining talent… I’m a big believer that people don’t only leave for compensation, people don’t only leave for better opportunities, people leave when they don’t feel a sense of connectedness with the organisation,” he said.

He noted that the likelihood of an employee staying back goes up when they have a “sense of feeling of belonging” and that they are “relevant as a human being in this system of hundreds of thousands of employees”.”… we are spending a lot of time in how do we drive a strong sense of ownership for people.

Everybody should feel a sense of belonging both not only from the practice that they work for proposals, but also from HR that somebody cares that I exist, that I matter, that this is my career path, this is how I’m going to grow in the organisation,” Premji explained.Asked if IT companies were losing talent to startup ecosystem that has been expanding at a rapid pace in the country, Premji answered in the negative.”I would submit that it doesn’t uniquely change the situation.

There was this conversation a few years back that when the startup ecosystem, which as a thriving, active ecosystem was growing, that suddenly there would be mass exodus from larger, more traditional services companies, and that didn’t quite play out. I think this is a universal shortage of talent and a universal demand for talent,” he said.He added that there are opportunities that are ripe, and many IT services companies are losing people to other IT services companies and not necessarily to young startups.”

… focus certainly (should be) on ensuring that people have great opportunities to grow and learn inside the organisation, we should focus on strong experience and engagement with employees, we’ve also got to focus on the fact that people get opportunities to try different things inside the company,” he further said.Talking about hybrid work environment, Premji said fundamentally, it is important that people do come back to workplace for some time.”I’m a big believer that people should come back. We’re very keen that people come back some of the time but all of the people come back some of the time… Equally I’m very excited about what the hybrid model allows you to participate in.

It allows you to include many people who couldn’t be included in the workforce before, it allows you to include people perhaps, who are living in tier III-IV cities… There are women who want flexibility…,” he said.To a question on how organisations can be future ready, Premji said one needs to have a mindset of openness for that.”

… a mindset of being able to unlearn what you believed to be the truth for the longest time and an openness to change that completely. I think that’s the number one thing that you need, and you need it at all stages of leadership, and all stages of your career. To be open to changing what you’ve known, and to try new ways of doing it,” he added.