Human capital management is changing at a dizzying pace globally. Uruguay does not escape this reality and the Information Technology sector, in particular, is one of the most dynamic. With zero unemployment, the companies that are part of it must be increasingly ingenious to attract the best employees, reduce high turnover and promote training, which is essential to enhance growth.
With the purpose of analyzing this reality and fostering dialogue among the actors in the sector, the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology (Cuti) organized the event "Challenges and Trends in Human Capital Management". The meeting, which brought together about 60 participants, allowed human resources managers, directors, company managers and workers to share their experiences and be enriched by the exchange.
"The problem of human capital worries us all and Cuti has put the focus on this. All Latin American countries consider us as an example in technology and we must take advantage of this handicap to grow, but for that we need the right human resources," said Carlos Caetano, president of Cuti.
In order to promote the exchange, the Open Space dynamic was used, an agile methodology that gives the participants of the meeting control over the agenda and the topics to be discussed.
In this opportunity, 12 discussion tables were formed to focus on different topics, being education one of the cross-cutting issues. How to reach teenagers to awaken their interest in ICT careers, the need to have more trained staff and the importance of promoting internal training instances, were some of the points analyzed. "We invest two years in their training and when they start to perform, they leave", mentioned one of the businessmen who bets on the internal training of his staff, but suffers from the high rotation in the sector. In this sense, the practice of head-hunting was addressed as a current recruitment and selection strategy that demands the implementation of new practices for the retention of talent. Diego Sastre, vice president of Cuti's Human Capital Committee, highlighted the need for a search for consensus among companies to promote better coexistence within the industry.
One of the biggest changes facing human capital managers is that the economic proposition is no longer the most important thing when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent. Today, flexible hours, training support and a good working environment are more valued, said the human resources managers present in one of the discussion groups.
Another issue addressed by several of the groups was the arrival of the "millennials" (under 30 years old), who through their approaches, generate new models of internal organization and leadership. The current trend is to abandon the vertical order, with directors isolated in their offices, and move to collaborative, horizontal models, where proposing and being heard becomes the norm.
Also considered were performance evaluation modalities and possible rewards or prizes that raise the level of employee satisfaction. The increasingly low female participation in the sector was another point that attracted attention, as only 15% of positions in Uruguayan IT companies are held by women.
"What emerges from this meeting is that everything is there to be done," said Jorge Vidart, another referent within the Commission. "Medicine is 2,000 years old, architecture is 3,000 years old and our discipline is only 50 years old. What we have to do is generate culture, be patient, learn and correct ourselves," he said.
The participants highlighted and thanked Cuti for generating this instance of exchange that enables synergy between different actors and enables a frank dialogue.
The learning generated sets the basis for a review and validation of the current strategies, as well as for the design of the Chamber's actions, in terms of Human Capital, to be carried out in 2016.
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