Digital Transformation in this Era:

Abstract

We have worked on the topic: “Inclusive leader in the digital era” for our term paper. We
have introduced the topic along with its significance and how we are going to discuss the
topic as we proceed. We have discussed the various effective and smart qualities of inclusive
leaders before and after the pandemic. Then we have gone ahead and stated what does it
mean to be an inclusive leader today and how to introduce inclusivity in the workplace to
develop, retain and nurture future corporate leaders. We have answered one of the
important questions on how to measure the extent of inclusivity in the team and, as a
manager, how to lead the team post-pandemic in the digital era. After that, we have
stressed how to incorporate the hybrid mechanism as an inclusive leader and also
exemplified some of the potential leaders who have brought inclusion in this digital era.
Eventually, it ended with a summary and a conclusion about the topic.
The main purpose of going ahead with the topic is that the topic has a real significance in
today’s business era where the inclusive leaders help in achieving the best for their team as
well as their organization and are responsible for bringing out innovative ideas and solutions
having a significant business impact.

A better way to develop and retain top talents of an organization

In reality, these days, almost every company has some kind of program to help the rising
stars of the company and nurture their talent. Nurturing top talents has been a priority for
companies because these high-performing employees have a large impact on the business
outcomes of the given company.
In spite of the existence of various kinds of talent nurturing programs, the companies are
not able to retain their top performers for a long period of time. Research studies across the
globe state that most management teams find it difficult to go through the process of
developing their next generation of leaders. It has also been found out that the senior
corporate leaders many times make misguided assumptions about their high performer
employees and take decisions on their behalf, which actually hinders their development,
and these employees start to feel that they are not included, which negatively affects their
trust for the organization.
Let’s look at the top six common errors being made by the organization leaders while
developing their next generation of leaders, which can make the entire process irrelevance.
1. Senior managers tend to assume that high potentials are highly engaged. But the
ground figures mighty be completely different. The high potential employees might not be
highly engaged or may be low in motivation for other numerous reasons

2. Equating high performance with future potentials. Sometimes it may happen that the
current high performers might not be suitable for the future where the technologies/
knowledge base being worked upon would be far different from the present moment.
3. Delegating down the management of Top talent. For example: When the task of
cultivating and nurturing future leaders is given to a specific business unit, candidates are
only selected pertaining to their performance exclusively on a specific field and are provided
with narrow growth opportunities limited to that particular business unit and mostly focus
on the skills required now rather than tomorrow.

4. Shielding rising stars from the early derailment. The top performers are generally
assigned tasks that require a bit of a stretch but very little risk of failure. This scenario
generally doesn’t help the star performers in the future to accomplish a task in an adverse
situation that includes a high chance of failure.

5. Star employees are expected to share their pain in adverse times. For instance, when a
company goes through tough times, senior managers may opt for freezing or cutting salaries
or providing compensation based on performance. But this decision actually erodes the
motivation and engagement of the star performers.

6. Unable to link the star performers to your corporate strategy. Many times businesses
remain “radio-silent” about their future strategies even with the star performer employees.
This increases the risk of disengagement from high-performing employees when they are
needed the most.

The process of retaining star employees through the Exit Interview process can be a
powerful tool for retention. A well-structured and strategic Exit Interview program provides
the ground reality about what employees are thinking about, the existing problems in the
organization and provides insight into the competitive landscape.

The companies should focus on the following six goals to ensure a successful EI program:-

1. Businesses need to uncover each and every important issue relating to HR.
2. Employees’ perception of work should be understood, where the perception includes
various factors like the design of the job, 
3. Collect insights from employees about the leadership styles followed by managers in the
organization and their implications and effectiveness.
4. To be aware of the trending HR benchmarks related to salaries and benefits in the
competitive landscape.
5. Respecting the ideas of demotivated employees that can bring innovation into the
corporate strategy.
6. Create a lifelong positive picture for the organization by showing gratitude and respect to
the departing employees.

Apart from incorporating a better Exit interview process, the following are the steps that can
be followed by the corporate leaders in order to be inclusive in the workplace and retain the
star employees of the company:-
1. Leaders must try to ask more and more questions to employees from time to time to gain
insights about the organization from the perspective of each employee.

2. Try to create more on-the-job opportunities. Managers must identify the skills the team
member wants to learn and provide corporate opportunities aligned with the skills. This
helps the employees to build trust in the process as well as for the management team.
3. Learning experiences must be varied pertaining to the employees. Yes, it is not easy to
provide a varying learning experience to each and every employee by catering to their
personal needs and goals, but the process should be started from the ground level.
Experiences that will best cater to the personal needs of employees must be considered,
and managers must see how to leverage these experiences for the greater needs of the
organization.

4. Regular feedback must be taken as well as given to the employees by the managers in the
process where the employees carry out the on-the-job responsibilities in the team. Regular
feedback must be provided on what parameters they are doing really well and in which
scenarios there is some extent of improvement.

5. Managers must manage their time. When there are a large number of direct reports
under a single manager, the workload might be overwhelming. To manage the time,
employee-support tasks must be distributed among the other informal mentors, senior
leaders or peers. Leaders must always try to determine their capable bandwidth of handling
workload before taking the tasks of mentoring and nurturing highly talented employees.

6. In the competitive corporate landscape, leaders must try to incorporate innovative

strategies in crafting jobs that not only align with the personal skills set and goals of the
employees but at the same time, employees must enjoy what they do and how they interact
in the team in the workplace. Managers should be smart enough to create opportunities for
the employees to leverage their strengths and align those opportunities towards the greater
good of the company.