It may sound strange, but it is true! The IPO-bound Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), the largest insurer in the country with assets of Rs 38.61 lakh crore, needs a helping hand of an external agency for assessing its officers for promotion to the top and senior management.
The fate of some 650 officers with at least two decades of experience is in the hands of an external agency. The massive HR exercise, months before the most-awaited IPO, assumes significance as the corporation's public listing would push it into the leagues of some of the largest conglomerates like Reliance Industries (RIL), HDFC Bank, TCS and Infosys in terms of market capitalisation.
LIC's valuation is expected to be in the range of anywhere between Rs 12.85-Rs 15 lakh crore, though the advisors are still struggling to compute its embedded value which would set the benchmark for market valuation. LIC's IPO is slated in the fourth quarter of the current year.
Many experts are baffled with an external agency deciding the promotion of top management officers like zonal managers, senior divisional managers, deputy divisional managers, and deputy zonal managers. "In a corporation of LIC size, the system and processes for promotion should be inbuilt," says an HR expert.
Sources in the company suggest that the corporation has also taken the help of external agencies in the past. Currently, LIC's chairman and four managing directors are appointed by the government.
The 65-year-old LIC has over 1 lakh employees, spread over some 2,000 plus branches and 1,500 plus satellite offices. The promotion exercise will cover employees in foreign locations as well as various states in the country.
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The corporation has identified 160-200 officers for promotion to top management, while there are an estimated 400-450 officers for senior management positions. The external agency, which can be a B-school or a recruitment firm, should have an average annual turnover of Rs 30 crore in the last three years. In addition, the company should have made profit in at least three out of the last five years.
LIC claims that the assessment by an external agency is part of the exercise to move beyond the traditional method of evaluation.
As part of the scope of the work, the external agency will have to design the assessment exercise and conduct online and offline assessments in areas like requisite skills and attitude for the critical positions. This also means identification of cognitive, non-cognitive, leadership, psychometric, and other requisite skills.
There is a separate skill requirement for promotion to senior management level. This includes skills like team building, leadership, and decision-making. LIC has also specified skills like design thinking, organizing, conflict handling, and negotiations skills.
Similarly, the skill set for assessment for promotion to top management includes communication skills, public speaking, team building, analytical ability, decision making and strategic thinking. There are other parameters like business acumen, execution excellence, conflict handling, negotiation and influencing skills, creative problem solving, etc.
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