Power equipment maker BHEL is in the process of reorienting its HR policy to prepare its employees to counter the competition put up by multinational firms, besides preparing them for a succession planning in the coming years.

The reorientation has been spurred by the fact that about 11,000 of its employees comprising around 22 per cent of its total staff strength are retiring over the next five years. The company has started working on a succession planning initiative, which will focus on grooming the remaining 19,000 employees who have less than five-year experience. "These young people will take over the baton from the senior people who will be retiring. We will prepare them according to the competition and challenges which the power sector, especially our segment, is expected to see," BHEL’s Director (Human Resources) R Krishnan told Business Standard.

Accordingly training programmes will be developed internally (within the company) and externally (from outside agencies) to fill in the gaps. The company has hired Ernst & Young for conducting programmes for its employees. Employees might also be shifted to different departments/positions according to their seniority levels, he said.

Even the remodeling of performance linked incentives is on the cards. “The focus is to develop not only each person’s competencies, but also their performance and potential in alignment with our ongoing business challenges. Leadership development, competency mapping, performance linked pay, career planning and succession planning initiatives are in various stages of implementation," Krishnan said.

BHEL has recruited about 19,000 persons in the last five years, but seeing the current situation in the power sector, the company will be watchful of hiring more people, Krishnan said.

With power equipment orders from power projects declining, the company has also planned to diversify into other sectors including oil and gas, transportation and defence to explore new stream of revenues.The company’s main focus is currently on power sector but with fuel unavailability and other problems such as land and environmental clearance hitting the capacity addition and delaying power projects, BHEL’s growth has also seen a hit. The company has fixed a target of Rs 1 lakh crore revenues by 2017 from currently about Rs 49,000 crore.