At the centre of a think tank\u2019s value are its people. These organisations require visionary leadership along with competent and motivated staff to meet their objectives. Good people management can make a big difference on how well a think tank performs.<\/p>\n
Think tanks require workers with a particular skill set, but many of these organisations struggle to recruit and retain<\/a> staff and get good value from their investment. \u00a0Good managers put great effort in finding and holding on to the right people, and developing their skills and motivating them to work in the right direction within an organisation.<\/p>\n Hiring the right people is important <\/strong>and difficult<\/strong> for think tanks.\u00a0 Two think tanks we spoke to, the\u00a0Centre for Policy Dialogue<\/a> (CPD) in Bangladesh and Public Affairs Centre<\/a> (PAC) in India, report this as their main challenge. While think tanks require very competent people, they are often not able to attract the right people and end up with hiring people who are available but not necessarily the strongest candidates.<\/p>\n We present a few\u00a0specific issues to consider:<\/p>\n Staffers should be knowledgeable and competent in their domains.\u00a0 But since research in think tanks is directed towards improving public policy, these domains cannot be narrow. Research on urban infrastructure, for example, requires the researcher to view not only the technical aspects of the problem, but to consider stakeholder perspectives, resource availability and constraints, and perhaps even the politics of the situation. Research should encompass all possible dimensions of an issue. Middle and senior level staffers, especially, must be comfortable outside their domains, have a multi-disciplinary approach, and engage with stake-holders such as policy makers, funders, civil society and team members.<\/p>\n Think tanks often want researchers who have high degrees of education. This makes it even more difficult to fill positions. CPD, for example, usually requires a Doctorate degree for the position of Research Scholar, but waives this requirement in some situations.<\/p>\n A degree of social and communication skills is essential for all think tank roles. The level of communications expertise depends on the role or function of each employee, but researchers must be able to communicate and gain support for their ideas, build networks, seek consensus and be able to absorb ideas from others.<\/p>\n Think tank staff should be capable of working fairly independently, while remaining aligned with the organisation\u2019s and the project\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n What all this means is that not only should think tank staff be very competent, they also require multiple, often paradoxical, competencies which aren\u2019t easily found in the same person. The high level of talent that think tanks require makes the search for suitable candidates harder, especially those with\u00a0skills in short supply in local employment markets.<\/p>\n CPD Bangladesh reports (and this could well be true of other countries in South Asia) that due to the system of education, people\u2019s writing skills are not good. \u00a0Many think tanks are small organisations and\u00a0may not have the resources to train people from square one, so they have to hire the right people from the start.<\/p>\n Competent researchers and outreach and advocacy experts are not short of opportunities within and often outside their own countries. Think tanks compete with companies, government departments as well as teaching institutions in hiring qualified people with expertise. PAC reports young researchers prefer to take up better paying jobs or further their studies, while CPD finds that the information technology sector and international agencies like the UN are more attractive for prospective candidates.<\/p>\n Think tanks that are dependent on short-term financing may not be able to match competitors for talent in pay and benefits, job security or career progression.\u00a0 One of the think tanks we spoke with wants to remain independent, so it does not accept funds from the national government or international institutions like the World Bank. This makes it harder for the organisation to pay at or above market pay.<\/p>\n Organisational culture strongly influences whether people would like to stay in an organisation. It also helps build its brand, which determines how attractive the organisation is to potential hires.\u00a0 A sample of employee reviews on Glassdoor<\/a> (an Indian site that permits anonymous reviews of an organisation by employees), shows what employees have liked or not liked about working in a particular think tank.\u00a0 While some complain of inadequate pay and others of being given \u2018grunt\u2019 work and not being allowed \u2018authorship\u2019 for the work they produce, others speak of bureaucratic work cultures.\u00a0 Since some think tanks do not have a professional Human Resources Management function, evaluating employee performance objectively and fairly can be a problem.<\/p>\n Here are two examples of what think tanks have done to create an attractive and engaging culture:<\/p>\n Public Affairs Centre, India<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019d love to hear views of leaders, researchers and think tank employees to promote a dialogue to build and improve human capital in think tanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the centre of a think tank\u2019s value are its people. These organisations require visionary leadership along with competent and motivated staff to meet their objectives. Good people management can make a big difference on how well a think tank performs. Think tanks require workers with a particular skill set, but many of these organisations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[175,221,1112],"class_list":["post-4288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-human-resources","tag-staff","tag-talent","article-types-case-study","people-annapoorna-ravichander","people-neeta-krishna","series-how-to-attract-and-retain-young-talent","theme-governance-and-management"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Competencies required: Supermen and Superwomen?<\/h2>\n
Domain expertise, but broad perspectives<\/h3>\n
\u00a0Social and communication skills<\/h3>\n
Autonomy and accountability<\/h3>\n
Competition for talent<\/h2>\n
Challenges in providing competitive pay<\/h2>\n
Organisational\u00a0culture and practices<\/h2>\n
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\n Centre for Policy Dialogue, Bangladesh<\/strong><\/p>\n \n
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