The war for talents experienced by HR before the economic crisis is back in force but in a different form. According to a KPMG study, it no longer concerns only the high potential and overqualified profiles in the company.
The skills shortage remains a central challenge for companies around the world. This has reached the point that for most of the 355 consultants interviewed in the KPMG study this shortage will reach a critical threshold during the next two years. Pressure is growing since the lack of candidates with qualified profiles now covers all sectors of business and industry. The problem is generational. It has taken some time for HR departments to adapt to a new generation of qualified workers who are claiming more openings in the company. It is becoming more and more difficult to find candidates on the market with profiles able to occupy the new positions arising in companies. To win the talent war which seems to be emerging once again, human resources professionals will need to develop new strategies. The study confirms this: 59% of respondents think that the new talent war differs from that experienced in the past since it no longer concerns only those with high potential.
More global talent management
What direction should talent management take under these circumstances? It seems that HR professionals will need to turn to more comprehensive strategies. In the KPMG study, two thirds of respondents say that it is now more important to have a single strategy around talent management that targets the needs of all employees, while one third still prefers retention of the company’s high potential people, often senior level.
Use of predictive analysis
To achieve this, the specialists interviewed put forward three approaches to meet the skills shortage: encouraging all of the company’s managers to think about talent management, concentrating on developing clear career plans and defining a talent management policy that targets all employees regardless of their level. To do this, KPMG encourages professionals to measure their HR data for better analysis of employee performance and to predict future skills needs. It is an area to be developed, especially when we know that analysis of the data may give HRDs more weight at the decision-making table.