More than 5,500 managers from 109 countries responded to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) survey. The results of this inquiry were presented exclusively at the 13th World Human Resources Congress, HR Without Limits.
Out with labour management costs, organizational restructuring and work/family life balance. These topics—deemed very important by HR professionals in the 2008 BCG/WFPMA report—lost a lot of steam after the economic crisis. “However, topics related to managing talent, improving leadership development, strategic workforce planning and employee engagement are perceived as essential now and for the years to come,” says Jean-Michel Caye, Partner in the Paris BCG office and a co-author of the “Creating People Advantage 2010: How Companies Can Adapt Their HR Practices for Volatile Times” report.
Same vision of crucial issues
At the same time as the surveys sent to thousands of managers, BCG and WFMPA conducted interviews with 153 executives. While Canadian managers and executives generated the most responses, with 10% of global responses, the survey covered most of the world’s countries, from Argentina to Uganda and Afghanistan. It is remarkable to observe that although they experienced the crisis differently, almost all cited the new themes of engagement, managing talent and leadership development in their top five HR priorities.
Leadership shortage
Another major finding is that companies are short of leaders for the years to come and tend to recruit them externally instead of promoting homegrown talent. Fifty-six percent of respondents cited a shortage of tomorrow’s seniors managers, and said that their companies recruited externally for 44% of middle managers, 48% of senior managers and 52% of top executives. And finally, women are severely under-represented in terms of succession, since they make up 10% or less of the talent pool.
What then are the lessons to be learned from these results? In just a few words: develop a true talent development strategy. This is one of the report’s recommendations to enable the internal development of tomorrow’s leaders and thereby promote greater employee engagement. There is still a lot of work to be done, however: today, only 6% of companies have developed such as strategy for recruiting and retaining their talent in the functions most at risk of experiencing a shortage. Jean-Michel Caye concludes: “We absolutely need to be more strategic and systematic in managing talents.”