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What's Changing? - Talent

Talent

 

Please see below selected recent intelligence about talent.

 

See also:

 

December 2022

 

June 2021

 

March 2021

 

December 2020

 

November 2020

  • Companies seeking to attract and retain talent may wish to look to Europe, with the continent dominating the annual talent ranking from the Institute for Management Development. Switzerland topped the business school’s list for its apprenticeships, quality of life and remuneration. Denmark came second and Luxembourg third in the list that assesses countries on three criteria: investment in the workforce, quality of skills and appeal to foreign talent. Canada (8th) and Singapore (9th) were the two countries outside Europe in the top 10. The United States came in 15th and Britain was 23rd, down seven places since 2016.

 

November 2019

 

October 2019

 

August 2019

 

July 2019

 

June 2019

 

May 2019

 

December 2018

 

October 2018

 

 

June 2016

  • Inadequate data on workforce mobility is placing firms under increasing pressure as they struggle to deploy global human resource strategies, contain costs and comply with the demands of cross-border regulatory obligations. This is according to EY's 2015-16 Global Mobility Effectiveness Survey, which provides insights from more than 200 professionals across 35 jurisdictions and 13 industry sectors.
  • Three-quarters of corporate directors say they face a critical challenge aligning board talent with the company's long-term strategy, and three in five want more diversity and viewpoints on the board, according to a global survey by KPMG's Board Leadership Center. Survey respondents also identified significant barriers to refining the board's makeup, with issues ranging from the right mix of skills and overcoming "status quo" thinking to lack of formal succession plans.  

 

April 2016

  • In CFO Journal, Deloitte LLP CEO Cathy Engelbert discussed top-of-mind issues for senior executives and the talent challenges facing CFOs, and what some are doing to address them. She also discussed the influence of innovation on professional services and the importance and value of a diverse workforce.
  • Top executives intuitively understand that people are their most valuable asset. But are they doing the right things to ensure that they have the people and skills they need? BCG's Global Leadership & Talent Index assessed the maturity of a company's leadership and talent management capabilities, highlighted the best way to improve those capabilities, and demonstrated the bottom-line value of making improvements.

 

 

 

  • The time is now for C-level and HR leaders to embrace evidence-based HR or risk losing ground, according to Evidence-Based HR: The Bridge Between your People and Delivering Business Strategy. According to the survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of KPMG, more than half of survey respondents remain skeptical about the potential of Big Data and advanced analytics to make a real difference to the HR function, even as CEOs grapple with regulators, customer requirements, talent, and the demands of the workforce.

 

 

March 2016

• Many CEOs love to talk about the importance of their employees. "Our people are our greatest asset," is an all-too-familiar phrase. But very few executives manage to translate such words into action. When it comes to human capital, Fortune magazine therefore recognised 30 companies which it believes truly stand apart from the crowd. These businesses have created work environments that support and encourage the educational development, professional growth, and overall satisfaction of its workers. In return, they have been rewarded with extremely low annual turnover rates.

 

• PwC launched an online market place matching freelancers with internal projects, to ride a global trend towards a “gig economy”. PwC launched what it calls “Talent Exchange”, an online platform that directly connects independent professionals with PwC teams. Freelancers register, upload their CVs, then apply to work on the firm’s client projects — from IT implementations, to product life cycle management, to antimoney laundering.

 

 

February 2016

 

 

• In 'Liquid Workforce' Accenture argued that, by exploiting technology to enable workforce transformation, leading companies will create highly adaptable and change-ready enterprise environments that are able to meet today’s dynamic digital demands. This liquid workforce competitive advantage is apparent as IT and business executives surveyed report that “deep expertise for the specialised task at hand” was only the fifth most important characteristic they required for employees to perform well in a digital work environment – other qualities such as ‘the ability to quickly learn’ or ‘shift gears’ were ranked higher.

 

 

• INSEAD, in partnership with the Adecco Group and the Human Capital Leadership Institute of Singapore, released the 2015-2016 edition of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index.  This year's theme of Talent Attraction and International Mobility focused on findings linked to the significant correlation between movement of talent and economic prosperity. Mobility is vital to fill skill gaps; and a high proportion of innovative, entrepreneurial people were born or studied abroad. It is therefore not surprising that top ranking countries have positioned themselves as desirable destinations for high-skilled workers. According to the report, faced with new types of migration flows, decision makers need to shape policies and strategies to address both the immediate concerns of their constituencies and the longer-term interests of their citizens.

 

 

• Human capital-related strategies dominate CEOs’ plans to address the top business challenges they face, according to the Conference Board, beginning with continual development to enhance the employee value

 

proposition. Leaders must master these strategies in order to drive business growth through a culture of innovation, inclusion, and engagement.

 

 

 

January 2016

 

 

• Organisational learning and development functions are not prepared to meet the needs of tomorrow's learners, according to the ATD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity's (i4cp) research report, 'Future: Taking Action Today to Prevent Tomorrow's Talent Crisis', which surveyed 405 learning professionals, 59% of whom agreed that learning in 2020 would take place in ways we can't imagine today. Factors learning professionals believe will influence learning in five years are blended delivery methods (which combine the traditional classroom with technology-based learning) and experiential learning (for example, simulations). Only 38% of those surveyed believed that their organisational learning functions would be ready to meet learners' needs five years from now.

 

 

• While most migration is from developing countries to rich ones and is often met with hostility, it has played a major role in the development of over half of the 20 most talent competitive countries in INSEAD's Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) 2015-16, among them Switzerland (with 27 percent of its population being foreign born) and Singapore (with 43 percent of its adults from overseas), but also the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland.

 

November 2015

 

  • In Winning the talent war: Critical success factors for consulting firms, Sourceforconsulting interviewed more than 100 job-hunting consultants and found that a huge 70% of them rate firms’ culture as one of the most important factors in choosing their next employer. While it’s not surprising that culture is important people want to like their company and their co-workers - Source was a bit surprised by just how much more important culture is relative to everything else. The second-placed factor - a good career path within the firm- was a top concern for only 55% of candidates, and money was primary factor only 54% of the time.

 

  • Consulting’s eternal war for talent has only intensified of late, found Sourceforconsulting, as rapid growth in some large markets and a need to recruit for digital skills has left many firms feeling short staffed.But perhaps the more daunting challenge comes from new sources of talent competition: whereas firms previously competed primarily among themselves and with investment banks to win the brightest recruits, they’re now facing a challenge from tech companies and start-ups, which many job seekers consider more exciting and possibly less brutal places to work.

 

In The Search for Hidden Talent Treasures, strategy+business warned that organisations looking for outside talent pay an extraordinary amount of attention to resumes. HR pores over job descriptions looking for the right words to craft compelling recruitments ads. Applicants fret as they hone their cover letters to reflect what they think the company wants. Hiring managers scour applicants’ CVs for indicators of the right skills and experience, but, too often, this is all forgotten once the hire is made.

 

 

 

 

 

September 2015

 

 

• Lack of sufficient leadership talent is a top issue currently facing 86% of HR and business leaders, according to Deloitte’s “Southeast Asia Human Capital Trends 2015: Leading in the New World of Work” report. All respondents reported that leadership was at least somewhat important to their business. However, the majority of organisations are still struggling to develop a pipeline of leadership talent. This current struggle jeopardises future growth.

 

 

 

August 2015

 

 

• EY UK is to remove academic qualifications from the entry criteria for the firm’s 2016 graduate, undergraduate and school leaver programmes, in a bid to develop a ‘level playing field’ for candidates and encourage greater social mobility. Students will no longer be required to have a minimum of 300 UCAS points (equivalent to 3 B’s) and a 2:1 degree classification to make an application. Instead, EY will use a new and enhanced suite of online ‘strengths’ assessments and numerical tests to assess the potential of applicants for 2016. The decision comes after an 18-month analysis of the firm’s student selection process by talent management firm Capp, which confirmed EY’s strengths based approach - used in the recruitment process since 2008 - is a robust and reliable indicator of a candidate’s potential to succeed in role.

 

 

• In The Two Types of High-Potential Talent, strategy+business asked: what is a high-potential employee? Most companies have a clear picture of the characteristics that indicate a top performer: intelligence, charisma, verbal skill, and the ability to be both part of a team and lead one. These skills definitely fit the criteria, but too many leaders stop there. They tend to see and promote only one kind of high-potential talent, when in fact they need two.

 

 

 

July 2015

 

 

• Following Accenture’s recent global announcement on moving away from performance appraisals, Deloitte Australia has declared it is ‘blowing up performance management’. The AFR had this on the announcement, “Deloitte Australia has scrapped bi-annual performance reviews for 1500 employees starting from June 1 this year, and will extend its "nimbler, real-time" performance assessment criteria to its whole workforce of 6000 from December. By June 2016, the dreaded ratings and distribution curves will no longer exist at Deloitte Australia. Deloitte's new regime, co-designed by NY Times best-selling author on people performance Marcus Buckingham, will give employees ongoing feedback from managers during assignments.

 

 

• Accenture will get rid of the annual performance review. Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme told The Washington Post that the firm has been quietly preparing for this "massive revolution" in its internal operations. "Imagine, for a company of 330,000 people, changing the performance management process—it's huge," Nanterme said. "We're going to get rid of probably 90% of what we did in the past." The firm will disband rankings and the once-a-year evaluation process starting in fiscal year 2016, which for Accenture begins this September. It will implement a more fluid system, in which employees receive timely feedback from their managers on an ongoing basis following assignments. Accenture is joining a small but prominent list of major corporations that have had enough with the forced rankings, the timeconsuming paperwork and the frustration engendered among managers and employees alike. Six percent of Fortune 500 companies have got rid of rankings, according to management research firm CEB.  These companies say their own research, as well as outside studies, ultimately convinced them that all the time, money and effort spent didn't ultimately accomplish their main goal - to drive better performance among employees.

 

 

• According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 survey, faced with gaps in talent and skills, many companies that compete globally for scarce, critical talent are starting to invest more heavily in learning and development to build the skills they need. They’re adopting new technologies, consolidating offerings, carefully balancing centralisation and distribution, and reimagining what the learning experience can and should be.

 

 

• The World Economic Forum released its 2015 edition of the Human Capital Report. The top 10 countries for leveraging their human capital are: 1. Finland 2. Norway 3. Switzerland 4. Canada 5. Japan 6. Sweden 7. Denmark 8. The Netherlands 9. New Zealand and 10. Belgium. The report found that a world where “nobody is left behind” remains a distant prospect, even in advanced economies.

June 2015

 

 

 

 

 

May 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 2015

 

 

 

  • The time is now for C-level and HR leaders to embrace evidence-based HR or risk losing ground, according to Evidence-Based HR: The Bridge Between your People and Delivering Business Strategy. According to the survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of KPMG, more than half of survey respondents remain skeptical about the potential of Big Data and advanced analytics to make a real difference to the HR function, even as CEOs grapple with regulators, customer requirements, talent, and the demands of the workforce.

 

 

 

March 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 


February 2015

 

 

 


January 2015

 

 

 

 

December 2014
 

 

 

 

November 2014

 

 

 

 

 


October 2014

 

 

  • In PwC's 2014 CEO Survey, 93% of participants said they recognise the need to change their strategies for talent, but 61% acknowledged that they haven't yet taken the first step. The challenge is especially acute in supply chain operations, which is facing a talent shortage despite an increasing number of undergraduate majors, MBA concentrations and entire programs in supply chain management.

 

 

 

September 2014

 

 

 

  • Deloitte noted that the people an organisation needs to execute its business strategy might be right next door- or halfway around the world.  In the open talent economy, talent is free to flow where and when it’s needed. For companies that want to overcome the paradox of talent scarcity amid high unemployment, this fluidity represents opportunity. Managing it, however, presents distinct challenges.

 

 

August 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 2014

 

 

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