Please see below selected recent intelligence about talent.
See also:
December 2022
- Further reading:
June 2021
- HBR analysed how to attract high-quality talent in a labour market that keeps defying previously established business patterns. For example, for hourly workers and lower-salaried positions, location is one of the biggest and often underestimated drivers of effective recruiting. Research has shown that minor geographic differences in available talent and open jobs, even in the same city, can lead to higher unemployment. Many people moved for family and Covid-related reasons during the pandemic and more are actively considering relocating, which implies that recruiting challenges can increase for employers whose job sites have remained the same.
- Further reading:
March 2021
- BCG argued that many companies are rethinking their approach to talent and beginning to rely on highly skilled freelancers and the ever-growing gig economy. The expansion of remote work and a dynamic need for new capabilities have given way to an on-demand talent model that allows companies to expand or contract their access to specialised, experienced workers as required. The pandemic is accelerating this trend, as companies put more work online and try to adapt quickly to turbulent market conditions and a widening skills gap. In this challenging landscape, 60% of leaders believe their core workforces could be smaller going forward.
December 2020
- Employee attrition can be a difficult challenge for businesses at the best of times, but the coronavirus pandemic and the chaos it wrought on workplaces compounded issues of staff retention. Employee engagement became a major issue as workplaces become remote: UK public service productivity fell by a third in the second quarter of 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics. Employees may be re-evaluating what they want as a work-life balance and coming to the conclusion they need to leave the company.
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
- Tech Talent - Raconteur
- The New Science of Talent - Quartz
- Tomorrow's jobs must be taught with tech - Raconteur
August 2019
- Big Tech may be losing its allure for talented staff - Financial Times
- How to Stop Your Managers From Talent Hoarding - Gallup
July 2019
June 2019
- Balancing business needs with employee engagement - Raconteur
- Chinese companies need to prepare for a shrinking talent pool - World Economic Forum
- Decoding Digital Talent - BCG
- Five predictions for what ‘human capital’ will mean for CEOs in the future workforce - EY
- Internal promotions: why you should be hiring from within - Raconteur
May 2019
December 2018
- For many years, noted EY, organisations have talked in general terms about how people are their greatest asset. In parallel, the investor community has consistently referenced talent as a driver of an organisation’s long-term value. Today, however, many investors expect more than simply talk and want to know exactly what organisations are explicitly doing to attract, retain, reskill, engage and inspire their people during an era of disruption. This is evidenced by findings from the 2018 US proxy season whereby enhanced attention to talent and human capital management was cited as one of the top five priorities for investors with the oversight of culture and talent ranking among the 2018 top 10 priorities for US and European corporate boards.
October 2018
- As IT’s boardroom presence and influence on corporate strategy increases, chief information officers (CIOs) need to be surrounded by talent that evolves at the same rate as technology. An infographic explored the most important technologies for businesses in the future to identify where the skills gaps are.
- Further reading:
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.
- In Shattering the Boundaries of HR, Accenture argued that attracting, developing and retaining talent isn’t just HR’s job anymore. It’s everyone’s. Just as companies strive to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels, so must they deliver a seamless employee experience across all interactions and touchpoints. Why? Because top talent demands it. But that means shattering the boundaries of HR so that talent management responsibilities are embedded across the organisation.
- 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.
- Consumer-driven trends like social, cloud and easy-to-use analytics are increasingly impacting human capital management (HCM), an umbrella term that is gradually replacing what used to be separate best-of-breed systems for human resources (core HR functions such as personnel data, benefits administration and reporting), payroll, workforce management, learning management, social learning, development, recruiting, workforce analytics and workforce planning. According to Computer Economics, 22% of organisations made some kind of HCM investment in 2014, either a new software implementation or an upgrade to an existing system.
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
- According to Deloitte, organisations today must navigate a “new world of work”- one that requires a dramatic change in strategies for leadership, talent, and human resources. In this new world of work, the barriers between work and life have been all but eliminated. Employees are "always on" - hyperconnected to their jobs through pervasive mobile technology. Networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Glassdoor enable people to easily monitor the market for new job opportunities. Details about an organisation’s culture are available at the tap of a screen, providing insights about companies to employees and potential employees alike. The balance of power in the employer-employee relationship has shifted—making today’s employees more like customers or partners than subordinates.
- The results of the latest annual survey by Universum showed that Google is the most attractive employer among European business students. According to Universum, these top employers, and others such as PwC and BMW Group, continually tailor their messages to attract the best and brightest.
- In a new global survey of 375 executives, The Economist Intelligence Unit explored how early adopters are using evidence to show connections between human resources (HR) and business key performance indicators and opening doors to new processes and people strategies that impact the bottom line of the organisation. Those with a rose-tinted view of how organisations and professionals operate might assume that important decisions are only reached after poring through reams of detailed and relevant information. But the reality is that gut instinct is frequently the dominant decision-making mode in many areas of human activity. The EIU report set out the current state of evidence-based HR, the obstacles it faces and its potentially transformative effect on performance.
- The role of human capital management will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 30, according to Shaping Tomorrow. For example, 70% of CEOs expect the Chief HR Officer (CHRO) to be a key player in enterprise strategy, while HR will be called upon to help employees adapt to a workplace in which robots and automation will play an ever-bigger role.
May 2015
- The Kennedy Human Resources Consulting Market Index 2015: Q2 report provided market size information and growth rates for the HR consulting market, as well as detailed market size, growth rate, market share and rankings information for the human capital management consulting segment. This market is analysed by geographic region and 10 industries.
- Kennedy Consulting placed PwC top among global consultancy firms, awarding us its prestigious Vanguard rating. The analysis places us above all our competitors, including Deloitte, Mercer, Aon Hewitt, and KPMG. Kennedy's rating acknowledged our people analytics, workforce planning, surveys for employee engagement and feedback, benchmarking for people metrics, and the effectiveness of an HR function.The report credited our recent acquisitions, notably the addition of consulting practice Strategy& last year, and, in 2010, The Difference, where clients discussing talent management issues can meet in an immersive environment to focus on a people-centric approach to problem-solving.
- PwC promoted a number of key human capital-related publications: A new take on talent; What do students need in a changing world?; Engaging and empowering your people'; Bob Moritz on engaging our Millennial workforce; How to seize opportunities when megatrends collide and What millennials want from work.
April 2015
- 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.
- In Shattering the Boundaries of HR, Accenture argued that attracting, developing and retaining talent isn’t just HR’s job anymore. It’s everyone’s. Just as companies strive to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels, so must they deliver a seamless employee experience across all interactions and touchpoints. Why? Because top talent demands it. But that means shattering the boundaries of HR so that talent management responsibilities are embedded across the organisation.
- 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.
- Consumer-driven trends like social, cloud and easy-to-use analytics are increasingly impacting human capital management (HCM), an umbrella term that is gradually replacing what used to be separate best-of-breed systems for human resources (core HR functions such as personnel data, benefits administration and reporting), payroll, workforce management, learning management, social learning, development, recruiting, workforce analytics and workforce planning. According to Computer Economics, 22% of organisations made some kind of HCM investment in 2014, either a new software implementation or an upgrade to an existing system.
March 2015
- In the UK, KPMG formed a partnership with specialist leadership & behavioural learning consulting firm, Lane 4, which was founded in 1995 by Olympic swimmer Adrian Moorhouse. KPMG’s head of People & Change, Tim Payne, commented, “Talent is at or near the top of the agenda for all of our clients. Our partnership with Lane4 will bring practical approaches to identifying, selecting and developing talent at all levels.”
- Following the launch of the China findings from the 18th Annual Global CEO Survey , Dennis Nally took a look at the challenges ahead for China's business leaders. Read more in his CEO Insights blog post : To succeed in China’s “new normal”, you’ve got to have talent.
- Companies with strong leadership and talent management practices increase their revenues 2.2 times faster and their profits 1.5 times faster than companies with weak practices, according to a survey of more than 1,260 companies conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The survey quantified the business payoff that companies can expect from improving their leadership and talent management capabilities. The BCG Global Leadership and Talent Index also quantifies the revenue and profit gains that companies can expect from moving up the index.
- The new issue of the Harvard Business Review took a detailed look at Deloitte's total redesign of its performance management programme that first started quietly rolling out nine months ago. Since then, HBR claimed, Deloitte has done away with "cascading objectives," those "nonsensical" attempts to create similar goals for everyone in the organisation. It's ditched laborious 360-degree reviews, in which everyone from managers to peers to underlings weigh in on one person's performance. And after realising the company was spending 2 million collective hours each year assigning numerical ratings to each employee, it did away with those, too.
- Lack of employee engagement is the top issue currently facing 87% of HR and business leaders (up from 79% last year), according to Deloitte’s third annual Global Human Capital Trends 2015: Leading in the New World of Work report. Yet, the majority of organisations are still failing to take action to improve their culture, potentially jeopardising future growth. The survey was conducted among more than 3,300 HR and business leaders in 106 countries, and is one of the largest global studies of talent, leadership and HR challenges.
February 2015
- Talent is an increasingly critical differentiator of corporate performance, argued The Economist. The best companies realise that talent- more so than capital or technology- is a scarce resource at large companies today and poses one of the most significant barriers to growth. As companies increasingly rely on knowledge workers, the ability to source, develop, and retain talent becomes a critical differentiator. A survey over 3,000 leaders on their perceptions of peer effectiveness at key leadership activities found that organisations with the most effective leadership pipelines.
- PwC's Talent management in manufacturing: The need for a fresh approach argued that industrial manufacturing companies are having difficulty filling jobs, even with relatively high unemployment rates in many countries. The problem is getting the right people for the available jobs. There is increasing competition for talent - and manufacturing is not always viewed as offering the most attractive career prospects.
January 2015
- According to the Boston Consulting Group, business leaders today are faced with an extremely dynamic business environment, characterised by technological innovation, blurring boundaries among industries, shifts in customer behaviour, scarcity of talent, and huge variations in growth across regions. HR functions need to help companies meet these challenges as true strategic partners. To fulfil this mandate, however, HR leaders need a clear view of their current capabilities, their priorities over the next three to five years, and the best way to tailor efforts to improve.
- INSEAD's Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2014 Report, Growing Talent Today and Tomorrow, focuses on the role of talent growth in enhancing countries' competitiveness, debating the marked importance of high-quality education and education system reform, the need to provide young people with skills that match the needs of businesses, and the path that countries should follow to grant a bright and equal future for generations to come.
December 2014
- The 2014 IMD World Talent Ranking, which assessed countries' ability to develop, attract and retain talent for companies that operate there, was led by Switzerland (1), Denmark (2), Germany (3), Finland (4) and Malaysia (5). Ireland is in 6th place, followed by the Netherlands (7), Canada (8), Sweden (9) and Norway (10), with the US 12th place. At the bottom of the ranking are South Africa (56), Peru (57), Croatia (58), Venezuela (59) and Bulgaria (60). For the investment and development factor, Denmark leads ahead of Switzerland (2) and Austria (3). Germany (4) and Sweden (5). Switzerland is top-ranked for the appeal factor, followed by Germany (2), the US (3), Ireland (4) and Malaysia (5). Switzerland is also highest-rated for readiness, ahead of Finland (2), the Netherlands (3), Denmark (4) and the UAE (5).
November 2014
- Technological advances and an ageing workforce are changing the nature of work – and with it the recruitment patterns of the UK’s main consultancies. Critical to most workplaces is encouraging diversity – and moving away from the perceived homogeneity of the past. Paul Connolly, director of the Management Consultancies Association Think Tank, comments: “Our corporate boardrooms, typically overstuffed with middle-aged 50-something males, need to acquaint themselves with people who have extremely valuable skills, but who don’t necessarily wear a collar and tie, aren’t necessarily Oxbridge. “However, they can inject some benign bacillus into the analyst-stuffed realms of corporate life.”
- Strategy& analysis found that many companies that send employees abroad or hire people because they’ve worked overseas are not taking advantage of that global experience - either because the companies are not prepared to learn from the employees or because company leaders have not made an effort to overcome cultural barriers. Yet at the same time, international work experience has become a critical part of the path to success in multinational firms. Such firms are developing or expanding programs for temporary overseas assignments, and they increasingly view such assignments as essential for would-be leaders.
- In Engaging the 21st-century workforce: Companies aren’t ready for the global, multigenerational workforce, Deloitte argued that global demographic changes are adding complexity to every human capital challenge. A Deloitte survey spanning 90 countries looked at the talent issues that can threaten organisational effectiveness. Across the 12 human capital trends surveyed, there is an average 23% “capability gap” between the urgency business leaders see in a trend and how ready they are to handle it.
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.
- BCG and The Network conducted research on today’s global workforce - everything from what people in different parts of the world expect of their jobs to what would prompt them to move to another country for work to the countries they would consider moving to. More than 200,000 people from 189 countries participated in the survey. The picture that emerged is of a global workforce that is stunning in its diversity - but that is also in broad agreement in certain areas. The areas of agreement include a high level of willingness to work abroad; the greater appeal of certain work destinations than others; the importance to would-be expatriates of broadening their personal experiences; and the growing interest in “softer” workplace rewards.
September 2014
- Businesses are facing the most diverse work environment that the world has ever seen with five different generations working together, across geographies — each with different skills, experiences and work habits. More of these workers will be freelancers and long-term contractors. All of this represents a major opportunity for productivity, talent development and employee engagement, but according to new wide-scale research from Oxford Economics, most companies are unprepared to capitalise on it. As revealed in Workforce 2020, an independent, global study by Oxford Economics with support from SAP SE, most companies recognise the importance of managing an increasingly international, diverse and mobile workforce.
- HBR commented on When Star Talent Grew More Powerful than Capital.
- 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
- Korn Ferry’s new talent analytics engine was designed to help companies identify top talent, assess performance and developmental gaps of their leaders, measure the effectiveness of their global talent workforce overall – and even compare their level of talent to their industry peers. The talent analytics engine, called Korn Ferry’s Four Dimensions of Leadership & Talent (KF4D), was born from the best intellectual property and databases of four industry titans that have all been acquired by Korn Ferry in recent years – PDI Ninth House, Lominger, Global Novationsand Decision Dynamics, as well as Korn Ferry’s own historical data. Korn Ferry’s social scientists combined and analysed the data to develop a framework around the four crucial areas that matter most for the success of an individual and their organisation – competencies, experiences, traits and drivers.
- Towers Watson presented key findings from its 2014 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey. This report highlighted several key insights on HR transformation plans, goals and progress at 1,048 organisations around the world, along with Towers Watson’s perspectives on HR service delivery success. For the first time in its survey research, key HR initiatives appear to strike a balance between people, process and technology, which the authors attribute to smart HR investments in initiatives that matter, like streamlining business process and implementing manager self-service, and to a commitment to running the HR function like a business, with an effective mix of strategic perspective and operational discipline.
July 2014
- Deloitte warned that the war for talent is far from over. Companies looking to recruit and acquire talent now compete on a new battlefield shaped by global talent networks and social media and defined by employment brands and changing views of careers. Sixty percent of respondents to our global survey have already or are currently updating and revamping their talent sourcing strategy, and another 27% are considering changes. Faced with a scarcity of key skills and rapidly evolving talent demands, companies that fail to adapt will likely be on the losing end when it comes to attracting and accessing the people and skills they need.