{"id":990,"date":"2012-07-25T11:59:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T10:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/?p=990"},"modified":"2012-07-25T11:59:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T10:59:22","slug":"global-ceos-about-talent-key-challenges-and-key-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/2012\/07\/25\/global-ceos-about-talent-key-challenges-and-key-actions\/","title":{"rendered":"Global CEOs about Talent: Key Challenges and Key Actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The 15th<\/sup> Annual Global CEO Survey<\/a> conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers International (PWC) revealed that despite of all the economic uncertainties, business leaders still believe that the trend of global integration will stay on track, and maintain the commitment for doing business globally stronger than ever before.<\/p>\n

The messages from more than 1250 respondents consistently reflect the main aim of business growth through sustaining mature markets and investing into emerging markets. To support the main direction of business expansion, CEOs name several areas of priority, with one of them being directly related to international human resources management. Specifically, CEOs stress the importance of focusing on the talent that they need to grow their businesses sustainably, and hence highlight strategies for managing talent as their top priority.<\/p>\n

The PWC research indicates that the \u2018talent crunch\u2019 is a complex and frustrating challenge for everyone as it is being felt worldwide. CEOs identified skills shortages as a top threat for business expansion, and reported that these shortages impact talent-related costs, as well as constrain firms from pursuing market opportunities, doing business effectively, and meeting quality standards.<\/p>\n

Given these unpleasant consequences, business leaders seem to be determined more than ever in making talent a strategic resource, implying the need for longer-term action plans that would serve also future staffing needs.<\/p>\n

Practically, as part of their talent management efforts CEOs have started integrating HR with business planning activities at the highest company levels. The PWC data indicates that 79% of CEOs have HR representatives within their pool of direct reports. Apart from direct participation in business planning, CEOs are also seeking HR support in getting a better understanding of their investments in talent. Although indicators such as productivity and labor costs are quite common measures available to business leaders, they perceive this information as insufficient. In fact, while labor costs and productivity figures can indicate company performance against the business plan (e.g. labor cost budget) or against ones peers, they do not alert on any deeper talent management gaps. What is needed are measures that identify pivotal jobs, and that could evaluate employee engagement and team performance \u2013 the significant correlates of business results. For example, an analysis of employee engagement also indicates clearly related issues of retention and discretionary effort. The use of engagement studies can thus help to identify the areas of possible tangible improvements (such as communication within the department), and create the focus group of employees that are at risk of leaving.<\/p>\n

Related to the question of employee engagement and retention, CEOs are also concerned with frequent job-hopping. Leaders strive to develop talent from within the organization, because external hires, while beneficial from a skills standpoint, create a loss in temporary productivity, time and money as a result of training and integrating the new employee into the company. However, developing the talent in each current employee also poses risks, as all the efforts and development resources may be lost if that employee decides to leave the company. The CEOs report that, independent of industries and regions, they fear losing high-potential middle managers the most. These managers are important because they are the closest to customers and execute strategic plans, while also serving as the future leaders with experience in the field. Overall, the trend of \u2018growing their own\u2019 talent is at the forefront, as most CEOs believe that their organizations have a role in upgrading and fostering skills of their employees, and 78% of companies report making direct investments in workforce development.<\/p>\n

Another concern brought up by the respondents referred to moving talent across borders. The data indicate that CEOs would rather prefer local managers to run local business units. This can be explained by local managers having better access to local customers and local multinationals. Today, however, the reality is that more senior managers are transferred from headquarters abroad than the company leaders desire. The scarce talent in emerging markets as well as possible skill gaps might be the reason for why foreign managers remain so desirable. On the contrary, however, business leaders not only move experienced people from mature to newer markets, but also engage into reverse transfers, sending the top performers from emerging to developed markets to make them more \u2018credentialised\u2019. Related to this is the practice of inpatriating subsidiary managers to a company\u2019s headquarters, a topic I have researched extensively and written about in previous blog posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All in all, the PWC report indicates that CEOs recognize that talent is vital to competitiveness at a time when global integration pushes towards international business growth and success depends substantially on the knowledge, skills and innovation capacity of employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Global CEO Survey conducted by PWC revealed that despite of all the economic uncertainties, business leaders still believe that the trend of global integration will stay on track, and maintain the commitment for doing business globally stronger than ever before. To support the main direction of business expansion, CEOs highlight strategies for managing talent as their top priority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18330],"tags":[44792,18393,577,44793,44791,44751],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views-and-news-about-expatriates","tag-business-growth","tag-developed-markets","tag-emerging-markets","tag-employee-development","tag-global-integration","tag-talent-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}