Building global leadership
The number one problem in human capital is the struggle to find people to lead. This is found across all territories, industries and departments. The pace of technological change and business practices is leading to a fall-off in competent leaders. Companies need to keep up with technological advances and put the training in place to ensure their staff can respond to these changes. Secondly, there is the issue of employee retention and the shortfall in leadership when talent is lost to an organisation. Finally, what came back strongly from the survey was that globalization has had an impact on individual companies abilities to keep pace with the skills required to do business across diverse regions and languages. It would appear that the HR industry is under increasing pressure to provide this talent to their companies as 38% of respondents rated this issue as urgent.
Employee Retention and Engagement
It can be easy for departments to pass the buck on the issue of employee retention. In reality, unless a company has a stated policy on how best to engage employees into the company vision and culture then they will likely not succeed in employee retention. The report of the findings urges companies to redefine their engagement strategy to move from keeping people to attracting them and creating a passionate and nurturing place to work. The concept of the overwhelmed employee is one that is closely related to this. Information overload and the 24/7 work environment are contributing to reduced productivity, reduced decision making and lower levels of engagement. To respond to this, organisations need to look at ways to simplify the work environment, focus on work life balance for employees and demanding senior leaders encourage this change.
Re-skilling HR
The third most pressing issue is the re-skilling of the HR department. It is a fact that the HR function is in a state of transition as pressures reframe the areas of concern and tech advances change the day to day functioning of HR practitioners. The move from people administration to people performance means that HR professionals too are in need of continual training and development. The process of attracting the right candidates to the organisation and the idea of a personality ‘fit’ with a company ethos are placing demands to operate in ways that they never previously had to. In a sense the HR function is now a marketing department for the company with their customers being all current and future employees. In addition they have to build sophisticated working environments that don’t just provide a desk and a computer but also a lifestyle and a sense of purpose! No wonder HR people are left scratching their heads.
Talent Acquisition and Access
At this stage it should be becoming clear that all of the challenges being faced in the human capital arena are interrelated and need to be tackled as a whole. Talent acquisition continues to be one of the most important things a company does on a daily basis. Most companies operate in environments where skills are in short supply and the job of finding and attracting talent is a critical success factor. Employer branding is playing an increasingly important role in providing this for companies with trailblazers like Sodexo showing the power of online communities in maintaining talent resources until they are needed. What is obvious is that the old model of posting jobs is not working as a method of getting the right talent into the organisation. This area is in a particular state of flux and recruiters have flocked to social media to try to be more strategic and focused in their hiring efforts.
Making up the Top 10 for the survey were:
- HR technology
- Overwhelmed employee
- Talent and HR analytics
- Performance management
- Workforce capability
- Diversity and inclusion
- Learning and development
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