Many executives foresee leadership shortages in the year ahead and are looking at programmes to accelerate leadership development within their companies, according to new research from Deloitte. The Deloitte report, “Talent Edge 2020: Redrafting Talent Strategies for the Uneven Recovery,” identifies a number of significant trends driving corporate talent strategies and tracks how companies are responding to shifting economic realities.
As talent demands expand globally, pressure is building to create talent strategies that can both scale and focus on regional markets: Asia Pacific (APAC) executives face urgent needs with significant shortages anticipated in research and development (68%), operations (64%) and strategy and planning (62%). Survey participants in the Americas see executive leadership and operations as the main talent gaps (both 56%), while business leaders in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region are far less concerned about shortfalls in talent.
“The standout findings from our research are two-fold: the near universal agreement about the existing and potentially growing shortage of executive leadership and the significant regional differences in talent needs around the globe,” Ghassan Turqieh, Consulting partner and Middle East Human Capital services leader at Deloitte, said.
“Talent leaders in today’s business environment are taking responsibility for their futures by focusing investments and capabilities on rebuilding and developing new talent programs for leaders and critical employees within their organizations.”
Key findings in Deloitte’s “Talent Edge 2020” report include:
Companies seek new sources of growth in a stalled economy: In a ranking of top strategic priorities, 38 % of surveyed executives picked improving top- and bottom-line performance, followed by expanding into global and new markets at 33 %.
Executives look to strengthen leadership development pipelines and programs: Approximately one-third (30 %) of executives’ surveyed ranked developing leaders and succession planning as today’s top talent priority—the highest of any response in the survey. Additionally, 29 % predicted this specific issue will likely remain the top talent concern over the next three years.
Corporate talent programs are falling short on performance and investment: Only 17 % of executives surveyed believe their talent programs are “world-class across the board;” 83 % acknowledge that significant improvements need to be made in their organizations. Executives that regard their talent efforts “world-class” are more likely to report —by margins of 20 % age points or more—that their companies are investing in these programs at a “high” level.
Executives are aligning their talent management practices to identify and develop new leaders, create effective succession plans and build global workforces, the survey shows. A majority of executives surveyed say performance management (73 %); talent assessment (72 %) and high-potential employee development (71 %) are core talent priorities that will increase over the next 12 months. These priorities clearly dominate new hiring initiatives across the board, including the hiring of experienced managers, new campus hires and contract/part time workers – a data point consistent with the high levels of unemployment in developed countries worldwide.
“Ultimately, building leading talent programs requires investment,” he added.
“Our research confirms that while less than 1-in-5 surveyed executives self-identified their organizations as talent leaders, more than 4-in-5 acknowledged the need for significant improvements and investments. Today’s top talent organizations are not sitting back and waiting for a slow recovery to solve their talent challenges. These executives are more likely to invest (by a two to one margin) across the board on talent priorities and initiatives.”
A separate new Deloitte report, “Global Business Driven HR Transformation: The Journey Continues,” explores the current trends shaping the way many companies are leveraging the human resources (HR) function and their people to improve competitiveness, profitability and growth. The report includes discussions of critical HR Transformation areas including global HR operating model and governance; impact of cloud, social, mobile and workforce analytics on HR; HR shared services and outsourcing; talent, global mobility and contingent workforces and global program governance and management, change analytics and benchmarking.
“Talent Edge 2020: Redrafting Talent Strategies for the Uneven Recovery” is the third in a series of “Talent Edge 2020” reports. The “Talent Edge 2020” longitudinal survey series was preceded by the “Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy” longitudinal survey series from 2009-2010. The “Talent Edge 2020” survey series is conducted in collaboration with Forbes Insights to identify important trends driving corporate talent strategies and track how companies are responding to shifting economic realities. The survey included 376 senior executives and talent managers’ at large companies (annual sales +$500 million) worldwide, across a range of major industries.