Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/73199
MSP Three-year plans have become largely irrelevant in business world today. One of biggest complaints from C-suite executives is about "opacity" in the market. Yet quality is top of mind. In a 2012 PWC survey of 1,258 CEOs worldwide, more than 90 per cent felt that workforce productivity issues were very important, but only 20 per cent felt they had good access to the data they needed. suffer from a disconnect. "Companies do not do a good job planning for peaks and valleys, and managers sometimes see hiring as an expense when they should see new employees as an investment. Also, there can be difficulty in workforce planning and getting the executive staff to communicate the information HR requires. It isn't that HR does not know what is needed, but that the operating executives don't know what is coming next." This is understandable. Three-year plans have become largely irrelevant in the fast-paced and changing world of business today. One of biggest complaints from C-suite executives is about "opacity" in the market. Yet quality of the workforce is top of mind. In a 2012 PWC survey of 1,258 CEOs worldwide, more than 90 per cent felt that workforce productivity issues were very important, but only 20 per cent felt they had good access to the data they needed. Productivity goes hand-in-hand with quality. Beck feels that it is hard to find good quality—not as difficult in some areas as it was five years ago, but IT professionals are the one group that is always hardest. Chad Lane, president of Allegis Group Services, agrees and also sees a bigger, more global constriction in the talent pipeline for a handful of critical job families. Some hard- to-fill jobs are getting even harder to fill, he says, as sought-after skill sets are difficult to find. "The most successful companies will want to build a great workforce and companies would do more training if there were fewer barriers to doing so," he explains. In EMEA, for example, it is very difficult moving workers from underperforming economies—in Spain unemployment reached 21.5 per cent a few months ago, a 15-year high—to healthy economies. Lane also cites difficulty in immigration policies in EMEA, uncoordinated worker legislation, and cultural barriers that discourage workforce mobility and inhibit the ability of companies to provide training. Lane says that for companies to maintain competitive and skilled workforces they would need to consider increasing training if they could see a clear path to retaining the talent they invested L&D dollars in. Lanes see the relationship structure in the workforce evolving as well."The workforce is changing and the 'social contract' is [24] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SPRING 2012 changing dramatically between employer and employee. Workers in the future will determine the terms of their employment whether it is as a full-time, contingent resource or statement of work (SOW) basis. We are moving from a 'corporate-centered' labour market to an 'individually-centered' labour market." The CR Factor The changing demographic makes the latest generation of workers and their quality a consideration. Lane says the stigma related to the quality of talent of Gen Y is receding, but he acknowledges their differing attitudes and how they are attracted and retained requires a new approach. These are all considerations in the training and development equation. One point that resonates with Gen Y is the importance they place on an employer's record of social responsibility and the need to feel connected socially to things they care about. They are more concerned about a company's current social practices than, for example, a company's 50-year history of achievements. In fact, this is borne out by several studies. According to the Corporate Social Responsibility Branding Survey by Penn Schoen Berland in 2010, 33 per cent of employees would take a pay cut to work at a more socially responsible firm. So, out of two similar employment offers, employees today are more likely to pick the organisation with the better record on socially responsible lists such as Corporate Responsibility Magazine's "100 Best Corporate Citizen List" or the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. In fact, this year CR Magazine will distribute the "100 Best Corporate Citizen List" to top colleges and universities as part of an outreach effort to make the career planning and placement offices highlight responsibility as a more significant criterion in first job choice. (CR Magazine is published by SharedXperitse, the parent company of HRO Today Global.) Going Glocal Steve Hinckley, president and COO of Adecco Global Solutions, concedes that the talent pool is changing very rapidly and that clients now need a global strategy solution that can be delivered locally. This can be daunting depending on the availability of labour in the local market particularly in certain specialty skills categories. Adecco has also tackled the worker mobility issue. Dominik De Daniel, chief financial officer of Adecco explains, "We relocated