The Trends Shaping Global People Management, and One That Isn't
SteveRecently the Boston Consulting Group published a report and research study titled 'Creating People Advantage 2012: Mastering HR Challenges in a Two-Speed World', a look at the most pressing and important trends and issues in Human Capital Management gleaned from their survey and interviews with over 4,000 HR and Business Executives from over 100 countries. You can access the full 59-page PDF report here.
Take a look at the summary chart below - you probably won't be too surprised by the three most important HCM topics as defined by 'High' Future Importance to the organizations, coupled with 'Low' Current Capability in that discipline.
In case you can't figure out the chart, (it took me a minute), the three topics that fell in the red or 'Strong Need to Act' zone were:
Managing Talent - Ok, kind of generic, but I guess it makes sense
Improving Leadership Development - Sort of a perennial issue in most organizations, but as the report details, becoming more acute due to demographic reasons, (the aging workforce, mainly)
Strategic Workforce Planning - Most organizations reporting ongoing difficulty in adequately forecasting short and long-term talent needs
So taken together, not all that surprising I guess, we have been hearing and reading about these trends and critical areas of focus for HR and Talent professionals for some time now. We need to get smarter at understanding our people, at developing them for future leadership roles, and more precisely planning for our future talent needs.
Basically, we need to just get better at our jobs. Sounds like a sound bite from the press conference of every losing football coach ever.
But what stood out to me from the report was not the three 'red' items, but rather the one topic out of 22 that registered on the opposite end of the scale - at the bottom of the scale in capability but also rated as least important in the long term, namely 'Actively Using Web 2.0 for HR.'
What?
Applying the latest in social, particiapatory, collaborative, and modern technology to improve HR and Talent Management rated dead last?
Even 'Improving Employer Branding' (which hardly anyone even understands), rated more important?
I have to say even though I would not have expected a really geeky, technical sounding function or topic like 'Web 2.0' (and please, BCG can you drop that term, it fell out of fashion in 2009), to register above most of the more traditional and familiar HR and Talent focus areas, to see it rank last in future importance by so many Global HR leaders is a little concerning and sad.
As a proponent of workforce technologies and as someone who knows the impact that the application of collaborative and social technologies can have to help address almost ANY of the topics on the BCG survey, I hope that these results are not truly indicative of how HR pros see these tools and their potential.
What are you seeing in your organization - are the new tools and technologies on your radar in HR?
Reader Comments (3)
The 2.0 piece shocked me as well and goes to show maybe it's not all HR's fault here. What if we are just proposing on deaf ears? After all, a recent McKinsey survey found that HR's greatest value as seen from the business was as a cost manager. This is where the ability to sell based on data becomes paramount, but then in another McKinsey study, lack of well defined analytics in HR is identified as one of 4 big opportunities.
In a nutshell, it's a fragmented battle with many key components missing, making much more difficult to pitch and win the business support and funding HR needs to unlock next level human capital value for their orgs.
One last piece since its recent, the election should be a major wake-up for corporations on the power of technology, particularly social. This election confirmed that if you don't have a tight social strategy, it doesn't matter how much money you raise.
It is very scary to see one item that has to deal with the future of the workforce with such a low relevance -- mainly, managing an aging workforce.
The forecast of available workers is supposed to drop as much as 30% in the next 5-10 years - requiring strategic workforce planning on many, if not all, levels.
The number of available workers is already dropping from lower number of births, but now we can add something that wasn't even thought about in the original forecast.
We now have more people leaving the country for work than are entering, and the next 4-8 years does not look like that is going to change for the better.
In Europe, 97% of graduates don't even have the USA on their list of places to look for work - undergraduates as well as graduates.
Add to this the quality and level education in the USA is sinking rapidly from the top 5 to the high 20's in less than 25 years.
This will lead to a brain drain to other countries --- we may have the resources, but what good are resources when the talent is elsewhere?
We will have no choice but to outsource everything to remain competitive .
The caveat about outsource is possession is 90% of the rule, especially when that outsourcing is outside our own sovereignty -- we are vulnerable to the changes of others instead of building self-reliance as well as services and products others want.
An aging workforce does bring many benefits to the incoming workforce -- as long as humility has taken its proper place.
Which reminds me...
If you think it is tough teaching an old dog new tricks, you should try teaching a young dog old (and wise) tricks...
@Dustin - I think you are on to a possible explanation there, I do think HR has been in the past, (and I guess the present), stuck in the support role and not able or willing to be more assertive in making the case for these technologies as a driver of business value. I hope that will change in the coming days.
@Garrett - I actually considered writing this post to highlight how low-ranked the Aging Workforce trend was as well. Pretty shocking I agree.