Central Hub A HUB FOR THE NEW ERA OF WORKPLACE
Leslie Woodruff explains in this CEB Insight Minute.
Constant disruption, such as technology and the gig economy, is changing how work gets done, how leaders lead, and the organizational model. To keep up, companies need to create flexible processes capable of changing direction midstream, embrace on-demand social learning, adopt a forward-looking performance management system, update how they identify and develop high-potential employees, rethink succession planning, and throw out traditional approaches to career management—and they will need to do it all faster. In essence, they must redefine and alter their approach to talent management.
For years, you have been hearing about the looming labor shortages that will occur when the baby boomers retire. The baby boomers are retiring, unemployment rates are rapidly declining, and labor markets are tightening. While the overall trend for mature economies is to experience growing tightness in their labor markets, labor shortages will vary by occupation, industry, and country.
Is your company at risk of labor shortages?
The videos explain where and when labor markets will become tight, what implications that has for businesses, and what every function can do to mitigate the effects of labor shortages.
From Not Enough Jobs to Not Enough Workers: CHRO Implications
The retirement of baby boomers will create a shortage of skilled workers in mature economies worldwide, leading to higher wages and lower profits for the next 15 years. Is your company at risk of labor shortages? It depends on occupations, geographies, automation, and immigration, among other factors. The Conference Board has developed an index that helps companies forecast their risk of labor shortages in hundreds of occupations and industries in the US and Europe. This report discusses implications for companies and mitigating actions they can take.
How should CHROs prepare for labor shortages?
Companies that have developed sound data and analytics about their workforce are now hungry for external talent data to answer strategic questions. The resources companies can draw upon to answer such questions are expanding—in part, because big data is creating mountains of new labor market-related information and, in part, because vendors are poised to cash in on the growing appetite. To use these resources effectively, however, HR executives and strategic workforce planning executives need to understand the strengths and limitations of three types of external labor data: traditional labor market information, secondary sources, and real-time labor market information.
Leslie Woodruff explains in this CEB Insight Minute.
Why should CFOs worry about labor shortages?
Leslie Woodruff explains in this CEB Insight Minute.
From Not Enough Jobs to Not Enough Workers: CHIEF TALENT/ LEARNING OFFICER Implications
Is your company ready for the coming “war for talent?”
Baby boomer retirements will create a shortage of skilled workers in mature economies, leading to higher wages and lower profits. This shortage will likely last for the next 15 years, and chief talent/learning officers will be on the front lines. To prepare, you must treat talent as an asset rather than a cost. Because the labor shortages will affect some occupations and countries more than others, companies must work hard to identify their own future skills gaps, then polish their recruitment and retention practices to fill them with the best talent.
Leslie Woodruff explains in this CEB Insight Minute
What can Chief Talent and Learning Officers do about labor shortages?
The Conference Board report From Not Enough Jobs to Not Enough Workers foresees the potential emergence of labor shortages in “scores of” professions in the United States. Report coauthor Gad Levanon argues that such labor shortages would result in reduced corporate growth in the future. Baby Boomers’ reaching retirement age and younger generations’ avoiding some fields will put pressure on employers to find talent. Not all industry observers share this dire outlook, but other considerations are becoming more important as well.
According to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (Nairobi, Kenya), island countries such as Antigua, Dominica, Granada, and Samoa are losing half or more of their resident populations. Young talent is leaving these countries in response to the lack of professional opportunities they provide. Such emigration could put economic pressure on countries and even entire regions. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Roger L. Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, posits that maintaining a viable economy requires addressing inequality of income and other issues and developments that are hostile to talent.
Corporations are already experimenting with a range of practices to address various labor-market issues. Some of these practices are questionable, and others are actually detrimental to job creation. Some companies looking for software engineers are losing interest in conventional career fairs and relying more on skill-based competitions (so-called hackathons, for example) to identify talent. Other companies are using somewhat controversial strategies to attract talent. For example, Apple and Facebook have started offering female employees a financial benefit that they can apply toward the cost of oocyte cryopreservation—the process of extracting, freezing, and storing a woman’s eggs for later use. Some observers see this offer as a genuine benefit that will attract female employees, whereas others view it as companies’ telling potential female employees that they cannot succeed professionally unless they put motherhood on hold. Perhaps most indicative of future developments is many employers’ reacting to increasing labor costs in developing countries by replacing human workers with automated labor.
Difficulty hiring and retaining qualified workers, and wage growth that may further cut corporate profits, are on the horizon.
