CEO Views of Talent Management

I was just perusing the "CEO Briefing: Corporate Priorities for 2007 and Beyond" from the Economist Intelligence Unit.  Probably the most startingly thing in their survey of CEOs was they did not refer to "HR" at all.  They called it "Recruitment/Talent".  I had seen results from previous years where it was called "HR".  Here are some other tidbits:

• The Talent Gap was one of its headlines in its summary of the research.  The biggest area of CEO concern for the talent gap was in emerging markets (e.g., India and China), not developed markets.
• There was a sidebar about Jobster and "recruiting the Web 2.0 way"
• When asked "Which of the following represent the greatest barriers to growth for your business within both emerging and developed markets over the next three years?", "Lack of available local talent" was by far the greatest barrier for emerging markets and in the top 5 (out 13) for developed markets.
• When asked "What do you think are the greatest risks your company will face over the next three years?", "Difficulty attracting and retaining talent" was in the top 3 (out of 12) for both developed and emerging markets.  "Rising employee wages and benefits costs" were also in the top 5.
• When asked "How would you rate the performance of the following functions within your organisation?" (on a 1 to 5 scale with 1 = excellent and 5 = poor), CEOs answered for Recruiting/Talent:
  • 1 - 6%
  • 2 - 27%
  • 3 - 38%
  • 4 - 22%
  • 5 - 6%
  • Don't Know - 1%

This is hardly a ringing endorsement and was near the bottom of the different functions within the organization (only Online Channels and Supply Chain rated lower -- Finance was rated highest)

Comments

[Tom O'Brien]

Interesting that the CEO's primary concern for recruiting/talent is focused on developing countries.

Seems like a HUGE business opportunity.

Tom O'Brien