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8 May 2008
Business Times
Firms say managing talent is key challenge
MANAGING talent has emerged as the most urgent challenge for companies
around the world today, and Singapore is no exception, according to a new global
study.
The increasing difficulty in finding enough locals to fill jobs is also
prompting more companies to look abroad for new blood - 71 per cent of
Singaporean respondents say that their companies will source for talent overseas
by 2015, up from 44 per cent currently.
These findings were unveiled in a survey of 4,741 business executives in 83
countries (116 of them from Singapore) conducted by the Boston Consulting Group
(BCG) and the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations.
Human resource professionals represented 80 per cent of all respondents. More
than half of those surveyed (57 per cent) worked at firms that employed over
1,000 people.
Apart from talent management, leadership improvement was the other top concern
of companies here. These pressing issues should be addressed as soon as
possible, or companies could end up losing knowledge and suffering a loss in
productivity, said BCG senior principal consultant Dean Tong.
Interestingly, even as these senior executives say managing their talent is
their top priority, the survey found that only 40 per cent of them are actively
addressing this challenge.
Mr Tong boiled the reason down to a perennial problem: the lack of resources, be
it in funding or manpower, that companies devote to their HR department.
'HR today still does not get the attention and profile it deserves,' he told BT
in an interview. 'It's neglected. How often do you see an HR person sitting on
the board of directors, or the executive committee?'
While HR has always been regarded as an enabler in business, it has failed to
establish itself as a 'strategic pillar by itself,' said Mr Tong.
Weighing in with his views, Tim Hird, managing director of staffing and
consulting firm Robert Half International, said: 'While many companies have
recognised talent management as a key challenge, many lack the resources and
know-how to tackle this issue effectively.
'Smaller companies, in particular, may lack the internal HR expertise, relying
too heavily on line managers or other roles to oversee the talent management
process - which translates to not having an adequate and effective talent
management policy.'
The BCG survey, meanwhile, also found that tapping foreign markets is not the
only way that companies plan to hunt for talent. Twenty-one per cent of
executives said that their companies plan to move businesses to new locations to
gain better access to job- seekers by 2015, compared with just 8 per cent who
did so last year.
One of the report's authors, Rainer Strack, put it bluntly: 'It may soon be
harder to find and keep talented employees than to raise money in an IPO. In the
West, workforces are greying, while in developing markets, companies have an
unquenchable thirst for skilled employees. Creating a people advantage will
increasingly translate into competitive advantage.'
Another hot potato of late - managing work-life balance - was rated a key future
challenge in nearly every region worldwide, emerging as a top-three priority in
eight countries, including Singapore.
Flexible work arrangements are the 'cornerstone of almost all work-life balance
initiatives', said the report. Globally, 60 per cent of executives surveyed said
that their companies already offered flexible working hours, with nearly 80 per
cent saying that they planned to do so by 2015.
BCG's Mr Tong, however, said he was 'surprised' that work-life balance ranked as
highly in the Republic as it did.
'This issue has been big in Europe and the US, but not so much in Asia, where we
pride ourselves on working very hard. But we are beginning to see more people -
especially in middle management, married with kids - demanding this work-life
balance from their companies,' he said.
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