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Coping with the Skills Shortage

In 2005, most businesses are facing or about to face six major challenges:

Differentiation – standing out from the crowd, overcoming brand blandness;
Retaining a Margin – coping with the effects of global competition, downward pressure on prices and the threat of commoditisation;
Coping with constant, accelerating change and volatility;
Globalisation – coping with the competition from emerging economies such as India and China that have enormous productive capacity combined with an intelligent, skilled work force;
Environmental concerns – facing a depletion of core physical resources, threatened ecosystems and growing government regulation;
Accountability – widespread lack of trust in corporate governance and the ability of the corporate world to police itself; and
A Talent Gap - being able to attract and retain sufficient people who are appropriately motivated and trained to supply the leadership skills necessary to face these challenges.

Of these six challenges, minding The Talent Gap is one of the most urgent for without wise and skilled leadership, given the magnitude and complexity of issues at work, then many companies will unlikely survive the decade.

The Talent Gap takes three forms: skills, leadership and employee satisfaction

The gap is due to a number of causes:

Aging baby boomers retiring
The failureof education and training to prepare a skilled workforce
Changing immigration patterns
Global competition
Re-engineering
Cost cutting
Politics, governance and litigation

Over the next decade, companies will be competing for talented leaders, many of whom are already thoroughly disillusioned with corporate life.

A Gallup survey of over 1.4 million employees in North America and Europe found that only 17% could be described as content – the other 83% were either actively looking for another job or were actively disenchanted and willing to say negative thinks about their employer.

Under these circumstances, why do such companies spend huge sums on CRM technology, for example, when their customers have a 80% chance of being subject to work rage?

The Business For Good team has determined what companies need to do to attract and retain talented personnel to survive and prosper over the next decade of the network economy.

It is our view that a new, holistic view of the work place is required that recognises that companies are not machines but organisms made up not of isolated parts but self-organising human beings who play various roles – employees, consumer, investor, stakeholder and that, only by understanding what is happening to those human beings on the outside as well as the inside can solutions be developed.

The obsession with brand and the development of artificial brand concepts that do not necessarily reflect the values and aspirations of the entire workforce belies the fact that a company is a community that will succeed only to the extent that it TAKES CARE – ie adopts a holistic, caring, systems approach to itself, its internal workings and its relationships with the community as a whole.

There is a growing body of evidence to show that the companies that do “take care” that put the people in front of profit; and whose objectives are first to make a difference do, in fact, outperform companies on every measure that traditional capitalists respect: profit; retention, longevity, market value and return on investment.

So this is not wet, soft, fuzzy altruistic stuff, because....

when Business is for Good, it’s good for business!

For a highly informative, radically different and mind alerting experience contact Business For Good to arrange a one hour presentation to your team, company or association.