Developing a workforce that is adaptive to change in a global economy is vital to the growth of a company and to the development of future leaders, a major study has revealed.
The study, conducted by IBM, surveyed 400 HR executives in public and private sectors in 40 countries, including Ireland, and found that more than 75 per cent of respondents are concerned with their ability to develop future leaders.
Executives felt that the generation gap - the passing of information from older to younger employees - and a lack of sufficient employee skills were the key challenges in developing leaders in the workforce.
Rapid growth in emerging markets has also had a negative impact on companies' ability to identify and develop the next generation of leaders, putting their growth strategies at risk.
Fifty-two per cent of those surveyed said a significant challenge facing their organisation was the inability to rapidly develop skills to address the current and future needs of the business, while one-third of respondents claimed their employee skills are not aligned with current organisational priorities.
Another concern highlighted was the continuing increase in employee turnover with almost half of respondents saying there had been a significant increase in employee turnover in their organisation in the last two years.
The companies that were most concerned with their ability to develop leaders were those in southeast Asia, with 88 per cent, followed by Europe with 74 per cent, suggesting that leadership development and workforce management have to an extent been overlooked due to rapid growth in the global market since 2005.
"The ability of an organisation to look ahead and identify the skills it will need in the future, and then rapidly develop a critical mass of individuals with those skills in a cost-effective manner, will be a core competency for those companies looking to compete in the globally-integrated world," said Randy MacDonald, senior vice president of human resources for IBM.
Rather than attracting new talent to the organisation, HR executives were found to be more concerned with concentrating on the development of existing employee skills, with 60 per cent believing their corporate reputations made them better than competitors at attracting and retaining talented employees.
Although the development of a workforce adaptive to change is considered vital to the growth and survival of the company, in reality only 14 per cent of executives said their workforce is capable of adapting to change.
This includes the need for companies to be more responsive to shifting market needs, more focused on core competencies, being resilient to external threats and more flexible in how they operate.
Areas where respondents suggested there was a need to improve was in the ability to predict future skills, in particular anticipating future business scenarios to know what key competencies to target in advance of market shifts.
Expertise location was highlighted by executives as being critical in pinpointing potential leaders, as well as identifying resources to determine new opportunities and threats. According to the study, more than 50 per cent of firms rate themselves as "very effective" in locating experts through the use of an employee directory.
Significant improvement in fostering collaboration across the enterprise was also identified as being critical to the company's performance and in developing leadership by executives, who cited time pressures and misaligned performance measures as barriers to effective collaboration.
Overall, changing trends in workforce demographics and mobility patterns indicate that companies may need to invest more resources in recruitment, selection and retention to develop their full growth potential and performance, according to the study's experts.
