You have heard it many times, by now.

Global Markets Mean Talent Markets, Too

You might be watching the global business economy and talent markets closely. It is the buzzword.

As you may have been noticing, the need for talent is starting to recover from the recent Great Recession.
While not everyone may be feeling the recovery, there is enough recovery to be conspicuous.

During the recession, leaders in the industries across the world have shared an overarching experience – the severely changing business landscape that threw competitive markets into a  super-hyper-speed for efficiency and innovation.
It was a fight to survive on a global scale.

This time, leaders all over the world experienced the survival shake down at nearly the same time.

Global Conditions Have Changed the Talent Market Forever

Of course, world markets have been flattening since the beginning of internet business platforms. Since Y2K, during every boom and recession cycle, you as business leaders have been noticing and watching.
However, this last one was different. Leader after leader sounded something like this, “The future is here. This is what it means to have a flat world economy,” and no one sounded happy.

They were right. Business and markets were no longer waiting for the world to become “flat”. It was “here”. Yes, the world markets have gone through declining economics together, and together they will prosper again – off to the races so to speak, as one huge market.
This is a drastic over simplification, but you get the point.

There’s another difference that you may not have heard much about. This global convergence of change has changed the Talent Market forever.

Why Talent Management?

The Talent Market is everyone who works for your company, anyone else’s company, and everyone who wants a job or a new job – anywhere in the world. There is now one giant market of people. We’ve been noticing this growing reality over the last 10 to 15 years. However, there has never been a time before where this has been so evident, even more accessible, and most importantly so needed.

In the not so distant past, Talent Acquisition (Recruiting) Leaders would talk about searching for candidates around the globe,

• The barriers to finding them
• Communication
• Understand their values and what they want
• How would you move them and their families here?

Business leaders would talk about moving production to another country, “offshore”. Then, corporate lawyers would research the barriers to enter a different labor market, legal landscape, and economic environment.

Now, enter today … what barriers? Ok, politics hasn’t crumbled – or all that goes along with the struggles for power and world domination. What you may not know, though, is that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) is very busy creating visibility for most international banking in all developed nations, in the name of reducing global imbalances and creating stability.
Combine this with the inter-connectedness of each countrie’s GDP and the global economy, plus foreign investment and financial strategy, then add all labor markets – and you begin to get a picture. Money (that’s legal) and how it travels, where it stays, and where it grows is becoming more visible. People follow the money, whether it’s business leaders, recruiting leaders, or the talent market.

The Talent Market is Flat

Wide sweeping changes are flattening the market with force, from the top down, rather than deflating and draining talent. Think of a giant hand flattening a big mountain. That means the Talent Market is, and will be, dispersing over the globe. Migration will demand to grow, whether it’s temporary or permanent. Here’s where business leaders need to pay attention. As U.S. GDP rate slows and other countries’ GDP percentages increase, for the first time in decades the most talented in the U.S. will consider long-term international opportunities. Now, billions of people want a job but the best talent (most trained, talented, smart, creative and ambitious) wants a great career – wherever that is.

This also means that diversity and the need for international talent will grow. Why? Not only will some of our best and brightest citizens export their talent, along side of that there aren’t enough motivated people with the right technical training, specific skills and knowledge for the jobs, and growing careers. Companies already find themselves looking for talent beyond the national borders at ever increasing speed and frequency.

It’s difficult enough to build a business full of good jobs, where people want to stay and contribute to building the company. Surveys show that many employees don’t think their employers are very good at it – either in the large companies also, in many medium-size companies which is the largest segment of employers. For two to three decades, the voices for topics like “equal pay for women” and “work-life-balance” has been getting stronger, but so has the nonstop workplace mantra, “do more with less”. Yet, the immediate pressures of the global market and international business environment are now demanding that employers change and get better at hiring the right employees, developing and keeping them.

Global Competition for Talent

Increasing global competition for the best. Talent Market changes what used to be a nice-to-have into a must-have. Starting today, more than yesterday, leaders need to pay attention to the risks of losing their solid performers and their best talent. An even more productive approach would be to create intention and attention to a constructive culture, performance and rewards system, and employee development programs that keep their people and teams engaged.
This is “change engagement”, which isn’t just for M&As. Change engagement is a long-term employee development strategy that paces alongside, or a half step ahead, of industry and customer markets.

Technology is accessible to everyone who can afford it and, often, so is the best talent. When equipment and software are purchased they’re owned.
When people are contracted as employees, their time is leased but not their loyalty or even their highest motivation.
Now that it’s getting easier to follow the money – it’s getting even more difficult to develop a longer-term employee life cycle (loyalty). Leaders that aren’t creating enough intention and attention to their employees home-away-from-home (the workplace) will continue to experience pervasive pain from the inability to keep enough of the right talent.

Companies continue to pay exorbitant prices to find, recruit, and hire talent. Though the world talent market is flattening, the best talent is getting more expensive, some may say exponentially so, because of the lack of educated or trained labor force for the growing job trends that contribute most to the GDP.

So, where do you start?  Start doing something for your company that concerns a constructive culture, performance and rewards system, as well as employee development.

Pathfinders conducted a successful program on Winning a war for Talents – why the war and what you do for winning the war.

Please let us know if you want to know more.
Suresh Shah, Pathfinders Enterprise