Leadership Gap Poses Biggest Talent Crisis

From SHRM Online, by Kathy Gurchiek

A gap in the leadership pipeline, not the pending retirement of key workers, is a leading challenge for organizations, according to a 12-month survey of 700 U.S. organizations that included interviews with 60 HR executives.

Bersin & Associates, an independent research and advisory service, touted its study, High-Impact Talent Management, as the first comprehensive analysis of the talent management market.
It discussed its findings on HR best practices, HR systems, business outcomes, organizational models and workforce issues in a March 28, 2007, webcast. The full results were to be published in May.

Among the findings:

• Gaps in the leadership pipeline (51 percent), creating a performance-driven culture (46 percent) and difficulty filling key positions (38 percent) are the top three talent challenges that respondents cited.
• Just over 80 percent said leadership development is the talent management process most needing improvement and the function that best defines talent management.
• Nearly 70 percent said talent management strategy is the responsibility of groups other than HR, such as the CEO, top management, and/or line-of-business executives.
• Only 23 percent said the pending retirement of key workers is a talent challenge.

Talent management is not just about the top talent, Bersin & Associates President Josh Bersin said during the webcast.

“Today that definition has completely changed and deals with the people all over the organization and the processes that touch most of the people across the organization.”

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