From our current issue of HR News and Views:

The search for talent seems as relentless as ever,continuing to be one of the foremost challenges for senior leadership in all leading organizations even though it has been almost a decade since “War for Talent”, coined by McKinsey figured in the corporate lexicon.

Today the challenges to attract and retain talent seem daunting. In a DDI survey conducted last year, one-third of all employees expected to leave for another job within the next year while 20% estimated their chances of leaving to be greater than 50%. Several studies also indicate that
attracting and retaining talented staff is the single biggest challenge for HR and senior managers.

The following are some of the major shifts that are altering the landscape of the workplace.

Demographic shifts: Where are the workers (knowledge or otherwise) of tomorrow going to come from? The developed nations are facing the problem of ageing workforce. Almost 20% of the population in Japan is already over 65, the highest group in the world. About 35% of Deere & Company’s 46,000 employees are over 50 and a number of them are in their 70s. A new word, describing those ‘returning to the work force after an absence’ has already been coined- “boomerangs”. At Ernst & Young, about 25% of its “experienced” new recruits are boomerangs.

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