The "War" for Talent

I read something on LinkedIn the other day that I thought offered an interesting and in my opinion incorrect perception- that the "war" for the best talent is over for the short term because of the current recessionary and unemployment conditions.

It rather reminded me of a conversation that I had twenty years ago with the CEO and VP of HR at a high technology firm where I was employed. I was frankly pretty disturbed by some of our human resources practices and policies that were just this side of exploitative in my opinion. It wasn't that our wages needed to be that low or practices that Draconian, it was that we were essentially the "only game in town". When I questioned our approach the CEO quipped "they aren't leaving are they ?".

He was right in many cases they weren't leaving, but our absenteeism, utilization of mental health care and regular health care benefits, absenteeism and other factors were much higher than both the industry and regional norms. Employee satisfaction was also low.

Then something interesting happened, some additional high technology employers came to town and "they" started leaving, in droves.

Flash forward to 2010. You see comments from CEOs, CFOs and others that because employees are anchored to their jobs because of the economy companies can occupy themselves with "important" matters like costs, efficiencies, etc. Employees aren't going anywhere.

Here are some contrary reasons to why I think that strategy is dumb:

• Employee dissatisfaction is at an all time high
• Studies show that something less than 30% of employees are "engaged" or exhibiting discretionary effort in their jobs.
• The demand for "experienced" workers is expected to increase by 15% while supply diminishes by 25% over the next 10 years.
• "Presenteeism" costs the U.S economy $200 billion annually.
• The costs of replacing an employee ranges between 2 and 5 times annual salary in "hard costs" alone.
• Engaged employees outperform their disengaged colleagues in every category and organizations with high engagement similarly outperform their competitors in every key metric.

Organizations that have high engagement didn't arrive at it by accident. They have a deliberate strategy. Do you really believe that organizations like Apple, Google, Southwest Airlines, and others are ignoring their people strategy? Do you really believe that best employees are going to stay with employers who exploited circumstances when the economy picks up?

So I have some recommendations JFHF3HCJD6FE for you during this "lull" in the war for talent:

• Look at your talent and acquisition strategy. As many as 30% of outside executives and 40% of new management hires fail within their first 18 months because of poor hiring processes.
• Studies have shown three essential pillars are key to long term business performance and success: trust, communication, and leadership.
• It is much more efficient to build an "employment brand" and hire people whom it resonates with than try to retrofit your culture and staff.
• The team with the best players playing in an aligned fashion always wins.

Systemic approaches like "lean", six sigma, ISO, and others aren't going to fix engagement and trust issues. Waiting until the "war" restarts and the cease fire is over seems like a dumb strategy to me. What do you think?