talent war...

The global war for talent is intense! Nature of work, composition of workforce, and new world order are the key drivers for such a war.

First, the organizations are operating in an environment with ever-increasing proportions of tacit knowledge. This stems from the fact that the proportion of services in the global GDP is increasing and the fact that many services are getting highly specialized.

There was a Congressional hearing on why CEOs of loss-making investment banks were compensated millions of $s. The board members from the compensation committee for these companies were drilled by the Senators. However, the board members had a simple stance: there is a war for talent and if we have to run our businesses, we will have to award these bonuses. Such politically satisfying rituals help the elected representatives to go back to their people and say - "ah, I tried ...did you see that on the television?" :P. Also, there are surveys by IPS-DC on executive excesses (2006 report, 2007 report). The ludicrous hearing by the Senators (I watched it on C-Span) and/or the surveys had no effect on the pay-practices in the financial services sector. This is evident from the recent WSJ article on "Say-on-Pay doesn't play on Wall St."

Second, the increasing global nature of workforce is posing other set of challenges. McKinsey & Co had an article on why multinationals struggle to manage talent. Mobility among countries and cohesiveness in achieving cultural diversity are prime challenges for multi-nationals. The global workforce today demands wage equality across the globe and is ready to move around to other companies that offer so. For instance, one of my former colleagues at a US-based system integrator/consulting firm didn't get US visa (lottery issues) and the firm could not make arrangements for him in some other country than India. She didn't want to be in India due to wage-difference. This led to her resigning and joining some other global consulting firm that could deploy her in Europe.

Third, the huge transfer of wealth from the US to West Asia (via oil) is leading to demands for talent at higher wages in a global demand uptick. The new world order is causing countries with immigration policies non-conducive to immigrants to lose out on competitive workforce for the nation. For instance, most of the financial services firms which cannot get visas for their workforce in the US are retaining the talent by deploying them in the UK or Canada. Similarly, west coast companies (such as Microsoft) is deploying its workforce (that lacks visa) in Canada.

Another evidence of the war for talent is apparent with the current talent-sourcing practices of leading organizations. Cyber sleuthing, an art practiced and perfected by Shally Steckerl and the likes, along with the boom for niche jobsearch sites for 100k+ jobs (The Ladders.com or 6figurejobs.com) are evidences for the same.

As Friedman mentioned in his book "The World is Flat", the companies that are not ready to change will cease to be competitive and later, the countries that are not ready to change will lose out. I think that the companies that are ill-equipped with HR policies to tap the global talent will lose out in the medium to long run and the countries that are having mis-aligned immigration policies will miss out in the medium to long-run. So, catch up with the times - change or else there will be nothing left to change !