When Samuel Dipiazza, the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) says in his Helsinki School of Economics address that he is not worried about finding enough gifted professionals to hire in the future but about keeping them, he was voicing one of the major issues faced by CEOs across the globe. Accountancy has traditionally been looked at as the safety net of the economy but is not considered a dream job with change in employee preferences and availability of alternatives in boom-time economies like those of China and India. Global jobs are easier to find now and hence a company like PWC which employs 140,000 people in 149 countries has its own quota of recruitment and retention problems. Similarly, as C Mahalingam aptly points out the CEOs these days have just two parameters to review. In the first case, they review the attrition numbers and the figures give no cheer.
The same CEOs then review the recruitment process to ensure that right people are available in various positions at the right times. Traditionally, these two functions are strictly in the HR manager's domain. The fact that more and more CEOs are now directly paying attention to this area shows the seriousness of the issue. The eleventh Annual Global CEO Survey released at the Annual World Economic Forum in Davos found that talent deficit was a serious problem with most CEOs. For eg., The Australian CEOs believe that the people agenda (and retention is at its heart) is definitely their top priority and 80% of all global CEOs agree. Only 43% of the CEOs believe that their HR department was adequately equipped to handle the issue, 97% of Australian CEOs believe that access to and retention of talent is the major drivers of competitive advantage.
So employee retention has become a major CEO concern in countries across the globe. Other current CEO concerns could include issues like oil price with concomitant energy and supply chain problems, carbon trading and global warming concerns, fiscal imbalances like the US subprime crisis and the like. The entire world economy has changed drastically probably because hitherto inactive economies like those of China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey have of late been growing very rapidly and there is a large skilled manpower influx into and exodus out of these economies. Historically, most companies stuck to their geographical boundaries.
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