According to the Canadian edition of Deloitte’s Human Capital 2015 Trends report, ‘Canadian perspectives on the new world of work,’ organizations are having a hard time developing leaders in the modern, multi-generational workplace. And who can blame them? Leaders don’t grow on trees.
The report is vast and well worth a read if you’re facing transition problems in your organization. But one thing sticks out like coffee stains on a white carpet. Namely that leadership, company culture, and employee engagement are tightly woven together and risk death by each other’s failure.
Baby boomers step down, millennials take their place
As millennials (born 1980-2000) are being outfitted with leadership roles, boomers (born right after WWII) are starting to retire. This creates transitional hurdles that some organization cope with better than others. For example, new jobs are being created that just a few years ago didn’t even exist. Only 58% of respondents in the study felt their organization provided adequate leadership programs for all levels.
Heather Stockton, Partner and Human Capital Leader at Deloitte, stresses that leadership and culture are highly dependent of each other. These two dictate the third (and most important) main ingredient for success – employee engagement. When these three strike a final balance, customer experience financial performance are automatically streamlined and improved.
Power to the staffer
The so-called ‘talent market’ is undergoing a shift in the balance of power, which today is in the hands of the employee more than ever. Motivation, personal ambition, and passion are now key subjects a CEO needs to keep close tabs on. The same goes for the work-life balance, which 44% of the respondents said they felt poorly equipped to juggle.
What’s needed is a redesign of the workplace and its culture with outsourced, contract, contingent, or part-time workers. 47 percent of the survey respondents pledged to adopt this strategy in the next 3 to 5 years.
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HR’s new agenda for 2015
Only 7 percent rate their HR department as capable of delivering excellent performance. 39 percent feel that their respective HR teams fail to fully understand their organizations’ business needs.
Human Resources needs to step up its game as their organization steps into a multigenerational era. Their new agenda is to be more agile and closely integrated with the business, as well as to identify, attract, retain and develop talent. In short, redefine its core responsibilities from the ground up.
I leave you with the top 10 2015 human capital trends in Canada:
- Leadership
- Culture and engagement
- Learning and development
- Reinventing HR
- Workforce capability
- HR & People analytics
- Performance management
- Simplifying work
- Machines as talent (leveraging technology)
- People data everywhere (using social media in HR)
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