When leaders are asked what scares them the most about the coming year, talent management always tops the chart. With relentless globalisation creating continuous changes in the business environment, winning the global war for talent - finding the most suitable candidates wherever they may be to fill the talent pool - has become the critical success factor.
This reality has led to numerous strategic changes, and hence triggers changes in the workforce. Multinational organisations in particular are being compelled to re-examine their talent mobility practices to be able to compete effectively. As a result, HR organisations must transform themselves to embrace a more global world. They must adopt new talent sourcing strategies to match talent with tasks spread all over the world. This also requires new management methods, such as supporting mobile workforces across geographic barriers in needed areas.
If you look closely, the war for talent will only get worse in the future given the ageing population, social, cultural or language barriers, the lack of infrastructure as well as the low standard of education that could severely limit the potential of many. Thus, as the skills shortage is exacerbated, hiring will be more dependent on having a globally diverse and highly mobile talent pool if an organisation wants to remain relevant. HR practitioners will be vital in helping their organisations achieve the globalisation mandate.
For a start, I'd like to suggest that HR needs to implement a customised people management strategy. I would like to call it a "glocal" approach to talent management — creating an equal balance between the need for global solutions with the need to be locally responsive and relevant.
When organisations become more global and diverse, HR needs to implement a proactive talent strategy by unifying HR goals and strategies across the entire company. It needs to tap into the increasing complexity and diversity of the global workforce through advanced technology while customising and adjusting HR practices according to the needs of each location.
By doing so, an organisation can manage a global workforce in a much more effective way, using approaches that can accommodate local needs while maintaining central standards.
What's more, HR practitioners will need to make the most use of data analytics to leverage advantages across the global talent map. This is because global organisations will rely more on HR to help decide how to allocate people to different parts of the business — or even different sides of the world. It must decide how to train them, where to find the desired skills on the global market and so on in order to thrive in the future. Rich data analytics can help HR and the overall organisation to do just that.
Moreover, in a digital world, people may represent themselves digitally in public global databases that HR practitioners can easily tap if they make themselves familiar with using technology to advance their jobs. Similarly, if HR organisations can contribute to a collective global database, potential employees can easily see what skills are in demand and where their particular skills are required.
Another important factor is that HR needs to develop and groom local leaders to have a global mindset. Such leaders need to be able to adapt easily to any business context across the world, such as managing a multicultural workforce or managing across multiple time zones, as well as embracing diversity among their team members. In short, there are four main areas that global leaders need to modify: their global outlook, personal adjustment, interpersonal and influencing ability, and business understanding.
These are just a few examples on how HR practitioners can help their organisations to better operate in a complex, interdependent and globally connected world. Most importantly, however, HR strategies should be aligned with the objectives of the business transformation to truly become successful in becoming a global player and possibly winning the global war for talent.
All in all, when the global talent map loses its borders and when you can fill the labour pool by sourcing best available talents worldwide, businesses will need to realign their workforce and leadership with a new global mandate. This means ensuring that their leaders and managers have a global mindset that will enable them to operate across borders and cultures, and that HR practices are suitable for each geographic location.
At the same time, when companies are composed of a global, highly diverse workforce, HR will need to reinvent itself to remain relevant and help organisations to navigate a multifaceted and changing global labour market.
Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand's leading Organisational and People Development Consultancy. For more information, write an e-mail to arinya_t@apm.co.th or visit www.apm.co.th