Article: CEO as the Chief Talent Officer - Best of 2011

Leadership

CEO as the Chief Talent Officer - Best of 2011

The May-June 2011 issue presented the People Matters - Monster.com 'CEO as the Chief Talent Officer Study 2011', which revealed what CEOs are doing in their individual capacity to leverage the people advantage
CEO as the Chief Talent Officer - Best of 2011
 

In this high-growth phase, the role of the CEO is to become the ‘bridge' between the external world and the people inside the organization

 

The May-June 2011 issue presented the People Matters - Monster.com ‘CEO as the Chief Talent Officer Study 2011’, which revealed what CEOs are doing in their individual capacity to leverage the people advantage

73% CEOs in India spend more than one-fourth of their time directly on talent-related activities. While 68 percent acknowledge that this time has increased in recent years, 79 percent also affirm that this focus will only increase further next year. This indicates a relevant change in the way organizations are functioning today.

The 2011, “CEO as the Chief Talent Officer study” revealed that HR issues are undoubtedly core to the success of their companies. The increasing fear of unavailability of the right talent to execute their companies’ strategies is leading CEOs to discuss people challenges more and more at the boardrooms.

For Indian CEOs, talent has always been on the top of their agenda, either to foster growth or as a consequence of the downturn. But what is changing is the pace and pressure that organizations face to focus on talent issues. Today, these talent challenges are seen as a sign of a growing economy which brings with it the excitement of umpteen opportunities that this new reality unfolds.

In this high-growth phase, the role of the CEO is to become the ‘bridge’ between the external world and the people inside the organization. As the external environment becomes more and more complex, the importance of this bridge increases, hence impacting the CEO’s role to extend towards more talent-related areas.

A CEO’s top 3 HR priorities for 2011

This year’s CEO survey unfolded the undisputed top three HR priorities that have made it to the CEOs “to do list”. 65 percent respondents have chosen “building teams to meet expected growth” as one of their top three priorities, while the other two key priorities for the year include “building motivation and engagement” (56 percent respondents) and “retention of key talent” (52 percent respondents).

Building teams to meet expected growth. CEOs’ primary agenda is to help the organization build capable teams to execute new business strategies and opportunities. Therefore, the CEO is not only interested in hiring the right talent but CEOs are actively trying to create a consistent pipeline of leadership at the three levels - the top level to ensure leadership succession planning; the middle level to ensure ready talent pipeline for the top level, and the entry level to identify top performing employees who can be moved into fast track career development plans for middle level roles.

Building employee motivation and engagement. Internal teams need to feel engaged and motivated to work together towards the common goal. Creating a great workplace, maintaining employee engagement, keeping people excited and motivated, to innovate at their work have become key areas of consideration for CEOs. The CEO’s emphasis is on creating and maintaining a differentiated culture for the organization.

Retention of key talent. The increasing scarcity of quality talent along with growing impetus on people in attaining business excellence has made talent retention vital. Most CEOs believe that while this is a primary action point for them, its effective implementation is an automatic result of how well the organization meets the first two talent criteria of acquisition and development. Once the first two are in place, the third is automatically managed.

The 2011 Study included views from over 100 CEOs across industries and company sizes to reveal how they are investing their individual time and effort in building people-centric organizations. The trend of CEO as the Chief Talent Officer is set to consolidate as organizations center the success of their business strategies on identifying, grooming and retaining talent.

People Matters CEO Survey 2011

The survey reflects contributions of more than 114 leading Indian business heads across industries.

Respondents represent a spectrum of industries and sectors: IT/ITES (22%), Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (19%), Manufacturing (17%), Consumer Business (15%), Services (Profit) (12%) and Life Sciences and Healthcare (7%), among others. Respondents represented a diverse group of business leaders from different organization structures in India: Professional CEOs hired by the board (41%), 2nd or 3rd generation CEOs from family owned organization (33%), entrepreneur/promoter CEOs (25%).

The online questionnaire was primarily structured around closed, single and multiple-choice questions. Respondents also had an opportunity to add their views and comments where the option provided did not give the relevant description of their reality. The figures for multiple-choice questions reflect the percentage of respondents that chose that specific option. The figures for answers that had limited choices reflect the percentage of respondents that chose that answers within their limited choices.

Additionally, 30 percent of the overall responses were collected through face-to-face and telephonic interviews conducted by People Matters research team. These interviews were more open ended and allowed the business heads to elaborate with qualitative information on their people strategies and best practices. These qualitative responses have been incorporated in the results of the survey.

 

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Topics: Leadership, Strategic HR

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