In an ever-changing global economy, companies are going through significant change. Navigating this type of change landscape can be tricky even for the most seasoned of HR leaders and professionals.
One of the essential elements of any business is Supply Chain. A healthy supply chain leads to a healthy organisation. With all the global changes (from the political to economic environment) organisations need to have the best people in the right places through their supply chain. Here are some of the most important trends to look at when managing your talent.
More and more CFOs, CEOs, investors and board members recognize the value of a good supply chain. They also understand the risks of the week links in a supply chain. This will continue as more consumers will take advantage of global production. Consumers time expectations and quality expectation present one of the most notable challenges when it comes to an efficient supply chain. You don’t deliver, you lose business. It’s that simple. Each player is under microscope as their supply chain must maintain a balance between growth, profitability, responsibility and customer service.
Supply chain executives expect their most talented employees to leave at some point. Nonetheless, we see a lot of voluntary turnover all across the board in supply chain. Because of the free agent mentality—leaving your current employer for more money and/or for a bigger career opportunity, we see that an increasing number of organizations focus their attention on retention programs. Coaching, career planning and better compensation packages are some of the tools used by HR in making sure their best talent is not tempted to leave the organization.
We expect the HR and Marketing departments to create more original content in 2017 to engage with potential new recruits. Using video, blogs and social media posts and organisation could promote workplace culture, showcase projects and profile existing employees. Potential candidates are eager for an authentic picture of the internal culture that makes it easy to imagine how their career could look like at the company. Candidates are hungry for quality and authentic content. It is a high bar for more traditional minded organisations who struggle with transparency issues. Nonetheless, we expect HR content marketing to be an ongoing trend in 2017.
Gender diversity will remain a hot topic in 2017. The problem is about value. Value for all stakeholders starting with the shareholders, customers and employees. This can be created with a greater gender balance in the critical supply chain function across the board.
The essential skills required for success in supply chain are a combination of technical abilities but also such softer managerial skills as change management and performance management. Top supply chain executives in 2017 must have technical proficiency in operations management and also have strong business leadership. Diversity in ability clearly trumps deep, narrow expertise in adding value to business.
40 percent of the work done in supply chain revolves around complex analytics, planning, procurement processing, and provision of services.
This nature of the work, the need for multi-language support, and the associated local complexities of the different geographies being served will make work in supply chain global.
As an example, you could see a company from the US performing supply chain planning in the Philippines, operating procurement centers of excellence in Singapore, and conducting global business analytics in Brazil.
Conclusions
Top talent in Supply Chain is getting more and more in demand and competition is fierce to retain them, as well as to attract them.
We have the preconditions for a talent market where the employee will have the power and the employer will need to make bigger efforts for the retention of their top talent. And to make matters even more challenging, many jobs are changing and becoming more complex through the constant introduction of new technologies.
Hence HR has the prerequisites to becoming a crucial business partner to make the organisations move forward and develop.
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