The key theme for the CoreNet Global Summit in Atlanta in October is “Finding, Getting and Keeping Talent.” That’s what this article is about. We have been presenting a series of workshops over the past three years focused on how companies and local communities need to work together on addressing exactly this challenge.
Companies represent the demand side of the equation: they need the talent. Communities on the other hand represent the supply side: the talent lives there. This equation has gotten increasingly out of balance as people (the talent) increasingly make their locational decisions independently of their employment decisions. And we believe it is only going to get worse as talented people become increasingly scarce and begin to demand more than financial compensation in return for their knowledge and effort.
We are absolutely convinced that both corporations and communities are facing a work force challenge that is completely unprecedented. And it won’t be solved with any traditional approaches. It’s time to rethink both talent management and economic development from the ground up.
The simple fact is the over the next ten years the demand for talent, especially but not exclusively in the United States, will far outstrip the supply. In fact, a recent survey by Manpower, Inc., found that fully 40 percent of over 33,000 employers worldwide are already having difficulty filling critical positions, as reported by Business Week magazine. Perhaps even more sobering is the fact that for the next thirty years overall population growth in the developed countries of the world (including the United States) will be below the rate of projected economic growth. And that means that the number of jobs to be filled will exceed the number of people to fill them by a wide margin. In fact, some forecasters have predicted that by 2012 there will be a demand for 10 million more workers than will be available here in the United States; see Figure 1. (See also our article, “A Dirty Little Secret: The War for Talent is Over, and Talent Won,” Future of Work Agenda, October, 2003.)
We believe it won’t be long before you’ll be hearing stories of firms that had to shut down a division, a profitable product line, or even the entire corporation, simply because they were unable to find enough talented people to do the necessary work.
If this sounds at all like we’re crying wolf, pay closer attention.
In our recently published book, Corporate Agility, we identify “Closing the Talent Gap” as one of the three most critical challenges facing businesses today (the other two are Reducing Fixed Operating Costs and Institutionalizing Innovation). And we argue that those three challenges can only be met by implementing what we’ve come to call Collaborative Strategic Management—the complete integration and coordination of human resources, facilities and real estate management, and information technology.
And on the supply side, local communities are facing their own version of the talent gap. The old economic development equation that focused on incentivizing new businesses to locate in the region isn’t enough any more. The simple fact is that in our information-based, talent-driven economy local communities have to make themselves attractive to talent first and foremost. It’s a bit of “If you build it they will come”—meaning that if your community is attractive to talented folks, they’ll come, settle down, raise their kids, bring their work with them, and drive local economic growth just by being there (they’ll “import” revenue by exporting their work, and then spend their income locally).
That means that to survive the next decade every organization—public and private, large and small—needs a strategic human resource strategy that includes four key components:
- An attraction/retention program to ensure that you can find, hire, and retain the talent you need
- A work force development program to grow some of talent you need in-house (and to keep the talent you’ve got from going elsewhere)
- A location strategy component that tracks where the talent you need to attract is choosing to live
- A flexible/remote/mobile/distributed work program that enables you to employ talented people no matter where they want to live
The Economic Development Side of the Equation
And if you represent a local community or economic development agency, we recommend that you do a careful assessment of the quality of life in your community today, match up your own attributes with the kinds of things that knowledge workers value and expect, and then work on fixing your shortcomings.
What attracts knowledge workers to a community?
Our strong belief is that first and foremost knowledge workers value self-control and autonomy. And they view their careers and their personal life as something they want to plan and take care of on their own. Having the opportunity to choose among alternatives is thus a key component of what knowledge workers are looking for. But self-control and choice by themselves are not enough; knowledge workers also want to be part of strong communities that meet their other personal interests and needs.
The short answer to the question of attraction is community. Although the physical attributes (weather, recreational opportunities, cleanliness, livability) of a region are important, the equation is far more complicated than that. It is, frankly, about the psychology of the region. We are convinced that you can have all the roads, schools, airports, business services, Internet access, and hospitals you want, but if you don’t have a meaningful sense of community you won’t see much in-migration.
It’s not that roads, schools, airports, business services, Internet access, and hospitals are unimportant or trivial. Indeed, without those basics no region will be able to thrive in today’s global economy. Our contention is that those resources are just the price of entry. The more important question is what it takes for a region to be head-and-shoulders above average in attracting and retaining talent.
We believe a good way to approach this question is to take a step backward and examine first what kinds of abilities and competencies will be required of the work force of the future. Or, put another way, what will knowledge workers have to be good at to thrive in the emerging global economy?
Our hypothesis is that they will be attracted to communities that offer them an experience of what they have to be competent at. And what competencies will matter in the future? One of the best answers we have found to that question comes from Daniel Pink in his 2005 book A Whole New Mind.
Pink proposes six new competencies for the future of work: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.
If these are the core competencies, the things that knowledge workers need to engage with, then how do they translate into community characteristics? In the interests of brevity, Figure 2 captures our initial linkages.
Putting It All Together
Let’s face it: The future of work is already distinctively different from the world that most of us grew up in. Today work can be done productively almost any place and any time. The idea of an eight-hour, 9-5 day is ancient history. The economy is global, meaning work is going on 24×7, 52 weeks a year. And the name of the game is talent—the care and feeding of the knowledge workers who drive economic growth and create sustainability.
CoreNet Global’s Corporate Real Estate (CRE) 2010 program said it all several years ago: the role of the corporate infrastructure executive has to be supporting work wherever and whenever it takes place. That is even more true today. But it’s a radical departure from the concept most CRE executives have of their current jobs.
And economic developers are going to have to rethink their jobs too if they expect to help their local communities thrive and grow in today’s global economy.
In short, the time has come for corporate real estate and economic development agencies to invest in each other. Companies must invest in communities to build new social capital while communities in turn invest in attracting and generating the talent that companies need. We’re not talking about the old factory town of the industrial era, but of the new urban and rural “villages” of the 21st Century.
About the Authors
Charlie Grantham is a co-founder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. Grantham has spent over twenty years studying and writing about the future of work. He is also the founder and chief scientist of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work, based in Prescott, Arizona, where he manages an extensive applied research program focused on the emergence of the electronic workplace. He is recognized as an international expert on the design of information and organizational systems that support these new forms of work.
Jim Ware is a cofounder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. He has over 30 years experience in research, executive education, consulting, and management, including five years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. A recognized expert in fostering collaborative inquiry that produces both learning and action, he has led over a dozen sponsored research projects on topics such as electronic commerce channel strategies, web-enabling business processes, IT executive leadership and staff development, and building business performance scorecards.
