10 Important Global Workforce Trends

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

The Deloitte Consulting Firm recently released an important study entitled 2015: 030415-global-human-capital-trends. The research included in this report is an outcome of surveys and interviews with more than 3300 business and human resource leaders in 106 countries in every sector including health care. The study asked these leaders to assess and rank order the importance of specific workforce talent challenges and includes data on how they are meeting these challenges. The 10 top issues of importance facing business today in rank include the following:

1. Culture and Engagement

Lack of workforce engagement is a global problem. Organizations are beginning to realize that employees need to be treated more like customers. While you may believe that this problem does not exist in nursing – the data suggests otherwise. Recent nationwide research conducted by the Advisory Board indicates that only 32.8% of Registered Nurses are engaged in their work and 7.4% are actively disengaged. Improvement of the patient experience begins with a culture of engagement.

2. Building Leadership Capability

Organizations globally are struggling with the issue of succession planning as Baby Boomer leaders move into retirement. The problem is widespread in healthcare. Today’s healthcare environment is fast paced and constantly changing. The importance of planning for the future may be overlooked due to competing short- and long-term goals which seem to have more immediate impact. While there are best practices in succession planning discussed in the nursing literature, these initiatives are more the exception than the norm.

3. Promoting More Rapid Learning and Development

With 10,000 Baby Boomer retiring each day, the issue of knowledge transfer is a critical global problem. If not handled well, organizational and job specific knowledge can be rapidly lost.

4. Reinventing Human Resources

The role of human resources in organizational success is increasingly recognized as being critical. Yet many HR departments remain slow to respond to workforce expectations. This report calls for a re-examination of the role of HR and a complete reinvention.

5. Leading a Workforce on Demand

Globally in industries including healthcare, contingent or contract workers are becoming increasing important to meet the workforce demands of the organization. Yet the report maintains that very few organizations and leaders are really equipped to properly manage this workforce.

6. Performance Management

The report contends that performance management systems used in organizations to manage, evaluate and reward the workforce are antiquated. The newest generation in the workforce – Generation Y – are looking for something different in organizations in terms of feedback and rewards.

7. People Analytics

Organizations do a very good job of analytics in many areas relative to their products and services but not when it comes to people. Leaders need better analytics to help them make smarter people decisions.

8. Simplification of Work

Overwhelmed employees was an emerging trend in this report. Leaders surveyed believe that there needs to be a focus on simplifying work so that staff will feel less stress. We are entering an era where it is critical that we think about “doing less better” instead “doing more with less.”

9. Machine as Talent

Increasingly over the next ten years, we will have both robots and artificial intelligence available to us in organizations. It is possible that some jobs will be eliminated and staff will need to learn to work with machines as a member of the team. Leaders don’t feel equipped to deal with these challenges.

10. Managing External People Data

With the rising participation of the workforce on social media sites, leaders are grappling with how to deal with the information that is available to them about their workers and potential employees.

These trends highlight the fact that areas historically considered as “soft” such as engagement, leadership and learning are now urgent priorities in business today. Deloitte notes in the report that this is the first time that culture and engagement is the key priority issue. As I recently highlighted in a blog on staff engagement– it is also a key area in nursing leadership. Also of importance is the citing of leadership development. In this study, only 10% of leaders surveyed felt confident that their succession planning efforts were keeping pace with their leadership needs. We clearly have much work to do in every industry in the development of our most important resource – our staff.