ManpowerGroup: HR Must Evolve to Take on Talent Shortages

ManpowerGroup has identified three distinct roles human resources (HR) leaders must play to ensure talent sustainability for their organizations in its new insights paper, “The Talent Shortage Continues: How the Ever Changing Role of HR Can Bridge the Gap. ” The global talent shortage is at a seven-year high as 36 percent of employers globally cannot fill open jobs. The paper explains that HR leaders are the one group with the expertise to reshape their companies’ talent-base. They must now adopt in the employment market the roles of supply and demand experts, marketers, and designers.

“Macroeconomic forces continue to decrease margins, creating a need for organizations to do more with less and to have a workforce that is more agile and productive,” said Jonas Prising, ManpowerGroup CEO. “The answer rests with HR leaders, who must possess the strategic capability to ensure a sustainable workforce and the talent their organizations need to achieve their business objectives.”

HR leaders can bridge the skills gap by evolving their roles in three ways:

• Supply and Demand Experts: HR leaders must provide intelligence supported by relevant data, understanding their internal and external talent supply and how forces are shaping the availability of required skills.

• Marketers: In a world of talent shortages, HR’s role has expanded to include attracting and retaining customers (i.e., talent), in the same way that marketers segment and target consumers of the company’s products and services.

• Designers: A different way of thinking is required to cultivate communities of work and balance the employment mix to include contingent, fully-outsourced, partially-retired, and other workers.