Make Your People Before You Make Your Products: Using Talent Management to Achieve Competitive Advantage in Global Organizations

FOREWORD

By Susannah Clements

Deputy Chief Executive, CIPD

There is an ongoing shift in the business landscape, caused by the scale and velocity of change in the global economy. As a result, organizations are seeking new insights about the ways they can achieve high levels of performance and growth in the face of turbulence and unpredictability.

Against this background, there is growing recognition that good people management is crucial to success. For many organizations, people are the main source of competitive advantage. For some the only source. Business leaders are striving to ensure that they deliver outstanding practices in people and organizational development by aligning their people strategies to the goals of the organization and ensuring that all employees are engaged with what they're trying to achieve. People management is a strategic as well as an operational imperative.

But this isn't straightforward because of changes in the nature of work and the dynamics of organizations. And so three priorities stand out.

The first is an understanding of the future of work. In essence, this means answering questions about the nature of ‘work’ and how it takes place. The answers will have implications for skills and job needs as well as career paths. The impact of global mobility, technological developments and new ways of working are particularly important.

The second critical factor is an understanding of the change in workforce dynamics caused by demographics, generational ...