I just reviewed the "Talent Risk Report" published by the World Economic Forum which shows the challenges we, as societies and organizations, will face in the next two decades to resolve the imbalances between supply and demand for talent. In a nutshell, we have the northern hemisphere countries struggling with demographic issues primary related with the massive retirement of the baby boomers and the urgent need for younger talent in the workforce to keep their companies competitive. On the other hand, the southern hemisphere, mainly represented by the BRIC countries, struggles with a different king of problem: to beef up their educational systems to produce enough qualified graduates to keep their development efforts going. They don't face shortage of young people, but their education systems lack enough quality to qualify them as talent. On the other hand, they don't have a system of vocational training to bring to the workforce qualified talent more quickly, eliminating the expectation that people can have a good job only if they go to college.
Governments and companies are putting in place programs to fill these gaps such as strategic workforce planning through modeling future imbalances between supply and demand for talent; tapping on a huge talent pool of women who, because of social and/or cultural issues cannot use their talent; change immigration laws to allow talent to migrate easier; and so forth.
Many of us, who have worked many years for international organizations developed a rare set of skills that can be used in benefit of resolving these imbalances: we are used to work in multicultural environments, understand globalization issues and talent mobility challenges; we are used to deal with the challenges of diversity, and how to make HR policy an advocate for integration and a catalyst for cooperation. After all, we all want our organizations to succeed by providing a work environment where everyone has an opportunity to give their best. More to come.
Get the report here: http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-talent-risks-report-2011
