Leadership Development and Talent Management in a Recession

As we move into 2011, debate continues as to whether the worst of the global economic crisis is over and many business leaders are still tightly controlling costs in the struggle to boost profits. However according to The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s assessment of Deloitte’s ‘Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Where Are You on the Recovery Curve?’ report, there is no better time than the present for top executives to focus on the recruitment of top talent, launch new in-house programs for training future leaders and map out formal succession plans for the leadership team.

The Deloitte surveys, conducted over the course of a year, were based on the stated actions and opinions of 335 top executives and talent managers from a broad cross section of industry groups and from the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe, as well as the Middle East and Africa. The managers all worked for large firms with more than $500 million in annual sales. The study consisted of five surveys of the executives and one survey of employees.
Results concluded that ‘Organizations that posted stronger performances and were more optimistic about the future were those that "walked the walk" with leadership-development programs and succession planning’. Conversely results showed that companies concentrating on cost-cutting and putting on hold the fundamentals of employee development and talent management were making a major mistake, which could lead to worrying future ramifications for the business.

Key findings included:
• Many companies were not nurturing future executives, for example, only 31 percent were sending potential leaders on global assignments, and 60% lacked any formal lacked coaching or mentoring initiatives.
• 77 percent of these large, global companies did not have a strong succession plan for top leadership.
• Executives at firms that placed a greater emphasis on leadership, with ongoing programs in place and clearly identifiable procedures, also reported higher morale and greater confidence in management from employees.
• Nearly 60 percent of the respondents that described their leadership-development programs as "world-class" reported increasing employee morale, while 53 percent reported greater trust and confidence in corporate training.

Some food for thought as we all continue to re-assess expenditure plans for the forthcoming year.

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