You would think that the topics of talent shortage and managing employees productivity were two business issues. I’ve had a few conversations with senior Directors bemoaning the shortage of talent, particularly in IT, banking and technology and both have been linked to how to manage employee productivity.

The Talent Crunch
Most people would think that with the financial crisis that finding good talent would be easy, but in fact this isn’t the case for many specialist areas. Indeed the Manpower Group report that a third of companies report difficulties in finding good talent. There is a talent crunch in India, where it’s reported that sixty seven percent of companies are unable to find the people they need. In Brazil the figure is thirty four percent and the shortage is pushing up wages and inflation.

The skills shortages in these countries is likely to have an affect on our own talent pool and attract our own talent towards high salaries and a better style of living than can be gained within Europe or the USA. This will be true even of bankers who see career progression in terms of London and New York.

Managing Employee productivity
If most businesses can’t find all the talent that it requires, or afford it when it can, then it needs to invest some time and money to improve the productivity of its existing talent. That’s the reason that people have been asking me how to measure, manage and improve their people’s performance and productivity.

It’s been interesting that in the mind of the Directors I’ve spoken to that they seem to have a vision of a “One size fits all” solution. The problem is that there isn’t a one size fits all nor is there an immediate solution to making internal talent more productive. Different strategies need to be employed for salespeople as opposed to IT,  Senior staff as opposed to Non-Executive Directors and so on. In the long-run, however, it might be the only viable and affordable solution. 

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, Chrissie Lightfoot, who has written a great blog titled The end of Lawyers on the changes to how the legal profession will be changing. The article is very revealing and Chrissie has made some excellent observations.

Her blog has caused some discussion with  friends who use the internet for business. It’s been agreed that now we can offer experts in India, China, Thailand and all over the world work that would normally be done very expensively such as marketing, research, print design, professional advice and even pay someone to write our blogs,  monitor the results and only pay for what we have had satisfactorily delivered at a fraction of the price. Why would we want to hire expensive people or firms locally?

The result must be that professional firms in Europe and the USA must consider that to survive they must identify Micro-niche products that can’t be easily replicated.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, Chrissie Lightfoot, who has written a great blog titled The end of Lawyers on the changes to how the legal profession will be changing. The article is very revealing and Chrissie has made some excellent observations.

Her blog has caused some discussion with  friends who use the internet for business. It’s been agreed that now we can offer experts in India, China, Thailand and all over the world work that would normally be done very expensively such as marketing, research, print design, professional advice and even pay someone to write our blogs,  monitor the results and only pay for what we have had satisfactorily delivered at a fraction of the price. Why would we want to hire expensive people of firms?

The result must be that professional firms in Europe and the USA must consider that to survive they must identify Micro-niche products that can’t be easily replicated.