The economic upturn is driving new job opportunities, but low levels of employee trust and engagement, even lower levels of entry-level recruitment, and increasing demand for executive talent have created a crossroads. Companies must rethink their talent management strategies if they hope to retain key talent and remain competitive in today’s marketplace.

“They need to do that now or they’re going to end up in a situation where talent erosion accelerates, and it’s going to make it very difficult for them to take advantage of the upturn in the economy,” said Matthew Parker, group managing director at StepStone Solutions, a talent management solutions provider.

“You’ve basically got this situation where people haven’t moved jobs over the last 18 months for fear of organizations taking a last-in, first-out approach if they have to make cuts,” he said. “If people get more comfortable with the fact that organizations are not doing restructuring or cuts, they’re much more likely to embrace a new opportunity.”
 
These were some of the findings cited in “Companies at a Crossroads,” a recent report based on a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and StepStone Solutions.

The study also laid bare a significant discrepancy between the way senior executives and line managers perceive the level of trust and engagement within their organizations.

“Thirty-eight percent of C-level executives are saying [trust and engagement] is high, [compared to] only 16 percent of people working within the business — doing the doing versus doing the telling,” Parker said. “That is a huge disconnect, and it’s potentially driving business strategy in one direction when organizations should be focused in other areas.”

In fact, 40 percent of line managers said trust levels were “quite low.” There could be a few contributing causes to this discrepancy, Parker explained.

“One is the lack of effective technology to allow transparency around what’s going on in an organization, so data probably just isn’t feeding up through the food chain,” he said. “The other side is people don’t want to hear what they don’t want to hear — and some people don’t like giving bad news, so it reflects on a line manager if he goes to his boss and says, ‘My team is unhappy.’