Panel, Conference Presentation
2014 London Summit - Talent Without Borders: Building a Global Workforce
Milken InstituteGregory Cappelli, Kris Engskov, Sonia Gardner, Jody Greenstone Miller, Toby Peyton-Jones, Richard Ditizio, Charles Lubar, Sunil Krishnan, Mike Milken
- Demographic shifts, including tens of millions entering the middle class in Malaysia and Indonesia and a 45% global rise in independent workers since 2004 (reaching 8.9 million in the E.U. and 1.4 million in the U.K.), are driving labor market fluidity characterized by an average U.S. job tenure of approximately 4.5 years.
- Large organizations face specific challenges in mentoring women due to one-on-one conversation limitations, while Siemens aims to increase female representation in engineering roles where current percentages are lower than in finance and supply chain, and the average female college student demographic exceeds 60% at institutions like the University of Phoenix.
- The labor force is projected to include a high volume of Millennials and advanced-degree-holding women, though over 60% of women currently in college are expected to enter the labor force at lower rates than men, necessitating curriculum updates for immediate employability and programs that integrate learning and earning.
- Strategic plans involve shifting parental dialogue to a "parent issue," recruiting women as investors rather than in marketing roles, and adopting "forever model" anachronisms to a fluid environment where skills relevance and continuous learning outweigh tenure, with specific initiatives like Siemens' upskilling of gearbox technicians into mechatronics engineers.
- Companies anticipate competing for talent from Asia, China, India, Latin America, and Brazil by offering individualized work plans, career progression tools, and non-cash benefits like education funding, as 30% of UK and North West European graduates are expected to emerge from apprenticeship cadres.
- Significant risks include the obsolescence of positions due to technology, the difficulty of accessing global talent without addressing immigration laws, and the potential for paralysis if failure is not encouraged, with legal frameworks needing rationalization to suit non-traditional employer-employee relationships.
- Organizational cultures are expected to prioritize the direct manager-employee relationship, foster pride in social media, and institutionally commit to upskilling and communities of practice, while specific sectors like Avenue Capital Group maintain 100% employee commitment for 200 staff, contrasting with crowdsourcing ecosystems for experts.
- Starbucks intends to enter new markets by culturally adapting and providing internal education funding, while Siemens and others will collaborate across competitor, supplier, and customer lines to expand engineering pools and link university research with factory needs.