New research has unveiled the issues HR professionals at globalized firms are most worried about
In Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 study – which gathered the thoughts and opinions of 3,300 businesses and HR leaders from 106 countries – ‘engagement and culture’ was identified as the number one challenge facing global companies.
Two-thirds of the survey’s HR respondents said that they were in the process of updating their engagement and retention strategies – but Deloitte’s data showed that there were substantial capability gaps when it came to engagement and culture across countries and regions.
The global capability gap
Deloitte also measured the capability gap in certain countries.
The Deloitte Human Capital Capability Gap is a research-based score that shows HR’s relative capability gap by looking at the difference between respondents’ average ‘readiness’ and ‘importance’ ratings for each trend, indexed on a 0-100 scale.
It is calculated by taking the ‘readiness’ index and subtracting the ‘importance ‘index score.
Negative values suggest a shortfall in capability, while positive values suggest a capability surplus.
The outcomes for the selected countries were:
- Brazil -43
- South Africa -35
- Italy -34
- Mexico -33
- Belgium -32
- Japan -32
- Australia -31
- Spain -30
- US -30
- India -28
- France -27
- Canada -25
- Germany -24
- China -22
Top tips for improving engagement and culture
- Engagement starts at the top: Make engagement a corporate priority, and modernise the process of measuring and evaluating engagement throughout the company. Benchmark the company, strive for external recognition as validation of efforts, and reinforce to leadership that the engagement and retention of people is their number one job.
- Measure in real time: Implement real-time programs that evaluate and assess organisational culture, using models or tools to better understand its strengths and weaknesses, and how it really feels to workers.
- Make work meaningful: Focus on leadership, coaching and performance management to help employees make their work meaningful. Reinforce the importance of a coaching and feedback culture, and teach leaders how to be authentic and transparent.
- Listen to the millennials: The desires, needs and values of millennial employees will shape the company’s culture over the next ten years.
