Through the State of Organizations Survey, conversations with CEOs and their teams, along with supporting data from McKinsey & Company, we have identified ten of the most important organizational shifts that manufacturers and businesses need to address today. These shifts are both challenging and areas of opportunities, depending on how organizations address them.
1. Increasing speed, strengthening resilience
Half the respondents in our survey say their organization is unprepared to react to future shocks. Those able to bounce forward—and quickly—out of serial crises may gain significant advantages over others.
2. ‘True hybrid’: The new balance of in-person and remote work
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, about 90 percent of organizations have embraced a range of hybrid work models that allow employees to work from off-site locations for some or much of the time.[3] It’s important that organizations provide structure and support around the activities best done in person or remotely.
3. Making way for applied AI
AI is more than just a potential opportunity to boost a company’s operations; it can also be used to build better organizations. Companies are already using AI to create sustainable talent pipelines, drastically improve ways of working, and make faster, data-driven structural changes.
4. New rules of attraction, retention, and attrition
People are revising their attitudes both to work and at work. Organizations can respond by tailoring employee value propositions to individualized preferences in ways that can help close the gap between what today’s workers want and what companies need.
5. Closing the capability chasm
Companies often announce technological or digital elements in their strategies without having the right capabilities to integrate them. To achieve a competitive advantage, organizations need to build institutional capabilities—an integrated set of people, processes, and technology that enables them to do something consistently better than competitors do.
6. Walking the talent tightrope
Business leaders have long walked a talent tightrope—carefully balancing budgets while retaining key people. In today’s uncertain economic climate, they need to focus more on matching top talent to the highest-value roles. McKinsey research shows that, in many organizations, between 20 and 30 percent of critical roles aren’t filled by the most appropriate people.
7. Leadership that is self-aware and inspiring
Leaders today need to be able to lead themselves, lead a team of peers in the C-suite, and exhibit the leadership skills and mindset required to lead at scale, coordinating and inspiring networks of teams. To do that, they must build a keen awareness of both themselves and the operating environments around them.
8. Making meaningful progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion
Many organizations are prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but in many cases, the initiatives aren’t translating into meaningful progress. To realize DEI aspirations, leaders will need to identify opportunities to make progress both in their organizations and in their communities and broader society.
9. Mental health: Investing in a portfolio of interventions
About nine of ten organizations around the world offer some form of well-being program. But global health and well-being scores remain poor. Organizations need to refocus their efforts on systematically addressing the causes of mental-health and well-being challenges; one-off and incremental fixes won’t be enough.
10. Efficiency reloaded
More than one-third of leaders in our survey list efficiency as a top three organizational priority. Boosting efficiency is about more than managing immediate crises or getting the same work done with fewer resources; it means more effectively deploying resources to where they matter the most.
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