The pressure on talent is increasing in Asia Pacific countries. Many are experiencing double-digit increases in difficulty filling positions.

New Zealand and Australia lead the list of countries where workforce skill shortages is seen to be the biggest constraint on expansion (60% and 59% respectively), according to the Grant Thornton International Business Report 2007.

And corporate career websites could do better to support both employer branding and talent acquisition. A study by Collective Learning Australia analyzed the top 150 Australian company career websites against best practice elements such as talent relationship management, access, content, online recruitment process and usability…and found them lacking.

Our study, Career Site Recruiting in Asia Pacific: Gains to Be Made, found:

• 8 percent of Australia’s S&P/ASX 50 Index companies still have no careers page on their website. 28 percent of S&P/ASX 50 companies do not accept applications on their website via an online application form.
• 28 percent of Singapore’s Straits Times Index (STI) companies have no careers page on their website. 62 percent of STI companies do not accept applications on their website via an online application form.
• 33 percent of Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI) companies have no careers page on their website. 81 percent of HSI companies do not accept applications on their website via an online application form.

As we titled the report, there are gains to be made and opportunities to leapfrog the competition with the right talent management solutions.

…But if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need!

We think these Rolling Stones lyrics sum up the spirit of the Aberdeen Group’s latest paper: The Global War for Talent: Getting What You Want Won't Be Easy.

Responses from more than 600 organizations contributed to establishing best in class performance criteria for talent acquisition. As defined by Aberdeen, these high performance recruiters increased quality of hire, decreased cost per hire, and hired their top choice more than 50% of the time.

Here is what they found to be the required actions for organizations who want to get there:

• Implement processes and tools to define and use skills and competencies.
• Use tools to analyze sourcing strategy effectiveness.
• Communicate more effectively with candidates.

We agree. Taleo’s Talent Master system of record captures competencies, knowledge, and skills so customers can identify top candidates using our ACE methodology. Our customers employ comprehensive sourcing analytics to improve effectiveness by identifying the sourcing strategies that deliver the best results. And are using our candidate portal with Web 2.0 features to greatly enhance the candidate experience and improve communication.

We all know that winning the war for talent won’t be easy. But the proven solutions you can use to elevate your organization to best in class recruiting performance are just a click away. Start today, because - as the song goes - time waits for no one.

A recent article in eWeek.com called Workers Rarely Jump Ship Over Pay Alone focuses on IT workers but has insights for all on the causes of attrition and the remedies of retention strategies.

Outlining some findings in The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How To Recognize The Subtle Signs And Act Before It's Too Late, the author Leigh Branham was quoted and pointed out this disconnect: “Almost 90 percent had left for reasons other than pay, yet nine out of 10 managers believe that money was the reason people left." Why? The real reasons for leaving were not identified in exit interviews and then only rarely communicated to managers.

This is alarming because of the high costs associated with turnover. The PricewaterhouseCoopers / Saratoga Institute paper Improving Retention explains that when you measure the loss of high performance talent and establish meaningful benchmarks, you can truly see how it affects the bottom line.

Samuel Bright’s comment from Forrester: “Compensation plays a role, but cultural alignment plays a bigger one.” is in line with Fit + Skills.

You can simplify the main efforts of talent management with the words acquire and retain. Recruiting and sourcing solutions cover acquisition and performance management has a hand in retention. Both are opportunities for talent to drive organizational performance.

There’s a good Staffing.org followup interview with industry veteran and author Tony Lee who wrote a chapter for On Staffing called A Primer on Internet Recruiting. He’s satisfied with the outcome of his 2004 predictions:

1. Reviewing candidate skills will become more sophisticated.
2. Online applications will become the norm.
3. Minority and foreign candidates will become more visible.
4. Niche recruiting sites will proliferate.
5. Legal considerations will restrict handling of candidate data.
6. Demographics will continue to play an important role.

Lee adds one more: “Most companies I deal with are increasingly cost conscious when it comes to recruiting, and using the internet to recruit both efficiently and cost effectively is now well documented. That trend will continue strongly.”

We’ll add one, too. Recruiting will evolve from a siloed, linear function — need to hire, hire, hand-off to hiring manager — to an acknowledged component of organizational talent management — need to hire, acquire talent, grow talent, assess talent, retain talent.

The same folks who brought us the War for Talent have sent a wake up call to talent managers worldwide. McKinsey’s article The value of China's emerging middle class describes how growth begets rising incomes and accelerates development of the middle class. Here is their chart:

Why is this important? Because as you establish your brand in China, you must also consider your employment brand and how your career sites in growing markets will stand up to the talent challenge as buying power evolves.

According to consulting firm XMei International, barriers include:

• Talent management—China is experiencing a talent shortage at every level, sending salaries through the roof as desperate companies lure employees away from their competitors. The average turnover in Shanghai and Beijing is 20-25%.
• Quality of leadership—Key leadership skills that spell success on the global market are often lacking in the current crop of Chinese employees. Some industry segments are growing by as much as 30 percent per year; where will the next generation of effective leaders come from?

Learn more by listening to the archived webcast: Recruiting in Emerging Markets and reading these Career 2.0 white papers about how you can gain the talent advantage by starting at your career sites.

Late last year, WorldatWork, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and Buck Consultants conducted an Internet survey on the aging workforce called The Real Talent Debate: Will Aging Boomers Deplete the Workforce? Nearly 500 organizations contributed responses on the significance of baby boomers retiring from the workforce. The findings are interesting in the seemingly deep sense of denial combined with a significant feeling of potential risk. Here is the odd combination of conflicting results:

• Only 42% think the issue is significant with 60% saying there is no associated business risk. Yet 62% believe that cost increases resulting from the loss of an aging workforce are highly significant and 87% believe the aging workforce’s knowledge preservation is important. When does an issue become really significant or important? After the fact?
• 93% believe aging workers want to remain in the workforce due to financial reasons. But 80% have not bothered to survey their aging workforce about their intentions. So how do they know?
• 52% see the loss of senior leadership as the greatest risk in the loss of mature workers. However, more than 50% do not proactively recruit mature workers. When will they decide to do something about it?

Confused? We think this report underlines the potential disconnect between perceptions and reality. Only proactive efforts inside your organization with structured talent processes and metrics will provide the answers you need to proceed with succession plans and talent depth charting.

Just because it won’t happen for five years doesn’t mean it should take your organization that long to figure it out.

The International Workplace Survey from Robert Half reveals recent research on employer branding. Highlights include:

• 68% of worldwide companies lack an employer brand strategy.

• 44% of UK companies see the importance of a brand strategy.

With 35% lacking plans to exploit their employment brand, the talent advantage goes to those agile organizations that can develop a strategy, execute the plan, and upgrade their career sites the fastest.

The battle for the best talent will be waged on your career site, as described in the Taleo Research white paper, Career Site 2.0: Taking the Lead in the War for Talent. New Web 2.0 recruiting technologies can deliver the most innovative and intuitive talent management experience to customers and candidates.

If you are a UK company, congratulations on leading the pack in employer brand awareness. Yet, as reported in Careers Site Recruiting in the FTSE 100 Companies: A Missed Opportunity we found only half enable online applications through a structured form in an automated process.

Author and eRecruiting commentator Peter Weddle added his response to the Deloitte, EIU study results. His take:

Now, I admit I have an old world view of leadership, but I believe that the CEO is responsible for everything that happens on his or her watch. To be sure, they reap the accolades when times are good, so they should be held accountable when things go wrong. And, I would say that a 96% failure rate for their HR function would rise to the definition of something going wrong, seriously wrong on their watch. To put it another way, I'd like to see a survey of those business CEOs and other executives who are willing to put their money where their opinions are. Instead of griping about HR and then investing a measly 0.9% of total operating costs-the U.S. norm for the last ten years-I'd like to see how many would sign up to invest 5%, 6% or more of their operating costs to fix their gripe. Frankly, I'm tired of CEOs' vapor capital approach to HR; all they invest is hot air. If they want a world class HR function, they're going to have to pay for it.

We all know that workforce cost is the largest category of spend for most organizations. We also know that the people who represent this line item are an organization’s primary asset. In fact, many company websites feature variations on the statement: People Are Our Most Important Asset. So it only makes sense that improving the quality of the workforce through HR would rank high on the list of business investments.

Talent is what ultimately drives business success and creates value. Organizations that align talent with business objectives significantly reduce process costs, improve quality of hire, reduce risk, and achieve higher levels of performance.

So why the C-level disconnect? Why the reluctance to invest a corresponding percentage in the HR function to drive business performance? It’s time to put the budget where the ROI is. Because it’s a proven fact that automation and analysis of recruiting and hiring processes delivers returns and improves the bottom line.

Nearly half of administrative professionals and more than half of HR professionals who responded to OfficeTeam's poll for Fitting In, Standing Out and Building Remarkable Work Teams reported a bad fit.

Why is this significant? Because of the answer to next question:

Talent acquisition is expensive. Turnover is far more costly. Use all the tools available – including assessments – to get the best fit for new hires.

A lot of work is being done to find the formula for great employee performance. A lot of talk centers on employee engagement. Here’s a study that looks more closely at the drivers for employee engagement and finds that passion is a key.

PeopleMetrics, Inc. report, So, Employee Engagement Matters... What Next? found that emotional factors—including Purpose & Empowerment, Trust & Confidence, Security & Growth, Connection & Affiliation, Excellence & Reputation, and Recognition & Value play a bigger role in driving employee engagement than do functional factors. When done well, the results are impressive:

Fortune 500 companies in the lowest quartile in company profitability had 50% fewer engaged employees compared to those in the top quartile, according to the PeopleMetrics study. In terms of individual performance, PeopleMetrics found high performing employees were twice as engaged as their low performing counterparts.

We know there are many factors linked with high performing employees. We also know that acquiring and retaining top performers – from the beginning of the supply chain with talent acquisition through talent management practices – has a high payback.

Making a business impact. Transforming the organization’s culture. Driving business performance. HR leaders know they add value on these levels all day and every day. But what’s missing? For some, it’s getting a permanent seat at the executive table and functional recognition.

Recent studies, articles, and blog postings point to a serious disconnect between business executive perceptions of HR and the realities.

The Deloitte and Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) global and cross-industry Aligned at the Top survey said that 85% believe people are vital to performance but only 3% consider their organization as world-class in HR and only 23% percent believed HR plays a role in strategy and results.

So are those old executive perceptions of The Personnel Department primarily taking care of problem employees, company picnics, and payroll still around? If so, they risk embarrassment in the face of all the successful HR transformations and business impacts we have seen with on demand talent management.

In any case, these findings created quite a reaction and online outpouring.

Workforce Management published the provocatively titled article: Business Leaders Don’t See HR as Key to People Strategies.

Thomas Otter on the Vendorprisey blog challenged people to respond.

Jason Corsello of Knowledge Infusion offered three reasons in his Human Capitalist blog: HR was lacking talent inventory, strategies, and business case articulation.

Jim Holincheck from Gartner underlined the importance of strategy in Will HR Ever Be Strategic? and offered some fine real-world examples of positive direction.

The symptoms of HR perception malaise can be seen in many organizations. The recovery begins with a strategic tone and holistic understanding of aligning talent to business initiatives and measuring performance. This understanding must go from high level business goals and team architecture all the way down to filling an individual contributor role in a specialized function.

Talent management processes and technology provide the ongoing therapy for formalizing strategies and executing vigorous workforce plans that show direct alignment between talent and the business.

That way, HR leaders can stand tall when they present measurable results using consistent talent management solutions and strategic performance management practices. And reading all the reactions and sore points, it sounds like it’s time for a backbone adjustment. Out with the old and in with the new.

According to the Recruiting Function Practitioner Consensus Survey, more than a third (34.4%) of companies surveyed have outsourced portions of their recruiting function, compared with 15.4% in 2005.

Notably, this did not create across the board reductions in HR recruiting staff.

What was the total number of HR staff dedicated to the recruiting function before and after the function was outsourced?

The likely hypothesis? Outsourcing is being used as an additional resource to augment rather than replace the recruiting function. With talent shortages and increased competition for top talent, there is a corresponding need for additional specialized recruiting resources. Position your organization. Read Four Key Factors to Watch in the War for Talent.