The Future of People Management Priorities | BCG

This excellent 40-page report provides insights from a study of people practices from over 6,600 participants in 113 countries. Using 32 HR and people practices across nine clusters (see Exhibit 2 on p.6 for framework), respondents rated their organization’s current level of capability and each topic’s future importance. In combining these two factors, Exhibit 4 on page nine segments the 32 practices in three categories of urgency: a strong need to act, medium need to act, and low need to act. They categorized twelve of the 32 practices as a strong need to act. The most urgent are 1) Leadership behaviors and development, 2) Upskilling, reskilling, and learning and development, and 3) Strategic workforce planning (SWP). (As a side note, a poll I conducted last week (n=112) on SWP shows only 23 percent of respondents said their firm does SWP, with the rest using it primarily for headcount planning or recruiting forecasts.) The two practices categorized as a low need to act are 31) Employee relations and 32) Policy management. The report also includes a ranking of the nine clusters across four economies: Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pac (pages 11-12). Other ideas are discussed.