Winning The War for Talent begins with the question: what really drives business profits? According to a recent CEO Institute survey, the number one issue keeping chief executives awake at night is ‘sourcing and retaining skilled staff’. When PricewaterhouseCoopers asked 1300 global CEOs about their operational priorities however, talent strategies didn’t make the top five. So while CEOs might claim to be suffering from insomnia, it seems they’re doing very little to alleviate the problem. Yet all scientific evidence points to the fact that workplaces that attract and retain the best people have the most outstanding results.
Mandy Johnson, a former UK Director and HR Leader of Flight Centre was intrigued by this gap between CEO thinking and actions, especially because her own career had been a case in point. When she co-founded Flight Centre’s UK operation she faced recruitment and retention challenges that almost destroyed her career. The unconventional people system she was forced to develop produced astonishing profit results and when she took it to other organisations they experienced the same effect – one large public company even halved its staff turnover in just 12 months.
