HRO Today July/August 2016 - 56

Latest Research
The top issues with readiness gaps include:
1. Improving the development of executives
who can lead effectively in a volatile business
environment. This issue jumped to the top of HR
areas that are in critical need of development.
Organizations are stretched for good leaders
and often don't have the resources to prepare
executives to successfully step into new
management roles.
2. Adapting talent management strategies and
processes to deal with changing business needs. A
top issue in years past, HR organizations continue
to express concern about their ability to respond
to new talent-related needs. This shortcoming is
com¬pounded by HR's isolation from corporate
strategy-making, as well as its inability to
anticipate future skills demand and supply, and
weakness in talent management.
3. Enabling successful business strategy execution. It is
critical that the leaders executing business strategy have
the right skills, behaviors, and mindsets. This is affected
by several key HR responsibilities, including recruiting,
training, strategic workforce planning, leadership
development, performance manage¬ment, and
organizational culture.
4. Dealing with shortages of talent and critical skills.
Despite a slowdown in growth in emerging economies
and tepid growth in mature ones, the supply of highperforming
talent and candidates with critical skills is
not keeping pace with demand. The survey shows that
strategies for recruiting, learning, and development at
many HR organizations are not effective.
5. Aligning workforce strategy with business strategy. This
remains one of the top critical development areas for HR
organizations. Workforce strategy is an essential output
of strategic workforce planning.
Overall, these issues represent a huge deficit in the
capabilities that businesses require most from HR
organizations.
Most Serious Gaps
Many HR organizations find themselves falling further
behind because they are unable to keep pace with the
growing demand for more sophisticated, high-value
capabilities (see Figure 3).
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HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | JULY/AUGUST 2016
The most serious gaps include:
1. Increasing HR's analytical, modeling, and forecasting
capabilities. The ability to mine, analyze, model, and
forecast data to improve human-capital-related decisions
is a widely recognized priority for HR organizations.
Still, few have the skills, tools, and technology and data
infrastructure needed to capably perform these tasks.
2. Improving the quality of HR data analysis and reporting
capabilities for decision-making. HR organizations also
struggle to provide basic analysis and to report relevant
data and insights to decision-makers. Underlying this gap
is the lack of HR systems integration as well as missing or
poor-quality data.
3. Increasing the ability to identify and plan for future
demand and supply of skills. This is a core competency
required by HR organizations to drive the effective
manage¬ment of talent throughout the enterprise.
4. Improving talent management capabilities. Many HR
organizations have significant room for improvement
when it comes to performing discrete tasks such as talent
acquisition, learn¬ing and development, succession
planning, coaching, employee engagement, leader¬ship
development, and performance management.
5. Aligning the skills of HR staff with the current needs
of the business. Companies need more business-savvy
HR staff members who are as comfortable discussing
competitive strategies as they are compensation plans.
HRO Today July/August 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of HRO Today July/August 2016
