Worldwide, we will see continued recovery in Brazil (4.0 percent GDP growth)
and India (6.0 percent growth), and China roaring ahead with 8.2 percent
growth. Europe, while it continues to emerge from the economic doldrums will
continue at very low rates of growth.
2. Workforce shortages will intensify. Years of postponing training and/or
eliminating the training function have resulted in severe shortages of trained,
experienced workers in many fields. Employers attempting to recruit experienced
people will find critical increasing challenges. Wise employers have already
begun to re-institute grow-your-own attitude. These enlightened employers are
already building bridges with their local schools, colleges, and universities
to insure that they are able to recruit the best and the brightest.
3. In the US and elsewhere, unemployment rates will remain relatively high.
Domestically, last year we forecast unemployment to remain over 7.5 percent; it
in the month of December 2012, it is actually 7.7 percent. We expect the US
unemployment rate to continue at 7.0 percent and above for the coming year.
According to the IMF, China’s unemployment will remain at 4.1 percent, in spite
of US employers turning away from inconsistent quality and/or finding
lower-cost source markets for low-skilled labor. China’s domestic markets are
growing very fast. The continuing challenge for employers worldwide is that many
of the unemployed do not have the skills they are looking for.
4. Workforce development will continue to be challenge. Due to the growing
shortages of skilled workers, more communities will wake up to the fact that
they will simply not grow economically without having an available skilled
workforce. With that fact in mind, they will put more money into workforce
development for the skill sets their prospects seek.
5. Gamification comes into its own. Gamification, which has been used for years
now in external marketing, will gain momentum in the field of internal
marketing to help employers bond with their associates and add new dimension
to doing work – fun. Gamification will be used in training as well as
performance appraisal and career pathing to encourage the growing numbers of
millennial (Gen Y) employees to be more engaged at work.
6. Using concepts like “knowledge fracking”, companies capitalize on
their internal social networks. (http://www.hermangroup.com/alert/archive_12-26-2012.html)
Companies will not expand their use of social networking in recruiting, but
will also increase its uses in training and development, and even in succession
planning as well. Large companies will focus on their intranets and internal
password-protected sites to preserve their intellectual capital.
7. More unemployed people will become entrepreneurs. We have already seen a
significant uptick in companies contracting the talent they need for the time
they need it. We will see more people identifying community and other needs and
crating small businesses to supply the needed services.
8. Re-engineering will continue ad infinitum. We will continue to see companies
of all sizes continue to reduce staff and hire other workers in an ongoing
attempt to optimize productivity, efficiency, and profit. The accompanying drop
in employee engagement will be ignored, until that decrease begins to affect
the bottom line. Wise employers will engage their employees in finding these
efficiencies – without reducing staff.
9. Many employers worldwide will ignore the roles of engagement and retention
in their bottom line profitability. Though some employers will have higher
employee turnover and much greater difficulty in recruiting, far too few will
take action to meet these
