pandemic – Stacey Lynden & Co

The New Era of Executive Recruitment

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the restrictions imposed have effectively ripped up the executive search rulebook. That might not be a bad thing. While technology advancements in the last decade have propelled the recruitment industry, executive search has generally not evolved and instead stayed truer to its roots – depending on extensive networks, specialised industry knowledge and building relationships face to face.

All that looks set to change – finally – as the pandemic forced the focus for many organisations away from the slow speed, high cost and lack of transparency and control of the traditional executive search model. With businesses commonly spending as much or more on executive search as on the rest of recruitment, procurement operations must reduce costs and cultivate a higher ROI. To achieve this, the HR or Talent Acquisition (TA) team should get full control of the process.

Demand for research and insight services

One area where internal TA teams will need outside help is data. We see a trend towards organisations seeking research and insight services to gain visibility to the senior talent landscape. Unfortunately, traditional search firms do not provide this type of research support without bundling it together with more services like the shortlisting of candidates and hiring for an end-to-end service.

Meanwhile, the methodologies of pure-play research companies lack sophistication and often use outdated data. Organisations want these types of services unbundled to focus on upfront research and insight to map talent, build pipelines and inform business decisions.

To reach the desired ROI, organisations and search firms need to make senior placements quicker. The process should offer the same benefits of recruitment process outsourcing, including ownership with flexibility, control and data provision. It means search firms will need to rethink their value proposition or become obsolete. The outsourcing model is a more attractive proposition as we navigate the changes caused by the pandemic. An executive search partner with RPO experience can offer the type of services and capabilities to deliver the results businesses need.

Changing leadership environment

The leadership environment has also changed considerably over the last three months. We are seeing a spike in demand for HR leaders who have rightsizing experience, particularly across multiple countries. Companies are looking for infrastructure leaders across finance, audit and compliance who can help protect businesses over the coming months and procurement leaders with a track record of reducing spend without impacting quality of vendor provision. Redundancies are already happening at all levels and there will be more as organisations seek these different skillsets as the economy contracts.

The skills and experience organisations look for in executives are changing as a result.

Previous achievements and experience outlined on CVs were not achieved in today’s environment and so demonstrable successes during the current period of pandemic-enforced remote leadership will become increasingly essential. Organisations will be looking for a different and diverse skillset that fits their new organisational landscape and their plans for the future.

The need for an executive search partner

Executive-level talent also might be exercising caution when considering a career move in today’s climate, which compounds recruiting challenges. From a recruiter point of view, candidate care is more important than ever in convincing executives to make a move at this turbulent time. Employer brand is critical for companies to move forward successfully to both retain and attract the right leaders who can help take them forward and out of the crisis.

Organisations should consider working with an executive search RPO partner at this time to incorporate the flex and scale that is unavailable in in-house teams, while also benefiting from the greater speed, agility, data and efficiency they offer. Employers are managing an unprecedented amount of challenges this year. But the change to executive search is long overdue – and it should usher in a new and improved era.

Originally published in The HR Director.

Reimagining the Outcomes That Matter

As environmental, financial and societal pressures converge, today’s leaders must solve a new equation.

As we near the two-year mark of the pandemic, the global economy has rebounded from the depths of mid-2020. The IMF projects global GDP to grow 4.9% in 2022, a downtick from the 5.9% growth expected in 2021, but still formidable. The 4,446 CEOs from 89 countries and territories who responded to our 25th Annual Global CEO Survey display optimism about continued economic resilience.

Yet threats, uncertainties and tensions abound. Just two weeks after our survey closed, news of the Omicron variant reverberated around the world, raising fresh questions about the course of the pandemic and about society’s ability to continue the slow climb to normalcy.

Our survey findings reflect these and other tensions. For example, just 22% of survey respondents have made net-zero commitments (though the largest companies in our sample are further along). CEOs are most worried about the potential for a cyberattack or macroeconomic shock to undermine the achievement of their company’s financial goals—the same goals that most executive compensation packages are still tied to. And they are less concerned about challenges, like climate change and social inequality, that appear to pose smaller immediate threats to revenue.

But our survey also provides a glimpse of what is possible when we reimagine the status quo. A case in point: the power of trust. We found that highly trusted companies are more likely to have made net-zero commitments and to have tied their CEO’s compensation to non-financial outcomes, such as employee engagement scores and gender diversity in the workforce. Correlation is not causation, and we’ll continue to explore these results. But at first blush, they suggest a relationship between trust and the ability to drive change—a means of moving beyond short-term, “it’s the next leader’s problem” thinking.

It’s an apt finding to spotlight as we commemorate our 25th year documenting CEO sentiment toward and reactions to transformative trends. During the dot-com bubble in 1998, we talked to chief executives about technology, from their personal use of the internet to the future of e-commerce; in 2003, we tracked the rise of corporate governance and enterprise risk management in the wake of financial scandal. We’ve also surveyed CEOs in moments of crisis—in 2008, as the global financial system collapsed, and last year, as we approached the one-year mark of the pandemic—to gauge the impact on strategy and growth.

The challenges facing CEOs today are no less daunting. Increasingly, these leaders need to create sustained outcomes for multiple stakeholders whose interests are not always aligned. Yet the imperative to take decisive action has perhaps never been as strong. “Business as usual” isn’t mitigating the climate crisis or bridging the socioeconomic divide. The results of our 25th Annual Global CEO Survey lay these truths bare—and underscore the need for bold leadership to unite us as global citizens and problem solvers.

Breaking the cycle

The opportunity—and the challenge—is clear: progress on society’s toughest problems will be limited without bold action from CEOs stewarding critical corporate resources. At the same time, this year’s CEO Survey underscores just how full the “inboxes” of CEOs have become. Near-term financial imperatives remain mission-critical, even as broader societal needs demand more mindshare.

Against that backdrop, the following five priorities should help CEOs deliver the diverse range of sustained outcomes that stakeholders are increasingly demanding:

Resetting the conversation: Boards should be talking with their CEOs, and CEOs with their top teams, about their collective “inbox” problem. Enthusiasm about ESG won’t make near-term financial demands go away. Indeed, in a world of scarce time, attention and corporate resources, framing trade-offs realistically may be the only way to bring investors along and create a prudent strategic agenda, as opposed to a wish list.
Recalibrating skills: Our survey results point to capability-building priorities related to cybersecurity, the cultivation of trust and the measurement and management of decarbonisation. In addition, the “inbox” problem holds implications for skill-building and role modelling among top management and boards. When leaders are stretching to reimagine their organisation’s place in the world and juggling an ever-broader array of competing priorities, those who have a growth mindset and who demonstrate empathy and a willingness to embrace debate and dissent become more important than ever.
Reappraising succession: The leadership needed to master today’s tenuous trade-offs is likely to come in all shapes and sizes, with external hires and emerging leaders from diverse talent pools critical to rounding out skill sets and resetting the conversation. Succession planning is an area where leaders and boards can challenge themselves immediately to start creating the future to which they aspire.
Rethinking incentives: The strong association between incentives, net-zero commitments and other nonfinancial outcomes suggests it’s time for boards and management teams to take a hard look at the fit between the priorities they want their people to drive, the performance management systems they have in place and how they report their progress.
Reimagining collaboration: Tackling society’s most urgent challenges won’t be an individual sport. It calls for an unprecedented level of cooperation among business leaders, government officials, policymakers, investors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Each brings critical tools to the table and can support and enhance one another’s capabilities. Edelman’s pre-Glasgow Trust Barometer found that no single type of institution is trusted when it comes to climate change action, but together they can create powerful momentum—in the form of regulation driving businesses to take aggressive action, NGOs boosting new government policies and so on.

Trust runs through many of these priorities, just as it runs through our survey results. To the extent that highly trusted companies are thinking and acting differently, and that those actions could help bridge the gap between society’s expectations and the system in which CEOs are operating, trust may be a meaningful enabler of change. And it’s only through change—bold, innovative and unbounded—that we can secure our collective future.

Excerpt from article originally published by PWC.

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The New Era of Executive Search