There’s a new face to the recessionstruck ‘war for talent’ — it’s become the ‘Cold War for talent’. As the recession bites, companies are following what a new report calls “a clear hierarchy of action to manage costs”, including such
highly visible moves as freezes on recruitment and wages, reductions in working hours and redundancies.

But behind the scenes, in spite of the slowdown and even reversal of recruitment activity, the business of recruitment and retention continues; organisations’ yearning to have the best and brightest in their employ hasn’t diminished. And they’re not lying down and waiting for the economic downturn to pass.

Less visible than the cost-cutting measures, yet highly potent, the actions underway promise to shape organisations and workforces of the future. They include redeploying existing talent, improving training and
development, maintaining graduate recruitment and targeting competitors for staff.

The changing nature of the talent agenda has been revealed in a newly released survey and report, The cold war for talent, by HR solutions and online talent network provider StepStone and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Nearly 500 senior executives from around the world and some of the world’s largest organisations were surveyed. Among the findings:

- Most business executives believe their organisations got out of shape during the boom. For example, 59% of the executives surveyed see the slowdown as an opportunity to streamline their business to a level they are more comfortable with.
- Businesses want to restructure to weather the slowdown, but talent gaps are holding them up. For example, 46% agree that recruiting and retaining talent is becoming more difficult, and 48% believe they have a talent shortage in their organisations.
- 70% said that their organisations’ talent strategy was becoming more important.
- 49% said that inability to gauge return on investment was a major barrier to putting talent management programmes in place.

The survey also suggests “big questions” about where ownership of talent management should lie within organisations — at the chief executive level, HR or across organisations, said StepStone chief executive Colin Tenwick.

Clearly, resourcing professionals and their companies have been handed a golden opportunity to rethink and reshape how they bring new people into their businesses and then move them around. Sometimes opportunity manifests itself in unexpected ways.