How Has the Recession Changed Hiring Practices?

How has the recession affected HR policies and talent management strategies at companies nationwide in the last two years?

Earlier this week, I attended the Senior HR Executives Conference in New York—an exclusive setting for senior HR executives with limited press access. While there, I took in a panel on Talent Management: Getting and Keeping Your Best People.

The subject matter was very timely: many companies are facing an emerging challenge as employees who had hunkered down during the recession are once again starting to actively looking for growth opportunities, and in many cases, to change employers. So acute is the problem that many executives confessed in private conversations that they had recently been pulled from other operational duties to assist in talent development and management.

The panelists, who represented companies that together manage approximately 350,000 employees worldwide, had a lot to offer—both on the question posed above, and on several other pressing HR questions of the day.

The panel:
--Moderator: Scott Stevenson , Director of Talent Management and Organizational Design, PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory (PwC)
--Bob Bennett, Chief Learning Officer and VP for Human Resources, FedEx Express
--Sayed Sadjady, Talent Management and Organizational Design Leader, PwC Advisory
--Helena Gottschling, SVP for Leadership and Organizational Development, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)

Highlights:

Employee Disengagement Isn't Leading to Employee Attrition

Stevenson indicated that while increasing percentage of employees were seemingly disengaged at work—especially in the last 24 months—they also made up the majority of the workforce that wasn’t actively job hunting.

"Between 2007 and 2009, the percentage of a disengaged workforce went from 10 percent to 33 percent. But this 33 percent were not the ones leaving either! Which leaves us with a big realization: One out of every four individuals leaving the company is a high potential candidate. This figure marks our biggest challenge yet," he said.

Continue reading: 6 Ways the Recession Has Changed Hiring Practices