How To Solve The Increasingly Serious Shortage Of Talents In China

In China, the imbalance between various business opportunities and qualified executives who can grasp these opportunities will become more and more serious.

Kevin Lane and Florian Pollner in China, the growing demand for talented managers has become the biggest management challenge facing foreign and local enterprises.

For example, in the recent survey of US capital enterprises in Shanghai by AmCham Shanghai in Shanghai, 37% of the surveyed enterprises said that recruitment is the biggest operational problem - the number of these enterprises exceeds the number of enterprises that are the biggest problem of regulation, lack of pparency, bureaucracy or infringement of intellectual property rights.

In addition, in the McKinsey Quarterly Survey of enterprises in China, 44% of executives said that the shortage of talent is the biggest obstacle to their realization of their global ambitions (see attached article: "searching for global talent for China").

The continued strong growth of China's economy in the next few years will further increase the demand for talented people.

The developed economies are also facing a growing shortage of talent due to the longer-term demographic trends, such as the lower birth rate and the retirement of the post-war baby boom generation.

As a result, the top multinationals in these countries are increasingly joining the global competition for search talents, making the problem of talents worse.

In the supply of talents, the gap between the supply and demand of various levels of talents in China is expanding.

For an entry level position in an enterprise, most of the type of graduates trained in Chinese universities is displaced by the type of job seekers interested in local and regional enterprises (not to mention pnational enterprises).

Those who prove their strength have higher expectations for their current employers. If these expectations are not satisfied, they will easily be attracted by the more competitive offers of competitors.

In the recruitment of experienced employees, enterprises face greater challenges, especially when recruiting talents with international experience beyond China and Asia.

Therefore, local businesses and multinational companies are increasingly fishing in the same "talent pool". Their "prey" includes high-quality graduates and highly skilled, potential leadership and experienced foreign language managers.

Many local businesses are willing to provide salaries for their talents to catch up with or exceed the salaries and benefits offered by multinational companies.

In China, the enterprises that can successfully meet the challenge of talents have many advantages in many aspects, including the ability to localize technology previously applied in other parts of the world.

The most successful companies see their talent needs in the next 4~5 years with a clear strategic vision, identify talent gaps in all levels of the organization, and meticulously segment business managers.

They have developed and run mature external recruitment mechanisms and internal development and training programs suitable for China's local environment.

It integrates strategic planning and talent planning.

In the past, the world's main shortage was capital and innovation, but there was plenty of talent. Therefore, talent was regarded as a secondary factor when deciding on enterprise strategy.

By contrast, in today's China, top companies may regard talent as the primary factor.

A thorough understanding of the available talent pool and a realistic assessment of the ability of enterprises to attract and train talents from the talent pool will affect the strategic choice of enterprises.

You know what you need - not as you think.

Just like the first-class marketing department subdivides their customer groups, first-class enterprises should also actively and prudently divide their talents.

This means planning according to the enterprise strategy, dividing roughly 4 or 5 different wage levels and job categories, taking into account the expected number of employees in the enterprise, promotion and possible attrition rate.

Taking into account the rapid change of the situation and the possibility of incorporating new assumptions such as employee turnover into the model, enterprises should evaluate these goals at least two times a year.

Enterprises should also clearly define the types of vocational abilities that they must cultivate, and identify the specific types of leaders they will need (for example, the "business creators" that can lead enterprises into new regional markets, or "executive promoters" who can bring discipline into corporate performance).

In China, the required skills and leadership skills may differ from those in developed markets (Chart).

For example, Chinese managers may need to know more about how to simplify or customize products, seek lower capital solutions, and manage alliance and government relations.

Managers may also need to become more accustomed to uncertainty or greater cultural openness.

Therefore, enterprises in China must make early preparations to identify and solve their talent demands and differences in other parts of the world.

It is a stronger and more sensitive concern for talents.

In China, the local management committee of any enterprise should regard the talent issue as a permanent topic in the agenda.

The top leadership should conduct a review of important talent initiatives every two or three months, and invest in time to design effective processes to collect data from factories, appoint specialized personnel to deal with talent problems, and develop and revise talent targets.

Executives need to take a lot of special time to personally take charge of the work, not just to allocate them to the HR department. They must also be very strict and conscientious in implementing the plan of recruiting, training, retaining and distributing talents, like financial planning.

We often find that some enterprises do not attach importance to these basic jobs and regard the talent issue as a "soft task". Therefore, they neglect the serious "hard impact" of the talent problem on the financial situation of enterprises.

A more long-term and solid talent channel.

Campus recruitment is a key element in the talent strategy of TNCs and Chinese local enterprises.

When working with institutions of higher learning, we need to adopt a highly targeted approach and conduct a careful analysis of top universities, reputable universities in China, and reputable universities in the region or in the region.

(we often find that there are often very successful and loyal new employees in universities near the workplace.)

When starting campus recruitment, we should seriously consider the impact of brand attributes and value proposition on Chinese graduates, because Chinese graduates tend to treat these problems differently from other university graduates.

In order to build a good reputation in the university campus, enterprises can adopt various methods and explore various methods, such as sponsoring lecture activities or university lectures, employing students in summer vacation internships, and supporting University Teachers' research work to enhance their ties with them.

In other markets that face similar challenges, enterprises and industry associations even create their own schools and universities in order to alleviate the shortage of high-quality entry level talents.

Enterprises should establish different combination relationships with universities: maintain close ties with a few universities (responsible for a special team), and maintain a loose relationship with most other universities.

An important goal of establishing these relationships is to discover talented college students in a much earlier stage than other places where they may think fit.

IBM is one of the enterprises that have established close ties with Chinese educational institutions. It has established partnerships with several Chinese universities, donated millions of dollars to the educational institutions nationwide, and has worked with the Ministry of education in China to improve the level of teaching and curriculum in Chinese universities.

DIY training talents.

Because the supply market is often unable to provide candidates with appropriate skills and leadership qualities, top-notch enterprises have set up a training and development plan for talents, and regard them as the central task of hiring and retaining talents.

Global talent training policies and plans may not be applicable; enterprises in China must tailor their own plans to adapt to the mentality of the Chinese talent team: they are highly motivated, but usually have low professional skills, but still expect to be promoted to higher levels and important positions quickly.

Therefore, employees should have a clear career development prospect, which may include speeding up to an intermediate position, such as assistant brand manager.

Apprenticeship and tutorial system can promote learning and commitment, and training should be carried out in the actual work scenario as far as possible.

P&G is very effective in applying these methods to create one of the most powerful and highly localized "talent engines" in China.

At Motorola (Motorola), employees can benefit from various customized training courses, such as training China Accelerated Management Program of future local managers, training Motorola managers' Motorola Management Foundation Program for new managers to solve problems and communicating skillful skills, and Motorola high tech MBA course, a collaborative project between Arizona State University and Tsinghua University, which aims to enable Chinese employees with outstanding performance to obtain an associate degree in the country.

The importance of making a good foundation in advance is not to be underestimated. Many Chinese enterprises or lack of evaluation system, feedback channels and other mechanisms which are considered as the best practices in western countries or fail to implement these mechanisms.

Enterprises should not only establish these processes, but also train employees to manage these processes effectively (for example, explain to employees how to set expectations clearly, and how to make meaningful feedback conversations).

It is not necessarily those who are expected.

In view of the growth rate of qualified executives and the time needed to cultivate them, China's talent solutions should include regular external recruitment.

Enterprises should identify industries that face similar challenges, such as having similar sales structure or facing similar regulatory barriers, and jump out of the conventional constraints of their industries and departments to find experienced leaders.

Managers' experience is often more accurate than their experience in developing their potential.

When a first-class enterprise discriminating the main types of leaders at all levels, it can define the background, experience and quality of the leaders that they want.

In this way, it is easier to get ahead of the expected candidates: enterprises can step by step to discover the professions, industries and enterprises that enable managers to show specific experience of the enterprise.

Challenges become opportunities.

China is facing double challenges: one is ambitious business development goals, the other is the serious shortage of talents needed to achieve these goals.

In order to turn this challenge into opportunity, first class enterprises take some important positions as opportunities to speed up the training of new leaders and experienced leaders from outside the company in a more systematic way.

It requires courage and willingness to give the relatively inexperienced people an important responsibility, but it can also help enterprises to develop leaders and abilities more quickly.

The key elements of success include matching talents and responsibilities properly; ensuring that their responsibilities are important; providing appropriate support to develop leadership and vocational skills so that leaders can stand out in the form of "JIT".

Comprehensive and consistent.

Our method can solve some important aspects of China's talent problem.

However, in order to implement these methods, they must be closely integrated with other elements of operation and organization of enterprises, including corporate culture and human resources processes.

Employees expect that the mission, values and talent policies of enterprises can be combined in a coherent way; for example, enterprises that value entrepreneurship values should provide substantial returns for entrepreneurs.

It is a severe challenge for a large number of employees, including managers, to maintain consistency in the relatively unfamiliar market of the enterprises they serve.

Therefore, enterprises in China must re-examine their human resources policies and processes to ensure that they are well adapted to the changing characteristics of the local talent market.

For example, the policy of retaining talents in enterprises should reflect the most concerns of Chinese employees (for example, whether they plan to switch jobs because of salary, promotion or better learning opportunities), and the talent market in the enterprise should also be as dynamic and exciting as the external talent market.

In China, the general principles of managerial talent may not be very different from the popular theories of other markets.

However, due to the serious imbalance between supply and demand and the rapid change of enterprises and society as a whole,