Talent top concern among CEOs

The availability and access to quality talent continues to be a serious impediment facing organisations, finds a Towers Watson-CII Industry Opinions study. The study, which surveyed 300 industry experts, including 100 CEOs/presidents/CFOs across Indian and multinational companies, finds that paucity of talent would continue to pose a problem over the next five years. About 64 per cent of the respondents are of the view that attracting and retaining key talent is likely to be a major obstacle to the growth of industry across sectors. Even as India is betting big on manufacturing through the 'Make in India' initiative, the problem of attracting and retaining quality talent remains a key challenge for the manufacturing sector with about 60 per cent of respondents having highlighted this challenge.

In fact, forty-two per cent of companies surveyed believe that the rising share of workforce costs would be a major challenge that can impede growth, while 53 per cent have identified inadequate supply of skilled workforce as a significant impediment. Around 39 per cent of respondents mark slow labour reforms while 46 per cent believe that stagnating workforce productivity poses serious threats to industrial performance.