Retiring Baby Boomers and the skills gaps in the workforce

Anticipating waves of retiring Baby Boomers and skills gaps in the workforce, Deloitte Research predicts that critical talent will become scarcer. To ensure their organisations have an adequate supply of high-performing talent for important jobs, Deloitte says CEOs should ask some critical questions of their company human resource leaders.

Since the best defense is usually a good offense, we offer you these critical questions in advance so you will be prepared. Better yet, you can take the questions with the answers to your CEO.

Be prepared to answer the following questions:

• Which segments of the workforce create the value for which we are the most rewarded for in the marketplace?
• Which areas of our business will be most impacted by impending waves of retirement?
• What are we doing to prepare successors?
• What impact will anticipated retirement have on the skills and productivity necessary to meet future demand?
• In what areas is the talent market heating up?
• Which segments of our workforce will be most impacted? What are the potential top-line and bottom-line implications?
• What skills will we need over the next five years and that we don’t currently possess? How will we create that capacity? What happens to our business if we don’t?
• What is our turnover in critical areas? How much is it costing us? In customers? In productivity? In innovation? In quality? What are we doing to resolve the root cause?
• Are we actively developing talent portfolios or workforce plans that will help us to understand and communicate the financial consequences of talent decisions on our business?

How many of the above questions could you answer today? Partner with line management to refine the answers you have, answer the ones you can’t, and create a sense of urgency within your organisation around this issue.

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