Waging the war for talent

Global talent shortage is on the top agenda for all organisations. In Schibsted, new ideas on how to address this are up for discussion. Offering partly remote work to employees is one key effort. We also look into some more key people trends.

Talent shortages are at record highs and unemployment at multi-decade lows. According to Gartner’s Emerging Risks Survey 2021, global talent shortage is now the top emerging risk for all organisations. Technology driven organisations also anticipate skill gaps in key roles post-pandemic, while dealing with one of the highest global attrition rates, at 13.2 percent annually.

Research also shows that 46 percent of the global workforce is potentially planning to change jobs as they now can work remotely. Remote job postings on Linkedin have increased five times since the pandemic outbreak. We are entering a talent migration that is larger than anything we have seen before, where many people are rethinking not just how we work, but why we work. More people will be doing work they love at companies they feel passionate about, leading to greater success for organisations which engage their employees with empathy, trust and purpose.

To tackle what is to come, employers need to step up their game to continuously develop and reskill their workforce and rethink how they can attract and recruit talent.

At Schibsted, we recognise these challenges, but also the opportunity to support and enable the building of new workplace norms that lead to both greater employee fulfilment and better business results.

Investing in a talent agenda with new solutions for hybrid work, personal development and employee experience will be crucial to succeed in the unprecedented war for talent that we are up against.

These are some of our ideas to meet the challenges:

Trusted leadership

We know from research that companies with superior leadership outperform other companies on the entire talent agenda. As role models, our leaders are key drivers of culture as well as the strategic agenda. We believe that continuous leadership training and programs to build on our principles and group strategy will be as important as ever.

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging

In September 2021 Schibsted hired its first Global Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (read the interview with Sumeet Singh Patpatia on pages 54–55). This is the first step to establish a group-wide approach to the question on how Schibsted can create competitive advantage through an inclusive culture.

Inspire people to grow

Research confirms that the main reason employees leave an organisation and the primary reason they join are career opportunities. At the same time, 75 percent of organisations are anticipating skills gaps in key roles. In Schibsted we have taken the first steps in building a “learning organisation”. We believe our ability to learn and translate the learning into action rapidly, is an ultimate competitive advantage. Our

Learning organisation strategy includes:

• Dedicated time for development (ten percent within tech)
• Sharing learning processes and practices through common learning platforms
• Strategic plans for competence development for all employees
• Increasing the level of cross-Schibsted employee mobility
• From industry to graduate hire at scale

We strongly believe that hiring for learnability will be the sustainable approach for the future. Acquiring learnability and providing unproven talent with great learning opportunities and career paths are keys to success to attract and retain talent.

Read more: People trends in short