With the last decade, it became a matter of fact that the key factor, you can differentiate and have the sustainable shareholder value is to have the competent leaders in all of the levels of your organization.

Human is, naturally, the only source that you cannot copy. At least up today Over the planet with the evolution of the communication opportunity and the technology, sharing the other sources such as the money and technology is a possibility but still sharing the human sources is a very limited option. If you have a feasible project in your hand, you can find the necessary finance not only from your country investors but also from anywhere on the world.

It is the same case for technical needs. But the hard side of this story is to find the person who will manage this finance or technology. Since the need for talent is getting bigger and bigger for the last decades, now it became really a big challenge for the ones who are not sufficiently brilliant, to find, employ and retain the potentials in the market. In Turkey, it became the sole reason for losing the market, or continuity problem of especially the small and mid-sized companies.

The war for talent is now out of borders even. World leaders are now not only discussing for scarce resources like water and petroleum but also for the well-educated, well-developed talent. Literally, the war is on talent now. The slogan “war for talent” is a real phenomenon.

Turkey with a high young population seems that has an advantage in this matter. Very close to Europe, the young generation of the country can be seen as an opportunity. On the other hand, the well-educated, well-developed part of this young generation is unfortunately not enough. Currently, the unemployment ratio is nearly %13 but when we concentrate on this ratio for the young generation we see that this number is over %22.

If we add the young people who is not fully employed or employed in the jobs which are not fully motivating them we can see that we are not utilizing our young population effectively. If you try to be an optimist, the young population is really an opportunity for the country but in reality, you have to consider the big risk potential of unemployment, you can see that we have to work harder to create more employable talents.

PERYÖN, The People Management Association of Turkey is continuously working on creating this realistic action base in order to develop the country talents with the right skills of the future. To create “world quality leaders” is one of the main pillars of its existence. In order to do so, the association is working with the government authorities especially for high and university education content and the employment programs.

Besides this wide range of human resources planning action, we need to reshape the employment paradigm and to reconsider the conventional ways of employment.

While this human factor is becoming a bigger fact of change since the number of well educated, world-class people is limited the mobility of talent is also becoming another challenge for companies and even countries. While millions of people are seeking for a job out there, some people have even more than one employment opportunity. This is real chaos for business life.

When you give an ad for a job you get hundreds of applications but among them, you cannot find even one or two real candidates for the post. This shows us another fact that the talents you have currently in your organizations are very valuable. You cannot say easily that they can go whenever they want, I can find another. Today recruiting the right talent is a very expensive and hard job but retaining the well fit and motivating the already employed one are even harder.

Most HR professionals are saying that we are employing people according to our organizational need. What does it mean? They’re saying that the need for the role is the key factor of employment. I challenge this argument. Today it is insane not to consider the talent the employed person has. You have to reshape, or even recreate the roles for your people.

The organizations of today and the future will not be shaped for the roles but they will be shaped according to the abilities of their people. You will employ not according to your organizational needs but you will reorganize your future expectations according to your talents. This can be still annoying for some of us but the flexibility of your organizations and talent focus of your leaders will be your number one agenda items in the very near future.

PERYÖN is not defining the unemployment problem as we don’t have enough jobs but we don’t have enough right people for the right jobs. High school education and vocational training are the key points of future employment. We need to focus on the next 25 years’ talent needs and work for this skill set. For professional organizations, the case is the same. Companies are not only for today performances but they need to take very seriously their future needs. You need to care about the talent which currently you have and also a war for the ones you will need.