What Does the Future of Work Look Like?

If senior executives could have accurately predicted the full scope of the 2008 financial crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, or any of the other difficulties the economy has faced, chances are the market would look a lot different than it does today. While no one can predict with certainty what lies ahead, strategic readiness is paramount with leadership success determined by your ability to skilfully play out the hand you are dealt.

The dynamic landscape of the future of work is rife with challenges, driven by technological advancements, societal shifts, and other global factors, and the trends we are seeing now are likely to have a lasting impact on what is to come. Rialto research into growth areas, senior-level strategic priorities, and the macro factors impacting today’s market has identified the following trends and areas of future focus for senior executives:

• Increased Organisational Complexity & Strategic Transformation: As Automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics are reshaping industries and transforming the nature of work, efforts to reimagine and reconfigure how businesses operate will increase. Within the next year, companies that have not integrated and adopted a digital strategy may find themselves unable to compete in the evolved market.

To remain relevant and competitive, organisations need to ensure more time and effort is invested into creating a robust executable future-of-work strategy. This includes a greater need for strategic thinking around business imperatives such as data analytics, sustainability, marketing and leadership including the approaches, tools, and resources needed. Personal interfaces, virtual collaboration and new media will enable global and real-time communications requiring different environment thinking focused on facilitating the flow and exchange of ideas, providing greater autonomy and transparency.

• Shifting Workforce Demographics: With people generally living and working longer, the complex dynamics of accommodating five generations within the workforce are often underestimated. This is further influenced by both the potential rise in the retirement age and a potentially lower entry age.

The expectations and motivations of these different groups vary, presenting multifaceted challenges for recruitment, retention, and engagement. With younger workers expressing a preference for more flexible working models, employers will likely need to rethink their traditional stances on in-office work. This could also lead to more diverse workforces, as remote work expands the talent pool globally.

For business leaders, this potential diversity necessitates the creation of alignment across generational and geographic boundaries. Achieving this alignment may require adapting employee experiences, fostering a strong corporate culture, and strategically matching skills to specific roles.

• Skills Driven Hiring: Having the right skills will be paramount to success in the future of work. We are already seeing a shift towards skills-based hiring over experience, as employers have come to recognise that a candidate’s past job titles matter far less than that candidate’s ability to bridge knowledge gaps and adapt to new challenges

This shift in perspective will give rise to a workforce that’s not only recruited based on existing skills but also on their capacity to acquire new capabilities. Those ahead of the curve will nurture talent not only to open doors to business expansion but also to fuel personal career development.

However, this transition isn’t merely about shifting from one hiring approach to another. It’s also a profound transformation of workplace structures. The traditional, pre-pandemic, role-based hierarchy is increasingly at odds with the skills-based hiring model. As titles take a back seat and skills and capabilities become the primary currency, we predict the workplace’s meritocracy will undergo a significant shift.

• Balancing Human and Digital Productivity: As we peer into the future of work, the convergence of productivity and efficiency considerations encompasses both the human and digital workforce. The strategic integration of advanced technology to elevate organisational capabilities offers immense potential, particularly when underpinned by a commitment to practicality, ethics, and risk management.

In the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report, respondents predicted that 42% of business tasks will be automated by 2027. To benchmark, current estimates indicate that approximately 34% of all business-related tasks are performed by machines. This implies that a substantial 10% growth in automation is on the horizon over the next four years. This estimate is more conservative than others have made, and while it is hard to predict exactly where AI development will reach in the next several years, the fact is that it will have a transformative impact on the future of work. The rapid evolution of robotics, Cloud infrastructure, Generative AI, and more have already generated major operational efficiency and productivity gains for those who have adopted them, and as technologies develop and AI becomes more intelligent, there is only more to be attained.

• Purpose-Led Businesses: Finally, we expect to see both organisations and their operations becoming more globally transparent, which will require more purpose-driven decision-making in the future. This will require a genuine commitment from leadership and a deep understanding of the organisation’s purpose, values, and the societal and environmental challenges it aims to address. Both customers and employees alike increasingly want to associate themselves with social causes that align with their values and share their sense of long-term social and corporate responsibility. Successful organisations will be those with a clear focus on their mission who champion it effectively through both their actions and their words.

Looking ahead, we recognise that predicting the future of work is a complex task but preparing for it strategically is within our control. The trends we’ve explored all point to a future where adaptability, agility, and a joined-up focus on talent and technology will be paramount. For senior executives, embracing these trends and proactively aligning strategies with them will not only help to weather the storms but also seize the opportunities that lie ahead. The journey is uncertain, but by keeping a firm focus on the future as we navigate the now, leaders can guide their organisations toward continued growth and resilience.

There have been hundreds, thousands, some say millions of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol since its publication 180 years ago including blockbuster movies, theatre productions, graphic novels and even two operas.

Clearly, its lessons are as apposite now as they were in 1843.

Few of us would ever wish to be associated with old Ebenezer Scrooge, at least from the opening chapters. But, as we wind down for the festive break, could we perhaps take a moment to think about the literary miser’s journey and reflect upon what has brought us to this moment in time, be mindful of the present and ask how we can make our own futures brighter, more connected and, well, happier?

What actions can executives and senior leaders take right now to go into 2024 refreshed, focused and ready for a whole year of challenges new?

Chapter One: No humbug! – send your staff into the holidays with a boost. 

Dickens’ novella opens with the parsimonious money lender refusing an invitation to spend Christmas with his nephew, turning away charity collectors and only begrudgingly allowing his beleaguered and underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit a single day of paid holiday.

Sounds like the gig economy?!?

The ghost of Jacob Marley with his clanging chains of doom warns Scrooge to pay attention to the three ghosts unless he wants to spend his own eternity in a netherworld of miserable penance. Reflection and projection now will save much pain later.

2023 has been yet another tough business year with economic pressures, high inflation and interest rates and organisations forced to restructure to save costs. Maintaining morale from the factory floor up to the executive offices is never easy when money is tight and the future uncertain. There are steps senior leaders and HR professionals can take that cost little and can send staff into the holidays feeling valued and appreciated.

In recent research by Workhuman, a third of workers surveyed said feeling seen makes them more engaged and 40% said their performance improves. Not many employees would stick around like poor, undervalued Cratchit. Imagine the attrition toll if your CEO was Ebenezer Scrooge.

It costs nothing to say thank you to your people. Whether in person or via a live virtual link, a genuine, warm Christmas message, looking back on the year, celebrating the wins, acknowledging the difficulties you have faced together, looking to the future and capitalising on the communal festive cheer to build a seasonal sense of belonging and identity will go a long way. If you haven’t been able to afford generous Christmas bonuses this year, can you announce a surprise early closure for those you can lose for an afternoon – and promise an extra half day in lieu to the rest? If you can send your workforce home for the holidays with an extra boost you’ll reap dividends in loyalty and productivity when they return at what can otherwise be a depressed and lethargic time of the business year.

Get leaders and managers to personally thank everyone in their teams and identify and name the action or success that stood out for each individual in 2023. You want your workforce charging out of that door (or clicking laptops shut) with a smile and a surge of positive energy, not a sigh of despair and sense of dread at the thought of returning.

Chapter Two: The Ghost of Christmas Past – how did you get here? What did you learn? 

Before he could see and appreciate the lessons of the Ghost of Christmases yet to come, Charles Dickens’ Scrooge has to accept some very difficult truths of the past and present. The childlike Ghost of Christmas Past shows him for the first time how he was the architect of his own miserable isolation, driving his friends and his beloved away with his all-consuming pecuniary lust.

Understanding how we came to be where we are today, as individuals and as organisations, is an essential part of the cycle of development and growth. Have you been too single-minded? Too unapproachable or shied away from critical conversations? Have you missed golden opportunities?

Take time as you wind down for the break to analyse productivity levels over the year. Can peaks and troughs be explained? Instruct leadership teams to identify individuals or departments losing productivity. Are they suffering end of year ennui, a longer term burnout? How can they be reinvigorated, lifted, motivated, engaged? Where are the bottlenecks? Which teams are flagging? Where has the energy gone? Or has the market changed and your organisation failed to respond? What have your competitors done that you haven’t?

On a personal note, take time to think about your past, historic and recent. How did you get here? Why are you here? Did it happen by accident? Did you mean to go somewhere else? What motivated you to start on this path? Are you still as motivated? If not, why not? How can you get that back? Who did you meet along the way? Have you lost contact with anyone who could be valuable to you now? Look up your old contacts and friends, take the opportunity of the festive spirit to network and reconnect.

When were you happiest and why? When were you least happy and why?  Look at the dark times and the good times. Also, stand back and congratulate yourself on your achievements. Go through your diary for 2023, think about every win, no matter how big or small. How did you achieve them? How can you repeat that? Think also about what went wrong. How did it happen? What did you learn?

Chapter three: The Ghost of Christmas present. Now you’re here, is it where you want to be?  

Traumatised by the spectral visions of the previous night, Scrooge is whisked off by a jolly giant apparition who allows him to bask momentarily in the glow of joyful festive celebrations that will take place that Christmas – including poor Bob Cratchit’s, where Scrooge’s cold heart is warmed by the stoic charms of his crippled son, Tim, and his nephew’s, whose kind invitation he sullenly declined. He now regrets this and begs to stay.

This is a very good time to think about where you are now. Is it where you wanted to be? Do you look forward to every day? Or, now that you think about it, have you taken a wrong turn along the way? Bad advice? Or just allowed yourself to drift aimlessly?

Do you have burn-out? Have you lost your mojo? Do you have any serious regrets? Has your work/life balance gone all out of kilter?

If you are feeling dissatisfied, this break from the daily grind could present the perfect opportunity to assess your present situation. Can you leave an out-of-office message on your email and put your work mobile in a drawer for the holidays? Only then can you truly clear your mind to think about your executive career progression  with clarity.

Plan quiet times to allow those thoughts to crystalise. Try “naked” walking or running in the countryside or on the coast – don’t worry, you can keep your clothes on, just leave the phone in the car, no music, no company. Just your thoughts.

You may realise you are happy in your organisation but feel you have stagnated. Or perhaps, the time has come to seek pastures new. Do you need support to dig your way out of this rut? A fresh pair of eyes and professional coaching could be just what you need. Our executive career coaches see a surge in inquiries at this time of year from people looking for a career boost, so if that’s where you find yourself, rest assured, you are not alone.

On a more personal level, what can you do to recharge your batteries over the festive period? Think about who and what makes you feel happy. Can you even remember what makes you relax? The power of true rest and recuperation cannot be under estimated.

Work stress and lack of sleep can elevate damaging cortisol and epinephrine hormones which suppress your immune system and contribute to heart disease, high blood pressure and poor mental health. Allowing your mind and body to rest and engaging in healthy and happy pursuits, such as walking in nature and enjoying quality time with loved ones, reduces stress hormones and charges feel-good hormones like oxytocin and endorphins.

Using holidays to catch up on sleep and switch off from stress helps improve mood, memory and motivation, decluttering the mind and energising the spirit enabling you to return to work more focused and possibly even inspired.

A study by Ernst & Young showed that for every extra 10 hours of holiday time taken, annual performance improved 8%.

Aim to return to work free of the baggage you have built up over 2023 and go into 2024 lighter, clear-headed knowing what you want and how you are going to get it.

If you are out of work, it’s the perfect time to take a break from the often demoralising cycle of applications and rejections, spend time with loved ones, do all of the above and boost your energy, health and motivation. Spend time talking with family and friends and work out what it is you really want to do so you can return to the job search feeling focused and confident.

Chapter 4: The ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. You have the power to shape your future? 

Another night, another ghost. This one silent, ominous, foreboding. Scrooge is guided through scenes leading to a funeral, clearly one of someone who was loathed and will never be missed, in contrast to the funeral of Tiny Tim whose future death moves Scrooge deeply. Pitying the poor unloved soul and keen to learn from his previous visitors, the old man asks, who dies with nobody weeping? He is shown his own gravestone. He begs for a chance to repent and make up for a lifetime of avarice and greed. And wakes back in his own bed. Is it ever too late for redemption?

When you have a quiet moment over the break, look into 2024. What do you see if you carry on the path you are walking? Is it a happy scene?

Where would you like to be in three months, six months, the end of the year? Visualise it. How will you get there?  Imagine looking back on 2024, what do you hope to have achieved?

It is a time for questions. What would you change if you could? Would you spend more time with your family? Is there room for development and growth or change in your current position and organisation? How can you progress within it while maintaining your work/life balance? Or is it time to start considering a total change of scene?

Think about first steps in the New Year and how to start it in the right spirit. Look at blogs, Ted talks and news articles on predicted executive trends. Will you be ahead of them? Do you need to freshen up your skill set and knowledge? We can be certain technology, and especially AI will continue to play a big part.

If you’re making New Year’s resolutions, how about mixing up work and personal. Have you always wanted to learn how to play banjo or jive? Throw pots? Grow vegetables? What are you waiting for?

We all know we should do more physical activities but all hobbies, even sedentary ones, can be hugely beneficial. Learning a musical instrument can boost your memory and has been linked to lower levels of dementia while doing anything that you enjoy stimulates those feel-good hormones, boosts creativity and motivation while repetitive engagement and learning anything new stimulates the mind.

Chapter five: Embrace the spirit of Christmas and take it into 2024. 

Grateful to be alive and given a second chance, having seen the bleak future unchanged, Scrooge rushes out into the street brimming with Christmas cheer. He finds the Victorian chuggers he had turned away and hands over an extremely generous donation, sends a huge turkey to the Cratchits and surprises his nephew’s family by showing up and throwing himself into the day. He is a changed man, spreading kindness and joy for the rest of his years and becoming an avuncular figure to Tiny Tim, who thrives thanks to his new benefactor.

Whether you are feeling run down and on empty after a difficult year or you’re throwing yourself into the social whirl of the season, could you do more to embody the spirit of Christmas? think of Scrooge’s transformation. You will never feel poorer for making a generous donation to a cause you really care about. Can you spare time for a soup kitchen? How can you help practically? Do you have any neighbours or friends who will be alone this Christmas? Philanthropy is good for society and good for the soul. Research shows that giving can boost your physical and mental health in numerous ways.

Is there something you could do on a more permanent basis throughout the year? Voluntary work? Create a strategy to involve your business in a worthwhile cause, if you don’t already have one. Working as a team to do good boosts morale and belonging in the office, two assets you can’t just buy off the shelf.

Like Scrooge, if we can know how to keep Christmas well… “May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!” 

“Information is power. Particularly when the competition ignores the opportunity to do the same.” US billionaire Mark Cuban.

 At Rialto, we pride ourselves on staying abreast of current and emerging market trends with one eye on the present and another into the future. This is one of the ways in which we support our clients from c-suite and senior leadership level to stay ahead of the competition, whether seeking career progression or career transition.

We share some of the most relevant, timely insights our executive career coaches and other colleagues through our regular articles and blogs, and our quarterly programme of webinar events

Here, we review what we believe to have been the top five themes of 2023, largely aligned with our predictions from the end of last year, linked back to some of our previous insights and articles of the year.

1: Generative AI

Without doubt, Generative AI was the biggest business trend of 2023 and, barring any unanticipated seismic disruptions, most likely to hold its place into 2024 and beyond. This time last year, ChatGPT was a bit of a novelty. People were using it to write poems to their dogs and test its joke-telling ability. Two months later, it had broken all records by acquiring 100 million active users. In May 2023, a Gartner poll of 2,500 executive leaders found that publicity around ChatGPT had driven almost half of them to increase AI investments with 70% in exploration mode and 19% piloting or using the technologies.

As we head into 2024, the breadth and scope of generative AI and its more analytical technological sibling, large language models (LLMs), is almost limitless, affecting every single sector and function of work with a market expected to grow from $6.2 billion in 2023 to $58.5 billion in 2028.

Over the last year, Rialto insights, articles and webinar events have reported on the dazzling potential of GenAI applications in areas including, but not limited to: intelligent recruitment, training tailored to current and anticipated skills needs, market trend analysis and response, enhanced employee engagement, resource optimisation, supply chain management, sales and marketing, personalised customer experiences, report writing, content generation, sentiment analysis and insights, data management and analysis, internal communications, real time reviews of diversity, equality and inclusion policies and sentiment.

We also looked at research into which areas were expected to see the biggest productivity gains from AI while this article looked at how c-suite executives should be forming a strategic relationship with technology to drive impact. Here we looked at key areas where HR leaders can harness AI to revolutionise recruitment processes, enhance employee experiences, and provide data-driven insights to inform strategic decision-making HR.

Rialto has been ahead of this sharp curve in raising awareness with many senior level clients on how to become proficient in these technologies, building the confidence and expertise needed to oversee transformation strategies to integrate appropriate applications seamlessly and safely across the business. We have supported others seeking new opportunities to learn the language and capitalise on the capabilities of AI or pivot towards emerging technology-based C-suite roles such as chief data officer, chief information security officer or chief digital officer.

A central role played by these new positions is to safeguard organisations from reputational and AI financial risks.

Highly-trained co-pilots will be essential in managing ethics and compliance, monitoring accuracy and, of course, ensuring all AI-driven objectives and outcomes are imbued with human sensitivity. Here Rialto explored five skills needed for an AI-enabled executive workforce.

2:  Resilience and adaptability

Disruption and unpredictability have become the new normal. Today’s business leaders need to be able to absorb the shocks, endure adversity and adapt their business models, cultures, systems and workforces to respond and adapt fluently, with resilience no longer being a “Nice-to-Have”.

Executives have had another tumultuous 12 months, dealing with the legacy of 2022’s UK leadership chaos, sky-high inflation, rocketing costs and energy prices, economic uncertainty and pessimism, a slow job market, conflict close to home in Ukraine and Middle East, continued post-pandemic changes to working culture, not to mention the new technologies discussed above.  Those who have shown resilience and adaptability have been better able to create a unified, collaborative business environment, driving cultures of innovation and learning, and making faster and more dynamic decisions.

On a more personal level, in-position executives continue to need to adapt their own leadership style and skills to evolve with the fast-changing market and the traditional requirements of their roles. We looked at common challenges faced by those preparing for navigating senior leadership transitions, Top Resilience Strategies during Career Transition and how to turn a negative into a positive, making the most of rejection in an executive job search. while this piece looked at ways executives can adapt, evolve and pivot to reposition themselves in a more desirable, future-focused niche.

3: Strengthening relationships

Whether encouraging belonging among increasingly geographically-isolated staff, developing a wider network or consolidating stakeholder partnerships, building stronger relationships has shown itself to be at the heart of successful leadership in 2023.

A recent YouGov poll found that half of UK employees work from home some or all of the time and while the jury is out on the impact on productivity, many surveys have shown that distance workers often feel disconnected and worried they are invisible and so less likely to progress in their careers. C-suite need to work with HR to explore more collaborative operating models to recreate the interactive and sociable in-person dynamic alongside well-organised real life meet-ups. This approach can help avoid drops in morale and productivity, pitfalls of silo working, to build cohesive cultures, positive workforce identity and maximise joined[up performance.

In this insight, our expert Rialto executive career coaches shared five essential strategies they encourage executives to employ when seeking to enhance their leadership influence to motivate teams, engage stakeholders, inspire confidence and shape outcome from a distance.

We also looked at the value of continuous executive networking to build new and reinforce existing partnership relations. Data from McKinsey shows that only 14% of professionals have grown their networks since 2020, while less than 50% reported making any effort to do so. Yet the more extensive & relevant your network is, whether long-established or newly-connected, the greater your reach when you need to expand into new sectors or terrains or bring in expertise for business or personal growth. We looked at four key activities we recommend our executive clients to practise when networking: personal benchmarking, development and growth, gaining wider perspectives on innovation and sharing insights and advice.

4: Still reaching for Glass Ceiling

This term was first coined in 1978 to describe the invisible social barrier preventing women from reaching higher levels then almost exclusively occupied by men.

More recently, its meaning has been expanded to include any prejudices or working conditions that hold individuals back, whether due to gender, race, disability, mental health, age, sexuality or gender identification. 2023 also saw people start to talk about the impact of the menopause on women in the workplace and ask how explorers could support them.

Equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) are now built into any successful business model and there are legal requirements to do so with serious consequences for discrimination.

Rialto director Richard Chiumento says: “Most executives may remember a time when the boardroom and senior management were homogenous zones of white males. Today, it is a joy & much more appropriate to see a make-up from every cultural background and of all ages, a real diverse group of individuals which makes the workplace so much more vibrant, dynamic, productive and interesting”.

However, while things have improved greatly, and progressive business leaders are truly recognising the unmistakable value of having an expansive plurality of views, experience and backgrounds in any boardroom or business environment, there still remains much work to be done.

“We still hear from clients who are coming up against these discriminatory barriers, whether seeking to progress within their organisation or looking at career transition. We help them to identify and overcome them while also advising leaders how to capitalise on an increasingly global market by building visibly and displaying a genuinely inclusive and welcoming culture.”

From 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority set “comply or explain” targets for listed UK companies of 40% female board members including at least one senior position and at least one member from an ethnic minority background.

The deadline saw a flurry of new appointments, with 60% of new non-executive vacancies filled by women in 2021-2022.  However, the theme for 2023 was something of a regression with boards wary of geopolitical and economic tensions reverting to the security of experience over the unknown, suggesting that for some, it remains a box ticking exercise rather than a genuine commitment.

Headhunter Spencer Stuart surveyed the UK’s 150 biggest listed companies and found increased caution around appointing first-time directors, down to 31% from 44% the year before. The number of candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds was at its lowest level this year since 2020 while the proportion of non-executive vacancies going to female candidates peaked at 60% in 2022 but dropped to 51% in the 12 months to April, 2023.

Richard Chiumiento said: “Instead of just paying lip service to EDI, organisations need to set metrics and actively seek to redress any imbalances or obstacles to genuine equality of opportunity and remuneration parity. As well as ensuring compliance, this ensures better, more trusting and productive relations with employees, potential candidates and other stakeholders. Organisations that do not comply or only commit to the bare minimum risk a damaging financial impact as well as reputational damage.”

We spoke to some of our female clients about their experiences to mark International Women’s Day in March, 2023. They told us some of the greatest barriers they felt were thrown up by unconscious bias, imposter syndrome, misunderstanding of equality and AI bias within automated recruitment processes. You can read more and find advice from our executive career coaches here.

We will revisit EDI and look at the tangible benefits of a healthy and robust culture and policy in the New Year.

5: Talent shortages:

Post-Covid, we saw a “quiet quitting” trend, where employees and leaders at all levels stepped away or down in search of a better work-life balance having spent so much time out of the office during lockdowns.  In 2023, finding, attracting and keeping the best talent from the resulting smaller pool became a strategic priority for every sector and at every level, as did investing in existing teams.

We talked throughout the year about the many tools and methods organisations can employ to ensure they have an intelligent recruitment system and a positive culture, which encourages organisational commitment and an ethos of continuous learning and career progression.

We looked at strategic HR priorities including cultivating talent and upskilling, and taking the initiative with AI to help achieve those objectives and drive growth and productivity.

We looked at how predictive analytics can identify trends and patterns needed now and in the future. AI can then find potential candidates with those skill sets, even if passive, and tailor individual job offerings based on market and internal data and the individual’s experience and requirements. While generative AI can create and deliver bespoke training programmes designed to meet organisational and individual need and ensure the workforce remains agile and responsive to the dynamic internal and wider economic landscape.

We also analysed what this meant for our clients who were seeking career transitions. Unfortunately, our exclusive data revealed that the talent shortage had not led to an abundance of opportunities.

Our analysis of publicly-advertised mid and senior level executives and leaders found an incredibly worrying decline in vacancies. For example, in November 2022 there were 12,761 publicly-advertised UK Chief Executive Officer vacancies. In October, 2023 the number was down to just 115. Non executive directors were down from 4,034 to 42 and Chief operating officers dropped from 1,814 to 82. (figures are a snapshot, and not a 100% accurate depiction)

We shared some of the invaluable advice provided to senior clients on how to shine in a gloomy marketplace and some of the bright spots on the otherwise gloomy horizon.  Rialto director Nick Storey also shared his advice on staying ahead in executive career transition.

It has certainly been a tumultuous year and we hope you have found some of our insights and articles helpful in navigating the fast-changing marketplace and economic landscape. We will continue to monitor trends and developments across 2024. Please let us know if there is any subject or angles you would like us to look into.

In a recent survey, chief executives cited financial growth as the second highest priority for HR in 2024 after talent management.  HR leaders rated this tenth, revealing a disconnect which could be limiting potential for growth. CEOs also placed “efficiency and productivity” and “technology review and investment” much higher than HR Leaders.

Here are three key areas where HR Leaders and the C-suite should be working together to strengthen the contribution and impact of HR and add greater value to their organisation.

1: Leadership effectiveness  

HR need to constantly evaluate the evolving challenges and expanding responsibilities that functional business leaders are now expected to take on. A substantial three quarters of HR professionals acknowledge that leaders in their organisation feel overwhelmed by the growing scope of their responsibilities with more than half stating that their leaders bear more responsibility than they can effectively manage.

Regardless of sector or discipline, these are just a few of the day to daily challenges leaders may face on top of their specific positional duties: balancing short-term responses to crisis vs longer term visioning, cultivating fit-for-purpose behaviours, understanding and integrating fast-developing technologies, leading hybrid teams, managing multiple, sometimes competing stakeholders. On top of all that, they must oversee healthy cultures with clear EDI policies and execution and motivate workforces who may feel burned out and be seeking better work/lifestyle balances.

In order to thrive and drive productivity and efficiency, organisations require HR to step up and proactively support the path to navigate multiple priorities.  This means listening and being responsive. Among the strategies HR can employ to assist are: resetting expectations; enabling effective delegation and communication training through access to coaching and training for staff; simplification of structures and tasks; identification and help integrating new technologies to improve efficiency; and ensuring directives around business culture and expectations are clear and visible.

Leaders should be made to feel confident in asking for help without being judged and have built-in time for reflection and mentoring.

2: Talent Management and upskilling  

In the domain of talent management and upskilling, HR has an opportunity to take centre stage in its strategic input to the rapid evolution of workplaces and business models.  The integration of AI into HR functions will support the evolution of job specifications, with HR leveraging AI audits to assess skills, experience, and talent. AI applications will further empower HR to identify and cultivate individualised training programmes, aligning upskilling initiatives with the dynamic and agility needs of an organisation.

As the landscape of talent acquisition continues to transform, acquiring, retaining and optimising talent extends beyond traditional measures.  In a survey conducted by Gartner, only one in four employees surveyed said they felt confident about their careers. Scope for promotion, progression and personal enrichment can be as important as income when valued employees consider factors influencing their career decisions.

This shift requires a focus on creating a holistic approach encompassing employee wellbeing, coaching, transparent career progression and more flexible work arrangements as well as a commitment to continuous learning and upskilling.

Career progression is moving further away from being a vertical ladder with clear scripts and gateways, unfolding instead as a matrix with interconnected paths.  HR leaders should be ready to tailor talent strategies to these new business models which will open wider career possibilities, more diverse employee expectations and opportunities that represent finite cycles of work with dynamic possibilities for personal growth.

3: Embracing AI  

Surveys show C-suite buy-in to AI advantages is not being matched by enthusiasm from HR leaders. More than two thirds of executive leaders agree benefits of AI outweigh risks yet only a fifth of HR leaders are actively engaged in AI discussions across their organisations.

Most describe the application of AI as being something that will become increasingly important in the future. However, the most advanced organisations and their HR leaders are using it now to streamline processes, improve efficiency and enhance employee experiences, lifting HR’s role in the organisation.

First steps for HR are creating a framework to assess and identify appropriate AI applications and support departments to adapt existing organisational working models to assimilate and fully exploit their potential to drive progress and efficiency.  Importantly, they must also be aware of the risks and create a framework to ensure their ethical, transparent and responsible use.

There are known issues around generative AI, such as bias and a built-in tendency to “hallucinate” – literally to make things up. Whether you have AI tools built for your organisational needs or integrate existing applications, ensure there are humans testing, overseeing and constantly assessing output before it reaches any audience.

While younger generations may be unphased and embrace the fast pace of technology-driven change, adoption of frontier technologies may alienate some older workers who are already feeling bewildered by the pace of change, post-Covid, and worried about being displaced by automation.

Manage their concerns with genuine, effective two-way communication. Explain any changes, why they are necessary and how they will benefit them, ensure they get proper training to co-pilot the technology effectively, open channels for feedback, listen and respond.

If you want to learn how Rialto can help your HR teams to explore and prepare for the future of work and emerging business models, contact us on +44 (0) 20 3746 2960.

In the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report, 49% of those surveyed across industries anticipate AI to be a catalyst for job creation while 23% also expect it to drive job displacement. This displacement does not just apply to automation making certain roles redundant but also entails reshaping certain functions and shifting the skills needed by the professionals working alongside AI.

When thinking about the skills needed for future success, leaders need to consider both their own capabilities and the skillsets their team will need to possess to deliver impact while working alongside the digital workforce. With Generative AI and other forms of advanced technology taking over specific tasks and functions, what gaps may humans need to fill? How can man and machine work together in tandem to drive business growth? Our team have identified the following five skills for senior executives to focus their upskilling and reskilling efforts on:

1. AI Understanding: To work alongside AI effectively, one must possess a solid understanding of its capabilities, limitations, and functions. For senior leaders, it is imperative to understand what value AI can bring to your business, to be clear on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ your organisation plans to adopt it, and to ensure the rest of your team shares that same vision and understanding. Having a grasp of the scope of AI’s capabilities will make it much simpler to assign actions and owners, all while knowing that AI will not be a total replacement for all tasks and functions. While intelligent and impressive, this technology is not yet autonomous and will need a human at the helm prompting it into action and overseeing its outputs. Executives and their team members alike should treat AI as an assistant rather than a leader, learning how to coexist beside this technology rather than fixating on the losses it may create or overinflating expectations about its capabilities.
2. Analysis and Critical Thinking: One key area that AI excels at over human intelligence is its ability to process vast amounts of data in real-time and provide valuable on-demand business intelligence to business decision makers. This will include insights into markets, competitors, customers, supply chain productivity, and employee performance. While AI can compile this information into clean and digestible formats, artificial intelligence is not always able to assign relevance, perspective, or meaning to the insights it produces. It is therefore essential for leaders to hone their analytical and critical thinking skills to provide relevance to the information generated by AI and relate it back to the business’s objectives and strategy.
3. Bias Detection and Ethical Consideration: Of course, AI outputs should not be inherently and wholeheartedly trusted, as this technology has been proven to occasionally have ‘hallucinations’ and produce inaccurate outputs. Applying critical thinking and analysis to AI outputs can not only help mitigate the risks of misinformation but also help catch potential ethical errors. To be clear, AI is not an inherently unethical or biased technology, but with misuse or improper training can generate harmful outcomes. AI does not possess a human’s judgement to determine between right and wrong, and therefore leaders and their teams must be conscious of the dangers and potential harm of adopting this technology into business practices. This includes becoming conscious of the data sources AI algorithms are trained on, the potential harm of using AI for tasks such as recruitment or talent management, and the privacy concerns involved in sourcing and using information.
4. Emotional Intelligence: Adopting AI will be a major change for senior executives and their teams and is likely to cause discomfort and potential friction. Some members of the team may be eager to evolve, while others may feel threatened, intimidated, or anxious about the introduction of AI into their day-to-day activities. Therefore, it is of critical importance for senior executives to lead with empathy and understanding throughout the entire digital transformation process. Offer support and reassurance wherever possible. Understand your team’s perspectives and take their feedback on board.
5. Communication: To help ease concerns and make the transition to an AI-enabled workforce more effective, senior leaders need to become skilled and tactful communicators. Ensure that all goals, objectives, and expectations are shared clearly across every level of the business. Make it clear why the organisation is adopting technologies, how and when it plans to do so, and what this will look like in practice. Assign clear actions and owners with defined expectations and responsibilities. At the same time, it is just as important to listen as it is to speak. Open the feedback loop for questions, concerns, and suggestions. Making the entire team active participants in your business’s AI journey will help the process and man-machine partnership function much smoother.

In conclusion, as we stand at the crossroads of a transformative AI-driven era, senior executives must recognise that their role in shaping the future workforce goes beyond merely adapting to technology. It involves a profound shift in perspective, from viewing AI as a tool to seeing it as a collaborator in business innovation. These pivotal skills are the pillars on which executives can build a bridge between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence and are not just keys to embracing AI; they are the compass guiding us towards a more agile, empathetic, and prosperous future of work, where man and machine together drive the evolution of business and society.

While authority and formal titles may dictate a certain level of control or gravitas, true leadership is not about your ability to command others but rather your ability to inspire voluntary action. Influence is a delicate fusion of empathy, communication prowess, and vision. It requires an understanding of the unique motivations and aspirations of individuals and involves leveraging that understanding to guide teams toward shared objectives. A leader’s ability to influence reflects their ability to connect with people on a personal level, to build trust, and foster a sense of belonging and purpose.

Whether you’re championing a strategic initiative, leading restructuring efforts, advocating for new technology, strengthening  customer commitment or motivating your teams towards agility and higher performance, your ability to generate buy-in, inspire confidence, and shape outcomes hinges upon whether you are able to effectively gain support from your key stakeholders, many of whom will not necessarily be I the same room as you too regularly.

Our expert Rialto Executive Career Coaches have shared the following five essential strategies for senior executives to consider when seeking to enhance their leadership influence.

1. Master the Art of Persuasion: To influence effectively, it’s vital to master the art of persuasion. This involves appealing to both reason and emotion. Look to substantiate your position with data and facts, but also attune yourself to your audience’s feelings. Demonstrate how your vision and objectives align with their values and aspirations. Look to also clarify how their support and/or contribution support the broader outlook. A common error which many leaders often make is not focussing on multiple stakeholder benefits, even though they know that not everyone shares the same level of commitment to a particular cause or direction. To be truly influential, you need to be realistic about the various drivers for your different audiences and persuade them from that vantage point.  Segment your audience to customise your approach and consider their different interests and priorities.  Emphasise positive impact and what success looks like but equally anticipate and openly address challenges and risks, inviting feedback and creating space for dialogue.  Remember, mastering the art of persuasion is an ongoing process requiring self-awareness, practice, and a genuine commitment to understanding and connecting with others.
2. Build a Compelling Personal Brand: Your personal brand is a powerful tool for influence, both online and offline. A strong personal brand can make your message more compelling and trustworthy, especially where you have shared your expertise and values and proven yourself as a trusted contributor in your field or on key topics. Consistently align your actions and communication with these attributes is essential, both within and outside your organisation. Those that have established credibility among peers, team members, and stakeholders are much more likely to have their voice heard and be followed. Many senior leaders use LinkedIn as a preferred thought leadership platform to raise personal digital brand awareness, given its professional reputation compared to other social networking platforms. Build a strong profile on the site that accurately outlines your background, experience, and professional identity. Ensure that the information you include creates the desired perception you would like others to glean. Then, use the platform to build your influence through your posting and activity. Share relevant research, comment on trends affecting your industry or business, and actively engage in conversations about your topics of expertise. Leverage your brand to build your network and get in front of key members of your audience. Name recognition goes a long way in creating credibility and trustworthiness. Having a well-structured and active profile can help to position you well as a leader in your industry or job function, which in turn will support your ability to influence others.
3. Leverage Technology Wisely: Using technology to build your influence is a must in today’s digital age but ensure that you are doing so wisely. Utilise it to your advantage but be mindful of its limitations. Video conferences, webinars, and social media can extend your reach, but they still don’t create the same impact as face-to-face interactions Be mindful of how and why you use technology in your communications efforts and ask yourself if this is the right platform or appropriate messaging for your audience and brand. With the rise of generative AI, employing a platform like ChatGPT to draft thought leadership and persuasive messages is being seen as a valuable time saver for busy executives. However, generating content this way without your own perspective does little to portray your unique voice, match your tone and can occasionally generate inaccurate or misrepresentative information. To be truly influential, you need to own your narrative and your messaging instead of handing over to AI. Generative AI is an incredible technology, but again has its limitations. Use it as an assistant to your efforts rather than letting technology take full control.
4. Develop a Community and Open Communication: Both online and offline, you should be listening as often as you speak and empowering others to share their thoughts as well. Do not just share or ‘publish your own thoughts and expect that to be enough to position you as ‘influential.’ The most successful influencers are those who build communities of trust first. Spark valuable and thought-provoking conversations with others. Invite your audience to share their opinions and respond to them. Comment on what others have to say be that in your organisation, in your industry or on a wider platform. Influential leaders do not exist in isolation.

As a leader, take the initiative  to create a culture that encourages and supports open communication and collaboration. Encourage feedback, welcome diverse perspectives, and ensure that information flows freely. A transparent, open culture fosters trust, honesty and creates alignment. It also makes it easier to generate buy-in for initiatives or strengthen decision-making through collaborative input.

5. Continuously Learn and Improve: Building your influence will not happen overnight, and effective communication is not a static skill. You should always strive to learn and improve your messaging and your method of delivery. Seek feedback, stay updated on trends, and adapt accordingly. A commitment to ongoing self awareness and growth will help you to become influential long term, which will prove valuable in times of both prosperity and turmoil.

When leaders lead by example, showcasing values and behaviours that align with the bigger picture and a shared purpose, they set the tone for those around them. This sparks a ripple effect that in an organisation creates greater workforce cohesion, fosters innovation, and improves agility and resilience in the face of challenges. In an era characterised by rapid change and complexity, influence becomes even more valuable. Leaders who can adapt and communicate effectively in diverse and cross-functional teams are better equipped to guide their organisations through tumult, bridge gaps, resolve conflicts, and navigate uncertainty with grace.

The marketing function has undergone a major transformation over the last decade, playing an important role in the increasingly competitive business landscape. Challenging economic conditions have made it vital to attract new customers and retain existing loyalty, while the digital world has reshaped customers’ habits and increased expectations. It falls on the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to facilitate growth and sales, determines the brand’s direction and marketing strategy, ensuring their team can develop and execute successful future focussed marketing strategies.

This future will be shaped by leaders who are empowered by technology, consumers who adjust their habits with the times, and businesses who embrace digitisation quickly to avoid being left behind. Much of today’s customer journey takes place across digital touch points and will become increasingly virtualised over time. The CMO must prepare their team for this shift, generate support from related functions such as sales, and marry the best of the old ways with rapidly advancing market and business practices.

Here are some of the top skills required to be successful in the CMO role for the foreseeable future, challenges faced, and factors to keep in mind if a CMO role is your next career objective.

CMO Snapshot

At the time of publication, a LinkedIn search for profiles bearing the title of ‘Chief Marketing Officer’ yields 747,000 results globally, and 30,000 in the UK alone. A search for the same title in the Jobs section of the site results in just shy of 800 vacancies in the UK. Just as with many other C-suite roles, there is no blueprint for what a CMO looks like. However, demographic research helps provide a glimpse of where things currently stand.

Analysis of CMOs from FTSE 100 companies and the Inc. 5000 list found that a typical UK CMO is male, British-born, and 44 years old. Separate research from Korn Ferry finds that the average CMO is older at 54 years old, but still usually the youngest in the C-suite. On average, marketing chiefs in the FTSE 100 will have worked within their companies for approximately 8-9 years and had experience working for at least three other companies beforehand, spending around 5-6 years at each job prior to ascending to the CMO seat.

However, after ascending to the top of their organisation, the CMO is the least likely of their C-suite peers to stick around. This role has the shortest average tenure of any C-suite function at 3.5 years. This is notably higher turnover than seen amongst the average tenures of CEOs (8 years), CFOs (5.1 years), and CHROs (5 years).

In recent years, there has been a rise in businesses introducing what is called a ‘Fractional CMO’ as an alternative to having full-time marketing leadership in the C-Suite. These highly skilled experts are brought in from outside of the organisation to help with customer acquisition, developing and executing strategy, mentoring the marketing team, or delivering a specific campaign. This type of arrangement can benefit both the business and the individual executive. On the organisational side, the business gets to introduce much-needed marketing expertise and fresh, outside perspectives without the commitment of a full-time sitting CMO. For seasoned marketing executives, it offers the opportunity to enrich their career, seek out new challenges, or introduce more flexibility into their working life.

For those taking on the CMO role full time, according to Glassdoor, the national average salary in the UK is £106,552. The average additional compensation for the role is £20,901. The top-end salary for this role is approximately £201,000. In London, CMOs will earn slightly higher with an average salary of £112,125 and an average bonus of £16,000 per year. That said, compensation for the role will vary by experience, geography, business size, and other individual factors.

Top CMO Skills

Marketing is the primary communications function of the business, but there is more to being a successful CMO than simply being a skilled and effective communicator. Given the evolving needs of the marketplace and ever-changing consumer habits, our experts have identified the following top skills for marketing leaders to focus their attention on.

• Customer Centricity: Serving your customers, whether that be through products or services, is the reason your company is in business. If you are not keeping your customers at the heart of every discussion you have, every initiative you introduce, and every decision you make, then you can expect to fail.
• Keen Ability to Demonstrate Need: Behind the CEO and COO, the CMO is one of the most publicly facing roles in the C-suite. The CMO needs to be able to paint a picture for audiences that clearly communicates how the company’s products or services meet a need that specific customer segments may have. But at the same time, the CMO may find themselves having to sell their vision to the rest of their peers on the C-Suite, their own team, and others across different departments of the organisation. If your internal team does not share in the vision or understand how the wider strategy supports the customer journey, then you risk mixed or ineffective messaging.

Emotional Intelligence and the Human Touch: A global survey of 935 senior leaders and direct reports and over 1,100 members of the workforce suggests that human emotions are a key determining factor in the success or failure of a business transformation.

A successful CMO is one who truly understands and can put themselves in the shoes of their customer, and who allows that perspective to guide their strategy. Instead of imploring your customers to flock to you, you need to be able to meet them where they are and offer a solution to their pain points. This can at times be difficult, as CMOs will face pressure from the organisation to deliver results at all costs. But the ability to be realistic about who your customers are, what they care about, and what they are going through will make you better able to relate to and effectively communicate with them. Having this understanding at the top of the marketing function helps to shape the activity and the mindsets of the rest of the team. This is now more valuable than ever with digital taking over so much of the customer experience. Being able to provide a human touch to all marketing activities helps to fill a crucial gap that technology cannot and can add rationality and reasoning to all communications decisions.

• Empathy: If we are being truly honest, then it is fair to say that we are living through a challenging period in both our professional and personal lives. We have made it to the other side of a multi-year global pandemic, but many of us have lost things and people along the way. The aftermath is still echoing through our global economies alongside new challenges, disruptive forces, and geopolitical tensions. Business leaders, their people, and their customers are having to navigate all of this. In the meantime, marketers are having to adapt to the resulting changes in their customers’ spending habits, priorities, and needs.
• Future-Focused Leadership: After ChatGPT burst onto the scene with vigour, there was much discussion surrounding what this would mean for entry- and mid-level marketers. If a bot can create content, what do we need people for? This mindset does not depict the reality of the situation, which is that most jobs will be reshaped rather than replaced, but the thought is likely to have burrowed itself into the minds of many in the marketing department. The CMO should be able to help clearly define the respective roles of both technology and human talent within the marketing department and ease their people through this transition. Do not downplay their concerns, but instead communicate openly about what change lies ahead and what it means. Bring your people on the journey with you but understand that they will likely have their own reservations.

Top Market Challenges Impacting CMOs

The skills above will be critically important as CMOs attempt to navigate the challenges of the current business landscape. Some of the top factors that these executives should be aware of are:

• Rapid Digitisation: The future will most likely include new technologies such as generative AI, which has been quickly disrupting the marketing space and altering the way companies communicate with and understand their audiences. It has also provided a competitive edge to businesses of all sizes and industries, allowing those brave and bold enough to embrace change a leg up on the laggards. As International Hotel Group (IHG) CIO Eric Pearson was once quoted as saying: “It’s no longer the big beating the small, but the fast beating the slow.”

Marketing will likely be a major area of focus for many businesses’ AI adoption efforts. The CMO will have the responsibility of pinpointing which areas technology can improve and making those recommendations to the rest of the C-suite. CMOs should expect to work alongside other business functions to help create a unified omnichannel customer experience across multiple marketing, sales, and service platforms. New generative AI solutions like ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL E have already raised questions about what the role of the human marketer might be. It will fall on the CMO to decide where and how their people use these types of tools day-to-day and guiding the team through that change.

• Breaking Down Communication Silos: Of course, for digitisation and the overall strategy to be successful, there needs to be collaboration between marketing and the other departments of the business. This includes sales, customer service, procurement, operations, and research & development. According to a reportfrom CMO Council and KPMG, 70% of marketers don’t feel very confident in their current sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalised customer journey, and 60% of respondents said marketing and sales don’t co-own customer strategy and data. While these two departments may not function the same, they share the same goals and objectives and need to work together harmoniously to create a seamless customer experience. It will fall on the CMO to encourage collaboration to achieve shared business objectives, defining KPIs for both teams, and creating total alignment on customer audiences and personas. To achieve this, CMOs will have to be very clear on the C-suite’s target growth objectives, whether that be acquisition, retention, revenue growth and so on.
• Shifting Towards Retention and Experience: It is likely that revenue growth will be a top priority for businesses after a few economically challenging years. One of the avenues that CMOs may explore to achieve that goal is to focus on loyalty and retention. Existing customers are much less costly to retain than new customers are to attract. In an increasingly competitive landscape, CMOs will be tasked with holding on to their valuable customers for as long as they can.

Oftentimes, the deciding factor for loyalty is the experience that businesses can offer their customers. Marketing is a very CX-focused business function to begin with, but digitisation has upped the stakes and the expectations. Customers can easily draw comparison between you and your competitors on price, quality, and so on, but these do not always drive decision making. According to Salesforce, an astounding 97% of marketers witnessed a rise in business outcomes as a result of offering their customers personalisation. CMOs need to keep experience at the forefront of their strategy and

• Conscious-Minded Consumers: To successfully attract and retain customers, you need to meet them where they are and cater to their interests and priorities. Over the past several years, consumers have increasingly begun to value and prioritise more cause-driven businesses, products, and initiatives. This includes things like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, socioeconomic mobility, and so on. Today’s consumers, especially in younger groups such as millennials and Gen Z, have increasingly begun to ‘vote with their wallet’ and become choosier about the products they use and the companies they choose to support. This adds an extra layer of depth to customer personas that CMOs simply cannot ignore. Marketing chiefs will need to gain insight into what it is that their customers value most and how those values align with their organisation. Integrating these values into the comms strategy will be important for raising awareness in the marketplace.

Our Advice for CMOs

Given these challenges, our expert Rialto Executive Career Coaches recommend that current and aspiring Chief Marketing Officers focus their attention in these key areas:

• Don’t Fear Digital: Over the past century, marketers have adapted from print to radio, radio to television, television to web, and web to social media. This is simply the next evolutionary stage in a long journey of growth and innovation. Rather than letting that intimidate you, let it excite you. The most successful CMOs are those who can look beyond the status quo and view innovation as an opportunity to experiment and push the boundaries.
• Listen More Than You Speak: Marketing, at times, can feel like shouting into the void and hoping that it echoes into the ears of the right people. It can feel very one sided, but every expert knows that the key to good marketing is two-way communication. At the C-Suite level, it is unlikely that you will have much—if any—regular interaction with your everyday customers. That is why it is important to foster a strong chain of communication from the top of the marketing function down to its lowest level where most of the direct interaction with customers happens. These team members will be the most in tune with what your customers need, want, love, hate, and are most motivated by. These members of your team may not directly report to you, but they hold valuable insights that can help inform the strategies that govern the entire marketing function. Regularly seek feedback, and truly listen when it is given. Understand that your idea of your customer and the marketplace may not always be in line with the reality, and be willing to adapt as needed.
• Become increasingly Data Driven: In addition to communicating with your people, you can also consult your data. Businesses collect more data than they know what to do with, most of which can directly benefit the marketing function. By becoming more data-minded, the CMO can derive valuable insights into their customers, their team, their strategy, and the effectiveness of the company’s marketing efforts. Relying on gut instinct is not always the best and smartest move. Making a habit of consulting your data helps to ensure you always have a realistic view of your audiences and your efforts.

If you are a current Chief Marketing Officer looking for your next executive role, or an executive looking to transition into a CMO role, we can help. The Rialto Consultancy offers a range of career strategy services including Executive Outplacement, Executive Career Coaching, and Personal Branding. Get in touch with our team to discuss your options to make a game changing transformational career move.

The first few months of a new calendar year mark the end of most businesses’ financial year and offer an opportunity to reflect on the previous year’s fiscal performance, while making predictions for what lies ahead. As most organisations develop their plans, we are provided with a much more accurate glimpse into the market that is based on real performance and financial data rather than speculation or gut instinct.

Many of these insights will help to paint a picture of the people challenges businesses face in Q2 and Q3 of the calendar year and the start of the new financial year, but also highlight some of the trends and opportunities.

Here is our experts’ assessment of the current state of the executive jobs market and the macro business landscape, the top trends that will shape FY23, and our advice for navigating these conditions successfully.

Job Market Snapshot

The latest ONS Labour Market Overview for April 2023 serves the dual purpose of wrapping up Q1 2023 as well as the final stretch of FY22. The report found that between January and March 2023, the estimated number of UK vacancies fell for the ninth consecutive period to 1,105,000, a 47,000 drop on the quarter. While less vacancies often indicates more individuals in employment, that is not always true and does not appear to be the case here. The ONS posits that the drop in opportunity is less about an influx of hiring and more about overly cautious businesses pausing their recruitment amid ongoing economic uncertainty. Availability of jobs fell in 13 of the 18 industry sectors the ONS tracks, with real estate, mining, and quarrying experiencing the largest dips.

Businesses looking to recruit face no shortage of candidates, with the ONS data finding that there were 1.2 unemployed people per vacancy, a slight increase from the previous quarter.

Even so, there remains a talent and skills shortage with businesses struggling to secure candidates with the in-demand capabilities that businesses require to futureproof themselves.

However, the talent crisis spreads beyond recruitment as those in employment find themselves increasingly dissatisfied. The ONS figures for example also showed that there were 348,000 working days lost because of industrial action in February 2023, up from 210,000 in January. Over three-fifths of these strikes were in the education sector. The catalyst for these disputes includes pay, flexibility, work-life balance, and excessive workloads, which are also factors impacting a number of employees across other sectors.

Despite seeing growth in the headline pay figures (5.9% including bonuses and 6.6% without bonuses), average weekly pay including bonuses in December 2022 to February 2023 fell 3% when adjusted for inflation compared with the same period a year ago, while pay excluding bonuses fell 2.3%. These constitute some of the largest falls in pay since ONS records began in 2001. In the private sector, the average pay without bonuses grew 6.9% while the average public sector pay packet grew 5.3%. The narrowing of the gap between the two could potentially be attributed to ongoing pressure from unions in the public sector.

Key Trends

All things considered, we did not end FY22 or begin Q2 2023 in the strongest or most exciting conditions. These are the key labour trends our experts predict will drive activity throughout the remainder of Q2 as we gear up for the summer:

• Economically Driven Decision Making: The falling pay growth is simply a side effect of a bigger ailment, which is inflation itself. Despite expectations that figures would drop to 9.8%, the UK inflation rate came in high once again at 10.1% according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures. This is considerably higher than both the rates of inflation in the Eurozone (6.9%) and the USA (5%). The largest upward contributions to the annual inflation rate came from housing, utilities (electricity, gas, and other fuels), food, and non-alcoholic beverages. Simply put, it is expensive to live in the UK and that will continue to be the case.

It is expected by experts that the inflation rate will fall sometime this year, but when and by how much are yet to be determined. And despite the incendiary recent comments by the Bank of England’s chief economist, Britons are unlikely to just accept that they are worse off now and get on with it. From an organisational standpoint, you should expect that if you are not able to supplement the cost of living with employee’s pay or other benefits such as flexible work, you stand to lose some of your talent. From an individual perspective, it remains true that moving company is the best way to secure a pay rise. If cost of living is of concern to you or your people, it is not unreasonable to expect that this could motivate a career change or job move.

• Erring on the Side of Caution: This economic hardship will also continue to bleed over into businesses’ decisions regarding their staffing levels. Over the past quarter, we have seen hiring freezes and mass redundancies across tech, retail, banking, financial services, professional services, manufacturing, and media/entertainment. Unfortunately, this looks set to continue. Even businesses that posted better-than-expected Q1 results have made cuts or plan to soon. A recent global survey that included 500 UK-based HR directors found that 43% of UK businesses have recently completed or plan to make redundancies in 2023. A further 29% admitted that they are unsure at this point if they will be making redundancies, 18% said they are on a hiring freeze but have no plans to make redundancies, and only 8% confirmed that they will definitely not make any redundancies this year and are not on a hiring freeze. Among those who are letting people go, most (44%) cite cost cutting as the reason, closely followed by having over-hired in the years prior (43%).

If cost is serving as the primary motivator, this can proceed a few different ways. It might be that the worst of the cuts happened in preparation for the new financial year, and now that we are settling into it, things will calm down. Alternatively, further uncertainty in the marketplace may cause further quells later. In any case, both organisations and individuals should be prepared for any scenario. From an organisational standpoint, businesses considering cutbacks should also consider implementing support for those they let go. Investing in executive outplacement services helps preserve against reputational blowback and signals to both those you release and those you retain that the organisation cares about its people. For individuals, do not panic about potentially being made redundant, but instead prepare for that possibility. Take some time to think about the next step in your career and treat this as an opportunity rather than a setback. Additionally, you can work on your skills to increase your value and contribution potential in the eyes of your employer.

• High CEO Turnover: Typically, those at the very top of the organisation are relatively safe from any quells unless the organisation is undergoing a massive restructure that requires a major change in leadership. C-suite and Board-level positions are often long-held ‘legacy’ positions for several reasons. To start, the foundation of these roles is trust and respect, and tenure and experience can go a long way for securing both. Not only that, but these positions are also often the highest one can climb in their respective organisation or job function and once achieved, individuals tend to remain there. For a combination of these and other reasons, senior executives in C-Suite or Board positions have historically been less likely to leave their roles than their colleagues in other roles of the business. Until now, that is.

A recently published US-based report found that March 2023’s CEO turnover is up 18% year-on-year. This is the highest total for that month since tracking began in 2002. In Q1 2023, 418 CEOs left their posts. This is a 57% rise from the 266 CEOs who left in Q4 2022. These turnovers are largely occurring in the public sector, healthcare, technology, and financial services. Most companies are remaining tight lipped about the reasons behind their CEO exits, with 127 leaving in Q1 2023 without a specified reason. A further 106 retired (up 15% from the same period last year), and 25 moved into new positions heading another department or division within the company. While CEO turnover can create disruption for the business during the transition period, movement at the top has created more opportunities than ever for others to ascend into the CEO role and for businesses to inject fresh perspectives into their leadership team. This has created more opportunity for female senior executives to take the helm. The number of women CEOs is at an all-time high, with 32% of new CEOs being women through the first quarter. If this turnover continues, expect to see more diverse voices at the top of organisations and more opportunity for others to move into positions that may not have been available for many years.

• The Meteoric Rise of Generative AI: Generative AI has dominated the conversation so far this year. ChatGPT has been the centre of most of this, and following its public release it very quickly became the fastest growing app in history. The hype surrounding ChatGPT and Generative AI in general has sparked fear, curiosity, and excitement about this technology’s potential use in business moving forward. Goldman Sachs predicts that Generative AI could be responsible for the replacement of 300 million jobs, and many top minds in tech including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently signed an open letter calling for a pause on AI development.

Whether we like it or not, this technology is here to stay. We have let the horse out of the stable and it is too late to rein it back in. Generative AI will continue to develop, and its use cases will continue to expand. Rather than resisting, businesses and individuals need to learn how to work alongside technology. We shared a blog with our suggestions for navigating this at the organisational and C-suite level, offering advice for navigating this next era of business successfully, which you can read here. At the end of the day, AI will be an ally and assistant rather than a boss, and it is critical to understand its impacts on your job function, organisation, and industry as soon as possible to avoid being left behind.

Executive Transition Advice

These trends are sure to create an interesting and challenging business landscape in the near future. Rialto Executive Career Coaches advise the following for navigating these conditions successfully:

• Double Down on Skills: The latest employment figures indicate that despite the level of redundancies, it is still a candidate’s job market. Those with the in-demand skills employers need will be highly sought after. This includes technological savvy as well as the types of capabilities technology cannot yet replicate including creativity, strategy, empathy, and business contextualisation. AI can do the legwork of generating insights, but businesses need people to apply that knowledge in a way that benefits the organisation and creates real impact. For those who find their roles at risk of replacement by AI—though this is unlikely at the senior level—it is important to find a niche you can continue to satisfy for the business, whether this be something specialised or something complimentary to technology.

For businesses, skills remain important as well. If you are restructuring the business or making cuts, you do not want to put yourself into a position wherein you lack the necessary capabilities on your side to bring your new objectives and plans to life. If recruitment is not an option for your organisation at this time, you need to focus on upskilling your current team to ensure they can continue making an impact and driving the business forward.

• Assess Your Priorities: The reality of the situation is that the business landscape is going to continue to be volatile with elements of uncertainty and ambiguity. In the wake of so much disruption, now is a good time to take stock of what matters to you most from your career. Is it security? Is it financial renumeration or growth opportunities? Or is it flexibility, work life balance, and other benefits? Once you determine what is driving you at this point in your career, you will need to assess whether your current role or organisation can provide that. If not, it may be time to consider executive career coaching for help with taking your career to the next level or navigate a senior-level job search.
• Remodel Your Personal Digital Brand: If you do decide to head down the route of making a career move, you will need to be willing to put in the work on your personal digital brand. So much of today’s job search and recruitment happens digitally, so positioning yourself well online can be a major asset to your efforts to secure a new role, be viewed as a thought leader, or attracting other outside opportunities. Our Rialto Executive Career Coaches have worked closely with thousands of senior-level clients over the past decade to help them reach such goals.

Branding matters for employers as well. How you handle the challenging conditions ahead will send a clear message to all your internal and external stakeholders. If you do make cutbacks and handle them poorly, you risk losing the employees you retain and facing reputational damage in the marketplace. Having a bad reputation as an employer may make it more difficult to attract the right talent. It may also leave a poor impression of your business amongst your customers and partners. Offering executive outplacement support services such as those offered by The Rialto Consultancy can help the team members you let go of leave on better terms and demonstrate that your organisation is empathetic and concerned about its people’s wellbeing and ongoing career success.

Having an understanding of the current business and job market enables you to begin preparing for what lies ahead. We will share our next market update in summer 2023. In the meantime, you can keep up to date with business-relevant insights via our blogs and events.

In the words of our Director, Richard Chiumento, “You probably will not lose your job to AI, but you will lose it to a human who is using AI effectively.” An organisation is extremely unlikely to replace its leadership team with artificial intelligence (AI), but rather must enable its C-Suite to form a strategic relationship with technology to drive impact. Doing so will require a baseline understanding of how AI can benefit the business, and how to derive maximum value from it.

While many existing roles will be replaced by technology over time, businesses are unlikely to eliminate their entire workforce in favour of technology, despite the bleak predictions we often see making headlines. Rather, what lies ahead is a massive reshaping of the working world and ‘modern’ workplace as we have traditionally known it through the optimisation of everything we do, every process, and every production. The C-Suite will hold the responsibility of guiding the organisation through this transformation, which will require effective management and fostering a closer relationship with technology by all.

In this article, we provide key factors for organisations and senior leaders to consider to effectively leverage the current AI wave.

Differentiating Between Tactical and Strategic Uses of AI

Business use of AI can be split into two categories: tactical and strategic. What this looks like in practice will vary by business, but here are some general use cases to be aware of based on the solutions available in the marketplace:

• Tactical: Drafting text copy and imagery for marketing materials, sending outreach messages, communicating with prospects, automating parts of the manufacturing process, taking notes across sales interactions, answering customer queries through chatbots, screening job candidates, delivering tailored training, generating reports, etc.

• Strategic: Gauging customer sentiment through social listening, analysing historic data to identify opportunities, assessing performance, reducing production costs, streamlining operations, monitoring employee performance and engagement, lead prediction and scoring, competitor research, etc.

Understanding the Tactical Side of AI

The C-suite will likely have very little to do with the tactical uses of AI as part of their everyday role but should still be concerned with these practices. Team leaders should decide which systems to adopt, which vendors to work with, and where to invest. For this to be successful, each member of the C-suite will need to work collaboratively with their teams to identify where opportunities and efficiencies sit.

It is therefore critical for the leadership team to understand how specific areas of the business can benefit from the adoption of technology and how that might feed into the bigger picture. For example, the marketing, customer service, and sales functions are the most outward-facing functions of the business and stand to benefit greatly from the introduction of AI systems. It is likely that these functions will use generative AI to automate their communications with customers, create more compelling materials, become more targeted, and deliver the right offer in the right place at the right time. The CMO and CRO will need to work with these teams to find out which tasks could benefit most from AI’s helping hand and crafting a case for investment.

On the Operations and Supply Chain side, ongoing disruption has made an already challenging role even more difficult. The expectations placed on the COO will be to improve decision making, keep things running smoothly, and ensure cost efficiencies. They will need to think about how AI can facilitate innovation and identify how investing in new tools might improve long-term revenue and contribute to overall productivity and efficiency.

The urgent business need for digital transformation has fundamentally changed the CIO role from IT operator to business strategist. The CTO and CIO will be concerned with the technicalities of AI adoption and will most likely lead any conversations about vendors and tools. The ability to communicate the value of complex technology to the business is critical, as is the skill to drive and manage long-term change. Tactically, they will oversee the actual implementation of AI systems and need to ensure that the business possesses the necessary infrastructure, hardware, and software.

The CFO will most obviously be concerned about the cost of any AI investment and the returns it will generate. In addition, adopting the right AI will play a huge role in supporting the expectations of shareholders, regulators, and audit committees specifically in providing information in the areas of financial and nonfinancial reporting, transparency, and governance. The CFO will need to work closely with the other leaders to provide structures for governance of AI models to help ensure end-to-end AI governance. This will span from defining the AI strategy through training, testing, deploying and monitoring AI and the data used to train it.

Meanwhile, the CEO will have to keep a finger on the pulse of all this activity. They will be assimilating the massive amounts of data from AI initiatives taken forward by their peers to form answers to complex strategic questions at a massively accelerated rate. The CEO will also likely be the public face of the business’s transformation and will need to communicate with key stakeholder audiences both internally and externally.

In summary, despite not having a hands-on role in the tactical use of AI day-to-day, the C-Suite will need to stop going it alone and start thinking with a machine, using increasingly sophisticated analytic tools to help them rally the organisation. Selecting the right AI solutions, deciding what processes are automated, where money is spent, and how the business can benefit through business model transformation will be critical. This will require a need to ask questions that weren’t previously economical to answer as well as questions they didn’t even know to ask.

Leveraging the Strategic Side of AI

Most businesses possess more data than they know what to do with and in today’s increasingly digital age, even more is accumulated each day. This data is a goldmine of untapped potential that can offer a genuine snapshot of the business, its customers, stakeholders, and performance. However, to try to manually assess this data is a fool’s errand. It would take far too long and by the time any real progress is achieved, so much more new information will have been generated that the old data is obsolete.

Making sense of a business’s data in a tangible and useful way is the most valuable strategic benefit AI offers. In such a competitive landscape where customer habits change regularly and disruption is always on the horizon, having real-time insight into the business can help in staying ahead of the curve and gaining a competitive edge.

Measurement of KPIs is often focused on hard figures such as revenue, number of sales, and other tangible metrics. But every C-Suite executive knows that cost and value is often not that simple to nail down. There are often soft KPIs that are harder to measure but impact the business nonetheless. This includes reputational gains, employee or customer satisfaction, perceived CX, and loyalty. Because these indicators are not tied to an organisations figure, they are often harder to quantify.

AI can help with this, too. Again, the C-Suite will not need to have much direct interaction with tactical AI platforms on a regular basis, but these solutions and their activity can generate insights that can make the C-Suite more effective at what they do. For example, your marketing team’s social listening tool can provide insight into who your customers are, what matters to them, and how they feel about your business. Your sales team’s CRM platform will offer plenty of intelligence into what it takes to attract new prospects and what it takes to retain them. All of this information can be fed back to the C-Suite to help inform their wider strategy and measure success in a much more nuanced way.

The C-Suite will need to redefine the KPIs of the business for the AI age. This is where that grasp on the tactical side of AI comes into play. By understanding how each function of the business uses technology, it becomes possible to determine what can and should be measured. For example, if you know your sales team is using AI to manage relationships with existing customers, you can ask them to measure retention and loyalty. AI tools offer advanced reporting capabilities which help the C-Suite gain a deeper knowledge of the business as a whole. With this information in their arsenal, the leadership team can be much more targeted in their strategic objectives, agile in a crisis, and smarter with their budgeting.

Developing a future focussed workforce

But of course, with any significant change comes resistance, hesitation, and discomfort. It is likely that integrating AI into normal business practices will be met with all of these. Businesses are likely to encounter negative mindsets from their teams and this can include those in the C-Suite. Here are some common negative mindsets our team have come across and advice on how to overcome them

• Replacement: With so much hysteria surrounding AI and several bleak predictions pertaining to massive job losses, it is understandable that your people will be concerned about job security. How the leadership team communicates with the rest of the organisation will be critical here. Instead of shying away from these fears, address them head on. Acknowledge that this is a big change for everyone but provide reassurance that your people will be active participants on this new journey. Set expectations, and assign actions and owners. That way, employees will be reassured of their value and feel more secure in their place with the company. If there are redundancies to be made, be honest about that, too. However, do not leave those you let go of to fend for themselves. Invest in Executive Outplacement services such as those offered by The Rialto Consultancy to support these employees through the transition and help them to land on their feet.
• Obsolescence: Witnessing how impressive and effective AI can be at tasks people have been contending with for years may stir up feelings of intimidation. Individuals may begin to question both their value and their abilities. The truth of the matter is that AI is an assistant, not a boss. When AI takes over those more routinised tasks, it will create more time for individuals to focus on value-add activities that technology cannot yet replicate. This includes creative thinking, strategy, and providing a human touch to the customer journey. The leadership team will need to reshape the roles of their team to assign new purpose behind them. While experiencing changes in one’s role may be uncomfortable at first, it can also reinvigorate individuals and breathe new life into their careers and levels of motivation. The C-Suite will need to consider how to best reshape responsibilities in their organisation to provide adequate support for AI while deriving the most impact from their human workforce.
• Complacency: On the other side of the coin, after witnessing how effective AI can be, individuals may begin to incorrectly assume they can hand off their entire workload to technology. While generative AI is impressive in its current state and growing smarter rapidly, we have not yet reached a point wherein technology can replicate certain human capabilities. When reshaping your people’s roles, it is important to emphasise that their new responsibility is to fill the gaps that technology cannot currently replicate. AI should always be presented as a partner rather than a substitute. By setting expectations early and clearly defining the roles of both technology and humans, the leadership team will be sending a clear message that there is still very much a job to be done by their employees.
• Inadequacy: However, some of your people may be more tech savvy than others and will pick up new tools quickly. Those outside of this camp may struggle and feel ill-equipped to cope with new technology, especially if they have become accustomed to doing things a certain way. You will need all your people on the same page and performing at the right level and may need to invest time and money to get there. It is important to not let these employees struggle in silence. You therefore need to develop a culture of open communication wherein everyone feels encouraged to speak and feels reassured that they are heard. Conducting check-ins with both managers and their direct reports can help the leadership team—especially the HRD or Chief People Officer (CPO)—to gauge where issues lie and where intervention is needed. It will also be crucial to provide necessary training for new tools, whether that be conducted in-house or externally.

Securing Necessary Skillsets

The C-Suite must be strategic about how they develop the necessary skills for successfully deploying AI and using it in practice. A lot of this will fall on the HRD and CPO, but each member of the C-Suite should be just as concerned and involved. Again, training will be necessary as AI skills will not just manifest on their own. The leadership team will need to decide the best approach for themselves, their people and budgets. In some cases, it may make sense to conduct in-house training led in collaboration with the Technology function and HR. It may also be of value to bring in outside experts such as vendors or consultants. You may need to conduct not only technical training, but also offer coaching to help create new mindsets conducive to supporting cultures of change. In other cases, it may make more sense to fund and encourage individuals  to pursue their own upskilling and continuous learning development outside of the organisation. While this lifts the burden of having to organise training in-house, it offers less control. You may not be able to ensure that all of your people are developing the essential skills and covering the necessary bases. The C-Suite will need to seriously consider which option best suits their needs and shape their upskilling programmes accordingly.

You may also consider introducing necessary skills through recruitment. This is a strong option for securing more specialised skillsets that might be costly or time consuming to cultivate with existing team members. Depending on your needs, you may want to secure a full-time employee for this, or may find that a temporary contractor will suffice. However, given the ongoing skills shortage and fierce competition for qualified candidates, businesses should be prepared to face difficulties in securing the talent they need. The leadership team will need to consider their value proposition for new hires. Gaining an understanding of what today’s professionals expect from their employers can help to both attract and retain valuable talent. The C-Suite may need to reshape their hybrid work policies, employee benefits packages, and overall corporate culture.

While the AI landscape is fast-developing and ever-changing, adopting it successfully does not need to be difficult. If the C-Suite is willing to invest time and effort into their own learning whilst building the right physical and emotional infrastructures, the organisation is more likely to reap technology’s business value with minimal disruption.

To get started, explore our upcoming AI-focused webinars.

If you are looking to build cultures of change within your organisation or further your own Leadership Development, we can help. Get in touch with us to discuss our Business Transformation services.

With the new financial year about to begin, businesses will be confirming their budgets and determining where to spend and where to save. As we predicted at the start of the calendar year, talent is a top priority for businesses as they aim to ensure they have the right skills in the right roles and the right leaders at the helm. However, ongoing disruption in the market will continue to make this a challenging feat.

CEO turnover is at its highest levels in 20 years, with an average tenure of around 5 years. Coupled with the mass exodus of over 50s from the workforce, businesses are having to fill gaps more frequently and reassess what qualities they need at the senior level. Succession planning is a smart move for preventing productivity losses, negative impacts on the bottom line, and a never-ending cycle of turnover. Yet, only 35% of organisations have a formalised succession planning process for critical roles and the majority of leaders will fail shortly after ascending to a new position.

If you want to be seen as a successor or are appointed as the successor to a key role, what must you consider and how can you succeed? From a business perspective, what should you factor in when considering which individuals to appoint to ensure a smooth transition? Our Rialto Executive Career Coaches have compiled their top areas for consideration to help deliver an effective succession plan.

Effective Succession Planning: Business Considerations

Succession planning looks at the business through a long-term lens with the understanding that certain senior executives in business-critical positions may leave or retire at any point. You may know when that will be, or you may not. However, recognising the potential of individual talent who might take on the challenges of these roles, investing in their development in advance, and having a plan for the role they subsequently leave behind can ensure a smoother transition of power and minimise business disruption.

Appointing a successor from within the organisation holds several advantages including demonstrating to your staff that the business values its employees. There is also a smaller learning curve and shorter onboarding time when a ‘candidate’ is already familiar with the business, and therefore these moves can be made much quicker without having to advertise, extensively interview, and screen for the position. In succession planning, you will likely already have an eye on specific candidates who will have already proven themselves, making it much easier to act with agility when the organisation needs to pivot. An internal candidate will also already have relationships with the team and the business’s partners, making it easier to generate support and buy-in.

It is therefore understandable why this is a common practice at the senior level. Many CEOs will have been appointed to the top chair from the CFO/FD or COO role. Other C-Suite executives may have previously held VP, Director, or other senior-level titles in their department or a specific geography the business operates in. Others will have worked their way to the top after climbing the level from the junior level. There is no one clear path to any specific senior role, and a business would limit itself by only considering specific positions as ‘feeders’ for other higher-level roles. What is more valuable for ensuring success is that whoever you appoint will have the proper support from the business throughout the transition.

For those looking to grow and identify a succession pipeline, we would advise you to not only have a view of the long-term vision of the organisation but also an understanding of your wider market and competitors. Openness to diversity and links to any wider talent management practices in the organisation will also provide an advantage. Our experts advise you to consider the following:

• What Worked Previously May Not Work Now: It is an easy trap to fall into when succession planning to appoint the most similar person to the executive who previously held the role. While keeping the status quo may be comfortable for the team during a transition of power, it may not be the most beneficial for the business. Succeeding a leader is an opportunity to bring in fresh perspectives, ways of working, or leadership styles. When considering who the right internal candidate for a leadership role might be, do not overlook those who do not resemble others who held the position historically. Instead, assess the current and future needs of the business, the challenges it faces, and priorities moving forward before assessing who may be well placed to navigate these factors.
• Expect Push Back: As any HRD can attest, it is impossible to please every employee all the time and every decision will have its naysayers. When you promote an internal candidate to a key role, there will always be others who felt they deserved it more and who are vocal about that opinion. Others will be apprehensive about change or may doubt the appointed executive’s suitability, and these individuals may resist or challenge the authority of the new leader as a result. It would be unwise to expect that every transition will be smooth, and everyone will be excited and onboard. By anticipating these biases within the organisational politics, you will be much better placed for overcoming them. Ensure you are clearly and effectively communicating why a specific individual was chosen for the role, what characteristics they possess, and how this appointment serves the bigger picture for the business. Shut down any negative talk with clear points on why the decision was made and stand firm in your choice.
• Communicate Carefully: Of course, how you communicate the succession of a senior role matters to more than just the naysayers. You need to consider how you position this appointment both internally and externally. How you communicate your points will change by audience. Internally, you will need to consider framing the announcement in a way that generates buy in and trust within the team and makes resistance of authority less likely. You will also need to consider that you are not just speaking directly to that new leader’s team, department, or direct reports. When communicating internally, consider how your message will be perceived by the rest of the leadership team and those in other teams or departments that will have to interact with or collaborate with this new leader. What would they want to know? What would get them excited to have this person in this role even though it has no direct impact on their own role? Externally, your mission is less about generating buy in than it is about inspiring confidence that the organisation is being led in the right direction. How you communicate this and what you might choose to focus on will vary. Your shareholders or other various stakeholders will be primarily focused on the safety of their investments or partnerships, while your customers will want to know what this means for your products or services. Ensure you are framing all messages in third party media, social media, the company website, emails, and beyond to hit the points your external audiences will be most concerned about.
• Factor in Skills: Succession planning is about so much more than filling open seats or promoting your talent. It’s about ensuring you have the right skills in the right positions to pilot the business into the future. When succession planning, be sure to factor in what capabilities you will need on hand. Is there someone you can appoint who already has those skills? Should you consider ‘training up’ an otherwise ideal candidate to make sure they have a well-rounded skillset when they ascend to the role? These are all important considerations for ensuring agility and viability in the future of work.

Succession Planning- Preparing for your next step up

While companies look to build their talent pipeline of candidates who could step into the shoes of key roles, individual senior executives need to consider what this might mean for their own career trajectory and adequately prepare. In fact, this preparation can make or break one’s success in their new position. Research estimates that 50% to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on a role, with about 3% of those executives “failing spectacularly” while nearly 50% “quietly struggle.”

Preparing for the next role you’d like to have while still in your current position can help you succeed once you ascend. In an ideal scenario, you would be notified well in advance that you are next in line to take over, train under the sitting executive, and have all the necessary support you need to move into the role. In the current business climate of ongoing disruption, the ideal scenario may not be the reality. You may not have the necessary onboarding you desire, and therefore need to take the reins of your career into your own hands.

Our Rialto Executive Career Coaches advise senior executives preparing to ascend to the next level to consider the following:

• Know Yourself: Many of the executives who fail shortly after taking on a role do so because they are not adequately prepared for leadership. We can at times become so busy that we neglect to think about who we are, what type of leader we want to be, what legacy we want to leave. This can lead to misalignment in a role, imposter syndrome, and mistrust from key stakeholders among other issues. Who are you professionally? What do you stand for? What will you do, and what will you not do? What approach do you prefer to take? What do you want out of your career, and what is the best way of achieving that? Knowing who you are as a leader and carrying yourself appropriately will help position you as a potential candidate for succession and help others visualise what you would bring to the role.
• Know Your Stakeholders: When considering how you want others to perceive you, you must also consider who it is you need to influence. Who are the key stakeholders both above you and below you that you need to gain the support of? Who are the key decision makers for all succession-related activity? What is your relationship to the individual you aspire to replace someday? Forging strong relationships now can prove beneficial later as you will ascend to the new role with an existing network of support and trust among your peers. Knowing how these various stakeholder groups are influenced will enable you to build that support by meeting people where they are. Learn all you can from these individuals and bring it into your new role to maximise the impact you are able to deliver.
• Comparison Kills Confidence: Just as HRDs and the business need to avoid appointing carbon copies of past leaders, you need to be your own person in your new role. It can at times be easy to compare yourself to the executive before you or to your peers who might have also been considered for the role. Sometimes, it may not even be your internal voice making the comparison. If you are replacing someone who was much beloved, others may be very vocal about how you measure up. If you are replacing someone others were not as fond of, the bar for comparison may be set so low that it becomes easy to get away with giving less. At the end of the day, there was a reason why you were the person chosen for the job and you need to trust in that decision regardless of what your thoughts or your peers have to say about it. The only person you should be benchmarking against is yourself. Are you delivering on your promises? Are you living out your values? Are you making as big of an impact as you could be? No two leaders are the same. Focus on carving your own path and creating your own legacy instead of stepping into the shoes of your predecessor.
• Be Prepared to Navigate Organisational Politics: The challenges of organisational politics will not just impact HRDs or the other decision makers involved with succession choices. Navigating hurt feelings, dissent, and doubt is an unspoken responsibility of taking on a senior role. There will likely be someone who thinks they could do the job better than you, and they may choose to be vocal about that belief. You may also have others who lack respect for your new authority, let your existing relationship impact what they believe they can get away with, or doubt your ability to deliver on objectives. These may seem like such small incidents, but they can make it difficult to adjust to the new role or cause unnecessary distraction. Do your best to keep your head above the noise and focus on the work at hand. Proving yourself in the role is the best way to shut down any naysayers and demonstrate that you were the right person for the job.
• It’s More Than a Promotion: Succession is not simply a promotion and will require a fair amount of career development activity on your part. Most succession planning is focussed at a senior level where executives will be succeeding into C-suite or Board-level positions, which come with other various reputational and strategic considerations. Appointing new members of top leadership enables the organisation to pilot itself into the future with the right people at the helm. What might that future look like, and what role do you intend to play in it? Do you have the right skills? It may be that taking over a role through succession requires reskilling or upskilling on your part to satisfy the organisation’s needs. Are you prepared for the internal and external pressures of the role? Your new role may require you to be more visible in your industry or the wider market. Is your personal brand reflective of who you are professionally and how you would like to be perceived? Understanding that this is more than just taking the next step in your career and preparing adequately will help position you as a stronger candidate for a desirable role and help you succeed once you get there.

If you are a senior executive seeking to grow your career, reach the next level and make a game changing career move, our Executive Career Coaches can help. Get in touch with our team to discuss our bespoke executive transition and career coaching services.