Companies face looming leadership crisis: Study

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New York, October 18:: Companies worldwide face a looming leadership crisis due to the retirement of baby boomers and rapid growth in Asia with half fearful they cannot develop the skills they need, a study released on Thursday said.

The survey by IBM's consulting arm interviewed 400 human resources executives from 40 countries and suggests companies are putting growth strategies at risk if they cannot identify and develop the next generation of leaders.

Baby boomers will drain companies of valuable knowledge when they retire, while multinational firms need to find people to lead their businesses in booming markets such as India and China, the study said.

"You've got this perfect storm of leadership crisis that is hitting the mature and maturing markets," said IBM's Eric Lesser, one of three co-authors of the study.

"Companies are really crunched both in terms of their current capacity of leadership and also their ability to develop leaders in the future. Three-quarters of the people who responded said this was a significant workplace issue."

The study found 88 per cent of companies in the Asia Pacific region are most concerned with their ability to develop future leaders, followed by Latin America (74 per cent); Europe, Middle East and Africa, (74 per cent); Japan (73 per cent); and North America (69 per cent).

Fifty-two per cent of human resources executives say their organizations may be unable to rapidly develop skills to meet current or future business needs. The study also found 36 per cent of firms said employee skills fail to meet company priorities.

With competition for talent on the horizon, younger job applicants might want to list online gaming skills on their resumes, Lesser said. Many can be translated to realities of the new workplace.