Most wanted: young specialists and managers

The figures don't lie: there are fewer and fewer talented people who want to take on management roles. This is partly due to demographic change and partly to the attitude that younger employees have towards their job and the responsibility that comes with a management role. Either way, a recent survey shows that the current situation is critical. And the already tense situation will become even more acute in the future. But there are practicable solutions: It is important to supplement your own staff with external specialists and managers as required - and to network this new workforce in such a way that they work together smoothly and deliver optimal results.

The Talent Climate Index for the first half of 2023 shows it in black and white: the number of young professionals who want to take on management roles is continuously decreasing. There is one main reason for this: the talented people who took part in the survey see fewer advantages to taking on a management role - such as being given creative freedom - than disadvantages such as a lack of resources for the "on-top" task (44%), an increased workload (40%) and pressure from employees (39%) and management (35%).

Talent and management talent are in short supply. Today and in the future

While management positions in particular have been highly sought-after among talented individuals in the past, a worrying trend is emerging here: 62% of the company representatives surveyed rate the availability of managers as "poor". The picture is similar for specialists, with 67% complaining of a shortage. Three quarters are convinced that the situation will worsen in the future: there will be a shortage of skilled workers (78%) as well as managers (73%). The reasons for this appear to lie in the fact that more and more members of generations Y (born between 1981 and 1995) and Z (born between 1996 and 2012) are entering the workforce. They have different professional and private priorities: While around two thirds of baby boomers and representatives of Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) have a high willingness to take on management responsibility, younger employees are less interested in doing so: the figure is 56 percent for Gen Y and 43 percent for Gen Z.

Filling vacancies internally or externally

There are various ways of filling vacant positions with specialists and managers. One positive development for companies is the internal availability of talent. The assessment of being able to find them within their own ranks has improved from the second half of 2022 (27%) to 38% in the first half of 2023. Respondents continue to rate the chances of recruiting young talent for specialist and management roles externally as rather poor - even if they have improved to 27% in the same period (previously 23%). When asked for a forecast, the companies see a bleak outlook: 68% consider the internal availability of talent to be "less favorable" in the future. The chance of recruiting talent externally is seen as "less favorable" in the future by 83 percent.

Recruiting specialists and managers externally

Interesting is the fact that companies - despite vacancies - rarely use recruitment agencies. According to the study Barometer Recruitment Agencies 2023, 54% of companies stated in summer 2023 that they used their services or had done so in the past. This corresponds to a drop of five percentage points compared to the previous year. At the same time, satisfaction with the performance of personnel service providers has decreased: While 74 of companies were still satisfied in 2022, this figure is down to 61 percent in 2023. One of the main reasons for this is the shortage of skilled workers. Even recruitment agencies are unable to find the talent and professionals they could introduce to companies.

The freelance revolution is in full swing

Detlef Scheele, former President of the Federal Employment Agency, put it in a nutshell in 2021: "The fact is: we are running out of workers." The conclusion is therefore obvious: if the usual methods no longer succeed in recruiting specialists and managers for your own company, other solutions are needed. What's more, while the traditional labor market is empty in many areas and sectors, a parallel development is taking place that is opening up new options: the freelance revolution. There are more and more freelancers around the world. This means that if fewer and fewer people want to be permanently employed, companies are well advised to focus on a new type of collaboration: The networked workforce. Interim management is a key success factor here - and flexible workforce management is the corresponding implementation method.

💡 Good to know 💡
Flexible workforce management is about deploying employees in such a way that they perform the tasks assigned to them in the best possible way. It is of secondary importance whether they are permanent employees or freelancers. What counts is filling positions with the best possible specialists.

There are many good reasons to employ freelancers

According to "The Global Survey on Freelancing", companies value working with freelancers to achieve selected business goals. These are the most important:

73% Controlling costs
73% Working at full capacity
73% Meeting market demands
70% Improving customer experience and satisfaction
64% Increasing organizational agility
64% Mitigating risks
62 % Accelerating market launches
58 % Developing or optimizing products and services

With interim management to a networked workforce

An interim management provider such as Deutsche Interim AG places highly qualified interim managers with companies, that have a shortage of specialists and managers. If companies succeed in using flexible workforce management,

• supporting flexible working models,
• assembling departments or project groups based on skills and
• forming agile teams that are seamlessly integrated,

they can make optimum use of the professional potential of their permanent and freelance employees. The result is a networked workforce, a connected workforce that offers companies a range of benefits:

• Cost advantage through temporary collaboration with experts in line with the available time and cost budget.
• Time advantage by accessing talent within days or weeks - instead of spending months recruiting, selecting and integrating permanent staff.
• Performance advantage thanks to the temporary support of experienced top talent that companies could neither attract nor finance on a permanent basis.
• Strategic advantage thanks to the deployment of suitable specialists and managers in a variety of areas - whether for short periods, longer projects or extensive interim mandates.

📖 Reading tip 📖
In our brochure Connected Workforce: With Interim Management to a Connected Workforce you can find out more about the causes of the shortage of specialists and managers and why the Connected Workforce is a promising solution.

Where is the journey going?

For our CEO Tilo Ferrari, all of this ultimately culminates in a new professional and economic reality centered around the connected workforce. The basic idea is as follows: experienced professionals pass on their knowledge to companies as self-employed interim managers - from younger business founders to people returning to work to older people who do not yet want to retire for good. These specialized experts then support companies in individual projects, in extensive transformation projects or in the event of personnel gaps. The more effectively the external experts work together with the core workforce, the better the results.

Tilo Ferrari is positive about the future.
(© Deutsche Interim AG, Alexandra Lechner)

"We all have a duty to think outside the box and give new approaches to employment a chance," explains Tilo Ferrari. "This is the only way we can maintain Germany's competitiveness as a business location in the future."