In This Article
- Exhibit 1: Companies scoring in the top third of our survey on global-talent-management practices achieved higher profit per employee than companies scoring in the bottom third.
- Exhibit 2: Three of the ten factors show the strongest correlation with financial performance.
- Exhibit 3: Best practices for developing global leaders differentiate effective companies from the ineffective ones.
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Managing talent in a global organization is more complex and demanding than it is in a national business—and few major worldwide corporations have risen to the challenge.
A McKinsey survey of managers at some of the world’s best-known multinationals covered a range of sectors and all the main geographies. Our findings suggest that the movement of employees between countries is still surprisingly limited and that many people tempted to relocate fear that doing so will damage their career prospects. Yet companies that can satisfy their global talent needs and overcome cultural and other silo-based barriers tend to outperform those that don’t.
We’ve long observed that global corporations grapple with a more difficult talent agenda than their domestic counterparts—partly because they need to share resources and knowledge across a number of business units and countries, partly because of the especially demanding nature of global leadership. To find out more, we undertook in-depth interviews with executives at 11 major global corporations and separately invited senior managers at 22 global companies to participate in an online survey investigating how effectively they manage their talent. More than 450 people, ranging from CEOs and other directors to senior managers, including human-resources (HR) professionals, took part...