Absence of a successful pipeline forces organizations to hire leaders from outside

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The absence of an internal succession pipeline has resulted in a tailback for organizations. Around 34 percent agreed to an absence of succession pipeline and are forced to hire from outside sources anytime there is a leadership vacancy, according to the Mercer-Mettl Leadership Hiring Trends 2019 report.

The survey studied over 500 global organizations of different size and scale from different industries. According to the report, around 42 percent of the surveyed organizations confessed to not have any hold on any leadership competency framework essential in determining the leadership capabilities crucial for an organization’s success. 

The report also revealed that the leadership competency framework is also responsible for a 25 percent increased chance of a company having successful leaders in the future. Personality skills (38%), domain skills (33%) and cognitive skills (29%) are the most commonly assessed by the companies in potential leaders

The talent assessment tools for good leadership acquisition include Psychometric Assessments (31%), Task-based Assessments (23%) and Online Leadership Assessments and Face-to-face Interviews (16%) and Assessment Centre (14%).

The organizations which support scientifically validated talent assessment tools for leadership hiring are 35 percent more likely to succeed as opposed to the organizations which use traditional hiring methods only. There was a positive march in this direction, with 77 percent of organizations using scientifically validated talent assessment tools to assess and hire the leadership talent. 

Larger organizations usually take longer to complete their leadership hiring process than small and medium-sized organizations. Large organizations have a higher adoption rate of modern talent assessment tools, systems, processes, and technology.

Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer | Mettl, said, “There is no denying the gravity of an effective leader in the success of an organization. By studying what the rest of the world is doing to raise future-ready and transformational leaders for digitally- transformed workspaces, an organization can assimilate and accelerate their leadership hiring paradigm.”