Germany’s talent shortage

Yesterday we hosted a webinar around the Germany-specific findings for our Workforce 2020 research (you can check out Germany’s fact sheet here).

Our data shows that German executives are more concerned than their peers in other countries about shortages of skilled talent and are more likely to say difficulty recruiting employees with base-level skills is an issue. This problem extends past entry-level jobs and into leadership positions—42% of German executives say a lack of adequate leadership is a major impediment to meeting workforce goals, compared with 34% of global respondents.

On a more positive note, German companies are also slightly better prepared to meet workforce challenges. In fact, 43% of executives in Germany say they are making good or significant progress toward meeting workforce goals—well ahead of the global total (34%). And while their use of metrics and benchmarking also suggests more maturity than other countries, like the rest of the world, Germany still has far to go when it comes to workforce strategies.

Check out our country fact sheets

After surveying 100 executives and 100 employees in 27 countries, we put together fact sheets that call out specific data points and quotes from the executives we interviewed in each country.

country fact sheet - 1country fact sheet - 2

The fact sheets will tell you how executives and employees from each country answer the surveys differently from their peers around the globe. For example, you’ll see that while only 19% of all executives surveyed say leadership is a top employee attribute, the number is even lower in China, at just 4%.  Another interesting finding: job satisfaction levels are significantly higher in Malaysia, where 57% of employees say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs (compared with just 38%-third of employees worldwide).

You can see all the country fact sheets on our landing page, or download them from the SuccessFactors Workforce 2020 page.

Money doesn’t equal happiness: More on work/life balance

How do workplace benefits and opportunities vary from country to country? This new article from Fast Company uses data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to compare job opportunities, earning potential, and work/life balance in several countries.

Among the key findings is that money doesn’t always equal happiness. While America tops the household income and financial wealth list with an average household disposable income of $38,001 per year, they fall to the bottom of the list when it comes to happiness, health, and work/life balance—there, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are in the lead.

We are looking into many of these topics in-depth in our surveys and will have preliminary results to share with you in the next few weeks. In the meantime, check out Debra D’Agostino’s post about our Workforce 2020 project on LinkedIn.