This Survey Reveals What CEOs are Worried About in 2019

What keeps CEOs awake at night? If it’s an external factor, well, you just have to hope for the best. But what if it’s something within your control? The internal factors?

A survey conducted by The Conference Board polled over 800 CEOs about the biggest business challenges they expect to face this year. In this survey, they revealed their top external worries such as trade and politics as well as their top internal concerns.

Here are the top three internal concerns for employers in 2019

1. Attracting and retaining best employees

Coming up as the number one concern for employers, this comes as no surprise given the challenges posed by today’s competitive labour market. With so many work opportunities are out there, it’s easy to understand why. Not to mention, Malaysia’s unemployment rate is at 3.3%.

Employers need to remember that short-term financial metrics are just one part of the solution, especially in this economic environment. As employers, you need to:

• Place even more emphasis on building and maintaining a strong company culture

• Constantly measure improve their “people metrics” (attrition, diversity, engagement) to make their organisation attractive and an enticing place to work.

Focusing on these factors can help retain an organisation’s best employees. Turnovers can take a huge toll on the bottom line:

When a worker leaves, it costs employers an average of 33% of the worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement.

2. Creating new business models because of disruptive techs

Many companies that thrived in the 90s have gone down, most of them failed because they could not innovate and adapt to the current times.

The digital economy is not slowing down anytime soon, so it’s understandable why this is a major concern for employers when they want to create new business models in 2019.

Here are a few investments that employers should consider:

• Expand market opportunity by enhancing a physical product with complementary services.

• Focus on solution selling. Companies that provide services have the chance for deeper, longer-lasting relationships with their customers.

3. Developing next-gen leaders

This is the third biggest challenge for employers: developing leaders for the next generation. The survey showed that CEOs recognise the need to invest in succession planning for future achievement.

But here’s where it gets tough. In the future, many jobs that exist today won’t exist in the future. It’s impossible to predict new roles that will be created. Right now, there’s only 1 solution:

Employers need to invest in continuous learning for their employees.

In order to stay successful, businesses need to focus on modernising employees skills. For example: FedEx partnered with higher education organisations that teach through online courses. Employees are rated according to their mastery of new skills rather than how much time they put into the learning process.

CEO’s fears in these three areas are understandable. But they should know that these issues are manageable, if they have the right game plan.

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Source: CNBC

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