Human Capital in Europe: Forward-Thinking Strategies for Meeting the Decade's Challenges

Companies in Europe continue to grapple with myriad economic and sociopolitical issues: near-stagnant growth in some European countries, financial and political instability, and the implications of Brexit. To meet these challenges, executives are increasingly focusing on an overarching human-capital-based solution to their most pressing business issues: developing high-performing leaders and teams that thrive on challenging work, fostering a culture of engagement, and hiring and keeping the best talent to sustain business performance amid high levels of uncertainty. As we look at how companies—IKEA, Novartis, Nestlé, IBM, Siemens, Unilever—engage their talent, we find that successful talent management rests on firms creating the time and space not just for individuals’ skills and aptitudes, but also their potential, ambition, and engagement with the company’s values and mission.