Talent Strategists take note – a stealth optimism is taking hold not only in the U.S., but around the world.  The S&P 500 has increased by 20% since early July.  Many emerging markets have performed even better.  And according to Bloomberg News, more U.S. executives than ever are increasing forecasts compared with those lowering them and that the last time executives were this optimistic stocks climbed 39 percent over the next 3 1/2 years.  Yet we believe that maintaining momentum will require talent.  Are you ready to resume the intense competition for talent that raged before the recession struck?  Are your plans in place?

You no doubt saw the Labor Department announce last Friday that employers had added 151,000 jobs in October, more than twice the median economist prediction.  If you’ve resumed hiring, do you have enough talent intelligence to hire just the right talent for just the right roles, or does a lack of visibility into the workforce create inefficiencies?  Join Sharad Thankappan for “Measuring and Closing the Talent Intelligence Gap,” an overview of how organizations use workforce analytics.  He will share the most valuable workforce metrics as ranked by both HR and line of business leaders while offering examples not only of common challenges faced by organizations in capturing, and using workforce analytics but examples of how to overcome these challenges.

Also last Friday, the Federal Reserve announced that U.S. consumer borrowing unexpectedly increased in September by the most in two years, led by a surge in non- revolving credit such as college loans and auto financing.  We’ll all benefit if people are feeling a bit more optimistic about their economic futures, but if those same people have been helping their employers do more with less over the past two years, their optimism might just be countered by deep, and sometimes dangerous fatigue.  Michael Lee Stallard, President of E Pluribus Partners can help you to better understand the toll that employee burnout takes on a workforce and how to combat it.

The bottom line is that you should be kicking your workforce planning efforts into high gear as the recovery accelerates.  Of course, that can be easier said than done.   While global competition has mandated hyper-speed in bringing products and services to market, the traditional solution of adding headcount when demand ramps up is no longer sufficient.  Further, the innovation that will be required to lead organizations into the future is stunted by the inability to attract and deploy talent effectively.  If you can relate to these workforce planning challenges, join HCI and other forward-looking leaders, for our third annual Strategy and Workforce Planning Conference, January 11 and 12, 2011, in San Francisco, CA. 

Finally, as you reassess your workforce for the stealth recovery, are you taking advantage of Talent Management Software?  If so, we want your opinion on talent management software as part of our latest survey.  The survey will require only 15 minutes of your time and will attempt to identify the chief issues and concerns facing senior leaders like you.  We’re gathering benchmarking data on average  spend on talent management software per employee, end-user abilities to effectively use the software, and more.