Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) - Malaysians are an in-demand lot overseas, according to Korn/Ferry International country head and managing director Reza Ghazali.
Speaking yesterday at the company's soft launch at its new Kuala Lumpur office in the city centre, Malaysians, he noted, are known to be outstanding due to the nation's multi-faceted environment, which compels its people to be robust, flexible and ready workers in turn.
Korn/Ferry International recently entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Minneapolis-based PDI Ninth House, a leadership solutions provider that has been in business for nearly five decades.
"We can now bring our solution lines together. From our position as a search company, we are now partnering with companies to manage their business by tailoring leadership solutions that integrate assessment, skills development and coaching,"
Korn/Ferry Asia Pacific president Charles Tseng added: "In essence, we want to groom, and not just recruit. We are ready to offer international exposure to local talents, but the question is: Are these talents ready to leave? The ultimate objective is for them to grow and lead the local business when they return."
Several in-house surveys have indicated talent management as a key challenge that most companies face today, hinting at the longstanding issue of unstructured succession planning.
"CEO succession is one of the most significant business challenges for boards in Asia at the moment," Tseng said. "We see shifts that impact succession planning, such as those of family-run businesses moving to professional management, founders' handovers to successors, as well as government-linked companies benchmarking themselves against world-class companies."
The talent management firm's solutions are to align future CEO criteria with short- to long-term business strategy using research-based assessment tools to identify high potentials to deepen its pool of executive talent.
To help companies manage efficiency and effectiveness levels, internal and external talents are benchmarked against the same validated competency profiles.
These are some of the key exercises that Korn/Ferry prescribes.
"Our knowledge of local companies, their boards and CEOs, as well as our understanding of the Malaysian business context, help our clients nagivate this transition effectively. We are uniquely positioned to build on our global experience in this area and align our services to key trends impacting organisations in Malaysia," Reza said.
