In 2013, more than 300,000 executives’ roles have been updated, added or deleted in medium and large companies worldwide. Here are 3 trends we have noticed.
1. Executive Turnover remains high
The pressure to deliver fast results at the top of the org charts (Board of Directors + Top Management = CEO , N-1 & N-2) remains high. 70% of top executives stay less than 2 years in the same role. They might be assigned to different roles within the same company or simply quit the company:
- In 2013, Airlines, Media and Automotive were the industries with the highest executive turnover rate.
- In 2012, Banking, Advertising and Precious Metals & Minerals were the industries with the highest executive turnover rate.
- One executive out of 7 has left his or her company in 2013.
2. Executive opportunities for women are (very) slowly improving
Only 6% of CEOs of companies making over $100M in annual revenue are women. Growth appears to be stagnating, and there are big discrepancies between countries and between industries in terms of women’s presence at the top of the org chart.
Women executives claim 19% of executive roles in China, 16% in the US and 11% in Germany. Women executives have the highest share of Healthcare (18%) and Services (18%) and the lowest share of High Tech (13%) and Manufacturing (11%).
Countrywise, women executives have the highest share in Slovenia (28%), Bulgaria (27%) and Ukraine (26%) and the lowest share in Japan (4%), Qatar (3%) and Saudi Arabia (2%). Check out this infographic for more details.
3. New roles in Digital, Risk & Human Resources expand
In the last 3 years, we have seen new roles emerging at the executive committee level (reporting to the CEO) in 3 areas:
- Digital with key words such as Online, eBusiness, eCommerce, Data, Community or Mobile;
- Risk with key words such as Governance, Compliance, Sustainability, Ethics, Insurance or Social;
- Human Resources with key words such as Transformation, Organization, Benefits or Talent Management.
In 2013, we have seen those new roles expand across all industries. In the last 3-6 months a second generation of more seasoned executives has started to fill those roles. Those roles do not seem to be short-term positions to entice a few stakeholders but have become strategic moves contributing to the bottom line.
Editor’s note: For this survey, we used data from medium and large companies (making over $ 100M in annual revenue) from 200+ countries and 94 industries. We looked at their executives: the CEO, members of the Board of Directors, the executives who report to the CEO (N-1), and the executives who report to someone reporting to the CEO (N-2).
