While our research focuses primarily on workplace culture and its strengths and opportunities, understanding the CEO/executive challenges, viewpoints, and vision is critical to the work we do. We wanted to share these insights with you, as these views and visions of the executives don’t just impact our work, they impact the world of work as a whole.

Collected as part of our Employer Branding and Culture work with leading global organizations, and via a survey conducted in Fall 2019, the results below reflect the opinions of 400 CEOs and top executives in various industries across Canada and the United States.

Through our work as Employer Brand and Culture Architects, we’re fortunate to partner with and learn from CEOs and top executives in leading organizations around the world.

What Matters MostCEO INSIGHTS

Top 5 challenges CEOs are facing in their business, as they prepare for the future:

Top 5 areas that need to change or improve in 2020 to meet CEOs’ strategic priorities:

Critical Leadership Behaviours Needed to Achieve Strategic Priorities:

46%40%37%35%34%

Cybersecurity

Talent Attraction & Retention

Competition and Customer Retention

Workplace Culture

Developing Future Leaders

Accountable

Curiosity

Collaborative

Innovative

Courage

Open & Honest

Values & Behaviours

Leadership Behaviours

34%

Succession Planning

32%

Brand Awareness & Reputation

30%

Purpose

29% 25%

Top 5 Areas CEOs are investing in:

Attracting Top Talent

28%Employee Experience

& Engagement

40%Brand Awareness

& Reputation

33%Succession Planning

31%Product

Development

29%

People matter. Having solid strategies in place to attract, engage and retain your talent is still a critical concern for CEOs. However, CEOs are also recognizing that having solid strategies isn’t enough if you don’t have the right leadership capabilities.

Developing future leaders and succession planning continues to be a priority. Leadership behaviour is still not where it needs to be for all organizations in order to meet future strategic goals and foster a culture of innovation. It will be interesting to see how leadership and employee development programs and strategies shift to adapt to the new behaviours required in the future world of work.

Greater exposure to security risks. With more organizations focused on disruptive change to offer better and faster service and solutions to clients and consumers, the result is a greater exposure to security risks. The good news is that CEOs are aware of the significant impact a security breach could have and therefore need to innovate with integrity.

Reputation matters. Almost daily, there are news articles highlighting the latest organization to face a PR crisis because of a terrible employee or customer experience. Being honest and transparent is critical to a company’s brand trust score and future profits.

Consumer AND Employer Branding matters. Given our new world of social transparency, building a positive consumer and employer brand is paramount. We will see continued expansion in the Employer Branding space as well as the use of external employer brand agencies to help employers develop and sustain a preferred workplace of the future.

Biggest Takeaways