What the Thriving Supply Chain Professional Needs to Succeed

What it Takes to Run a Supply Chain

Managing risk and increasing resilience sit at the very core of what it means to design, build and operate successful supply chains.

Keeping those supply chains moving is key to any successful business. More than that, if we’ve learned anything from the events of the last few years, it’s that supply chains quite simply keep the world turning. Although the challenges and disruptions keep on coming, sub-optimal performance can never be an option.

Within the complex mix of what it takes to run a successful supply chain, one nut that’s proved consistently hard to crack has been what has long been referred to as the “supply chain talent crisis”. For many years now we have experienced a shortage of skilled people in the profession, leading to a highly competitive market for supply chain talent, with the financial impact increasing year on year as employers seek to attract new hires.

Add to this the current level of burnout across the profession and the desire for people to find roles and working environments more in balance and alignment with their personal needs, and so the perfect storm of the supply chain talent crisis continues to rage.
The challenge and opportunity: to keep good people, optimize performance, drive engagement and – let’s not beat around the bush here – maintain and increase loyalty.

Navigating the Perfect Storm

Following a process of initial consultation with supply chain leaders to explore some of these key challenges, it was with this in mind that earlier this year we fielded a global survey to find the answer to the question: What does the thriving supply chain professional need to succeed?

The answers came in loud and clear. To help retain, engage, and boost the performance of your teams, the survey identified four clear calls to action for supply chain leaders around the world:

1. Lead with vision, clarity, and compassion
2. Actively support professional ambition
3. Provide the right tools
4. Support employee work-life needs

These four things may sound obvious. Indeed, they should be. But the fact is that in many cases, reality does not meet expectations. If you as a supply chain leader and your team are not delivering fully in one or more of these areas, this should give rise to major cause for concern. The consequence may well be that your people will look for job satisfaction elsewhere.

Perhaps they already have. In these Survey Results 2022 sections we'll dive into each of these areas in more detail.

Download the Survey Results 2022 and find out what the thriving supply chain professional needs to succeed Now!