Executive leadership teams may consider profit maximization one of many key priorities for their organization. As a result, new initiatives and expenditures may focus on increasing productivity and cutting excess costs to see fruitful returns for all over time. 

While this continues to be integral to success, executive leaders have shifted the mindsets of their organizations in recent years. Gone are the days of solely pushing profit. Instead, leaders want to promote valuable offerings and organizational impact. Though the shift toward purpose-driven mindsets is often incremental, it has lasting effects on organizational cultures and hiring trends. 

Consider Intuit, a prominent financial-software company. Though it successfully released desktop software solutions to consumers in its early days, Intuit began to plateau in profit. Their business executives responded quickly, allotting 10% of each employee’s time to explore new ideas. Rather than selling a singular product, they funded innovative concepts — shifting the organizational culture to center around continued innovation and education. 

Over a decade later, the company has doubled its customers to 50 million, doubled revenue, tripled earnings, and increased value from $10 billion to $60 billion. This tactic is tried and true — we see more leadership teams searching for ways to shift the mindsets of their workforce toward increasing value. 

Continuing the transition to a new normal has not been without challenges. Leadership teams this year have had to remain agile in adapting to today’s hiring trends — striving to keep the workforce happy and engaged while maintaining their market share. 

Business executives have faced the difficult task of electing where their practices take place. Their workforce has become comfortable working from home despite pushes for a return to the office. Nearly 90% of companies plan on implementing return-to-office policies by the end of 2024, but their workforce overwhelmingly supports a hybrid approach. 

A Bankrate study found that nearly 68% of full-time U.S. workers want to work at least one day a week at home. Given the sentiments expressed by the workforce, executives today remain conscientious in creating policies that help recruit, retain, and engage. 

Beyond that, leaders are keeping up with constant digital disruption. Cutting-edge technologies, from virtual reality to advanced machine learning, create new digital ecosystems. Non-traditional competitors use this to their advantage, finding new outlets to transform the value of products and services. Most businesses will be unable to keep up with hiring trends and grow their market share without a proactive approach to leadership. 

Effective leadership hinges on defined power dynamics. Authority over the workforce allows leaders to direct outcomes and make tough calls when necessary. However, business executives this year impacted public and private perceptions by leading with empathy first. 

Empathic leadership does not mean leniency toward different missteps — it means addressing overarching anxieties, stressors, and social issues. Studies by the Center for Creative Leadership revealed that empathy highly correlates to job performance. Those shown empathy from management were generally rated as better performers in their jobs.

Sensitivity is crucial as the workforce becomes increasingly overwhelmed. The Microsoft Work Trend Index found that nearly 48% of employees and 53% of managers today report feeling burned out. Executives this year have had to evaluate how to incorporate empathy into their business practices to keep employees performing at their best. 

As your partner in executive leadership, Ksquared Search notes emerging hiring trends and implements quality considerations into every search. 
As we kick off a new year, our team stands at the ready — waiting to help you find a visionary business executive to inspire and improve your organization. Contact Ksquared today to start the executive search process today.