Companies regularly promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet 10 years after McKinsey drew attention in its study, The War for Talent, to the looming shortage of executives, the challenge of finding, motivating and retaining talented staff remains acute.

If anything, it has intensified, bolstered by trends in demography, globalisation and the rise of the knowledge worker. A recent survey by The McKinsey Quarterly revealed that finding talented people was the single biggest managerial preoccupation of the next five years. And three in four respondents said the cost and availability of talent continued to be either a “significant” or “very significant” constraint on growth.