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By Shann Sievers, Director, HR, Facilities and Fleet, Missouri Employers Mutual

Whew! As the economy seems to be settled now, businesses can get back to business, employees can get back to work and job-seekers can expect to find more open roles. Money sitting on the sidelines will come back into the economy as investments in people, training, and technology, which in turn will lead to the innovation necessary to maintain, and then grow, our industry.

Or will it? I feel as though we’ve said both “goodbye” and “hello again” to uncertainty within our sector. We are still trying to sort out changes on the horizon and it feels as if we are sitting here, waiting for leadership of the future to just show up. The year 2014 promises to be one of the most challenging years yet for both our industry leaders and ourselves as HR leaders.  We will be forced to navigate a path around healthcare regulations that have yet to be fully vetted, mounting employee frustration with lack of growth, potential loss of benefits, and dimming hopes of a suitable retirement. Whatever your politics, we are all in the same boat, and it is starting to leak.

In the 2012 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, “Challenges for HR Over the Next 10 Years,” you will see “developing leaders” takes the Number Two spot for concerns HR must address as identified by 52% of respondents. This is a big jump from the 2010 survey, in which a mere 29% of respondents named leadership development a pressing HR challenge. In our business, as in the rest of life, leadership skills are critical now more than ever.

Taking the Number One spot in the SHRM survey with 60% of respondents is “retaining and rewarding the best employees.” This makes sense as a lead-in, since I would argue the best employees are leaders – people leaders, management leaders, claims leaders, underwriting leaders, technical leaders or sales leaders. We, as an industry, need to fill the leadership gap, plan for succession within our employee bases, and do it fast.

Let’s look at the top five challenges to developing leaders and think a bit about how to address them. Here are five must-haves for every leader:

Invest in leadership development. Whether you believe leaders are born or made, AASCIF organizations still need to invest in their best employees to develop and sustain leadership qualities. We are not talking advanced training in PowerPoint here; it is a good tool, but at best, it is simply a tool. Real leadership training involves exposing your best employees to an immersive leadership environment. It is a big investment, but it is a form of long-term planning where you build the best team you can, then invest to make them better. Your people will recognize the investment in them, and both the business and the individual will reap the rewards.  Does the term “Succession Planning” come to mind?

Create a culture of collaboration. Leaders are at their best when the company culture demands collaboration. Rewarding individual success is necessary but not sufficient. Only in a culture of collaboration will organizations have developing leaders working together to bring other employees up and into the circle of leadership.

Develop communications skills. We may expect our leaders to be good communicators but, too often, that is not the case. Communication styles vary widely; what may work for one AASCIF fund may not work for another. This is part of developing a company culture: we need to set the bar high for communications skills, giving employees training where they come up short, and correcting style mismatches before harm is done. Good communicators build teams and trust; poor communicators create and feed uncertainty.

Drive and sustain real accountability. Leaders must be accountable.  We must own the problems we need to solve and own our failures to be credible when claiming success.

Be human and reward emotional intelligence. Yes, I am a huge fan of emotional intelligence and yes, it belongs on any “top five” leadership traits list. As organizations work with emerging leaders, HR must stay focused on helping new leaders hone their emotional intelligence. This is crucial. Please leaders, be human!

Finally, leaders and HR staffs must act now to advocate for employees of all levels – we too must be leaders. HR and leaders alike have many responsibilities. Maybe among the most important is developing the next generation of leaders and being more innovative as times change rapidly before our eyes. Where would you start? I’d love to know.