Of organizations worldwide, 58% plan to make cuts to their workforce in 2009. This number is down from 66% of companies that planned on making cuts just 6 months ago. Only 5% of those companies plan on have to make significant cuts (greater than 10% of their workforce), compared to 13% that made those cuts 6 months ago.

The United States based companies were among the more likely to make cuts (74%) 6 months ago, but the new reports shows that fewer companies (64%) plan on making cuts during the remainder of 2009. In comparison, the number of European companies that planned on making cuts 6 months ago (71%) has only dropped down to 70% for the companies that plan on making cuts during 2009. And more than 1/3 of all companies (34%) said they will continue to hire key talent, even as they reduce their overall workforce. They insist on doing this because of the importance of having new talent for the future of the organization. More can be read on Mercer’s Leading Through Unprecedented Times global survey at Industry Week.

Talent Management is a factor that can be overlooked during a recession. However in order for companies to successfully come out of the recession, they need to understand that continuing to hire employees is key. For many industries like manufacturing and aerospace, it is even more important to continue hiring predictive maintenance professionals as well as reliability engineers. Reliability engineers and predictive maintenance experts can be extremely useful to companies and hiring them will only benefit your company in the future. Reliability jobs and predictive maintenance jobs are available, now the organizations need to manage their talent to they are used to the best of their ability.