Family Business In Europe: Talent Wars, Innovation, And Charging Ahead

The Family Business Barometer seeks to show which trends are seen and foreseen within European family businesses. This year's edition turns up a number of interesting insights, such as the war for talent currently being waged, and innovation being the top strategy for developing sustainable growth. Another prevailing theme is planning for the future, with many respondents talking about formalising governance structures and passing management on to the next generation.

The survey also takes the industry's temperature on its confidence level, and the results are positive: 83% of the respondents expect growth in the coming year, with 54% having increased turnover in the previous year. This is good news considering the importance of this sector, which is about 14 million companies strong in Europe translating into some 60 million jobs in the private sector.

Read on for a brief of some of the key results of this year's survey, or check out the whole thing.

The war for talent and the crusade for innovation

The story of the present epoch seems to revolve around personnel: three years ago, locating key talent wasn't even amongst the top five concerns. Now it ranks at first place. For any business, of course, talent is no small factor in success—but since family businesses tend to rely more heavily on their employees, this challenge will be a particularly key one in this sector. Notably, family businesses tend to keep their people for longer than other businesses, so if the war for talent is being felt here it perhaps indicates the degree to which the global workforce is becoming more restless or more demanding.

Notably, other top concerns included political uncertainties and increased competition.

The other recurring theme within the survey is innovation, which comes foremost in respondents' strategies in 2016. It also ranks third in overall priorities over the next two years (being beaten only by increasing turnover and improving profitability), and of those planning new investments over half plan to do so in the name of innovation.

From these results we can see that family businesses in Europe are preparing for future growth by positioning themselves with the best people and the freshest ideas, products, and services.

Charging into the future

Indeed, we can observe family businesses' preoccupation with the future, as almost nine in ten respondents already have formal...