More than 200 chief human resource officers (CHROs) jumped ships , followed by 118 chief executive officers (CEOs) and 56 chief financial officers (CFOs) between June 2023 and May 2024, according to data shared with Moneycontrol by Xpheno Executive Search .
Xpheno Executive Search tracked over 470 CXO movements, including new appointments with vertical movements, for the 12 months.
This is part of the overall 850 movements recorded during this period, in leadership roles covering CXOs, Directors, Vice Presidents (VPs)/Assistant VPs and Heads & Chiefs of enterprise functions.
Interestingly, CXO movements tracked for last year were 10 percent higher than the previous 12 months before that (June 2022 - May 2023). The 2022-2023 period recorded 430 CXO movements.
“The 10 percent year-on-year (YoY) rise in CXO movements is largely due to the significant dip in movements seen in June 2022-May 2023. This reference period of 2022-2023 had 17 percent lesser movements, compared to the June 2021-May 2022 period,” Siddharth Verma, Head of Executive Search at Xpheno told Moneycontrol, adding that the rise in CXO movements over the last 12 months is also driven by leadership shuffles and fresh appointments in preparation for a recovery year.
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However, compared to the 2021-2022 period, movements in the 2023-2024 period were down by 9 percent. This drop in volume is attributed to the fact that the 2021-2022 period was part of the “hyper-hiring phase” of the buoyant post-pandemic talent action.
CXOs shift to manufacturing
The top sectors that saw CXO movements in 2023-2024 are manufacturing (21 percent), banking, financial services and insurance or BFSI (16 percent) and Technology (14 percent). These three sectors are among the top talent-consuming sectors and contribute significantly to leadership hiring.
The shuffling, however, has happened in the ranking order with ‘technology’ dropping to the third position from the first position that it held till 2022.
With ‘technology’ going conservative on overall talent action, Verma said the non-tech sectors have been taking the lead for six quarters now.
According to Verma, the continued focus on increasing diversity in enterprise leadership and the mandate to increase women's representation in the board is seen driving the ratio of women CXO movements.
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Women leaders accounted for 26 percent of the CXO movements in 2023-2024. This is a significant 4 percentage point growth, compared to 22 percent in 2019-2020.
Average stay increases marginally
The average stay period of CXOs who moved in 2023-2024 period is 3.8 years. This is a marginal increase from the 3.5-year average stay period recorded in 2019. The marginal rise in stay period is attributed to the overall lowering in hiring action since the latter half of 2022. CXO movements dipped sharply by 17 percent YoY in 2022-2023.
“India’s leadership hiring dynamics are being positively impacted by the increase in the arrival of global brands and the growth in the number and established capacity of GCCs (global capabililty centres). We are witnessing an encouraging trend of global leadership roles being pitched to be based at the Indian outfits,” Verma said.
Along with the rising mix of non-tech sector leadership movements with the traditional tech sector movements, the mix of global and Indian leadership mandates is creating new hues in leadership hiring in India, he said.
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