“Talent is now on top of the CEO agenda.” That’s one of the top findings of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2011 CEO Survey.

The 1,200 chief executives polled in the survey report identify “strategies for managing talent” as the area of their organizations that is most likely to undergo the greatest change this year – and for good reason. The world is teetering on the verge of a global talent shortage, one that could greatly hamper businesses in developed and developing countries alike.

Jean Charest, the Premier of Quebec, made the same point in a report produced jointly by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Boston Consulting Group: “We are entering the era of unparalleled talent scarcity, which, if left unaddressed, will put a brake on economic growth around the world, and will fundamentally change the way we approach workforce challenges.”

The coming talent shortage took center stage at the annual WEF conference in Davos in late January, and the issue also has quickly become a priority among federal governments (like China – which is hardly immune to the challenge), federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), educational institutions, and community-based organizations (CBOs) as well as corporations.

Jeffrey Joerres, chairman and CEO of employment services firm Manpower Inc., presented on the topic in Davos. His company has produced large amounts of research examining the growing talent shortage and proposing solutions. (Manpower has also produced some thought-provoking videos on this topic like the one below, in which Joerres makes the claim that “Talentism is the New Capitalism.”)

This issue should command the attention of corporate finance and risk management executives (as well as the entire C-suite) for several reasons:

∙ The potential threat is massive in strategic terms. It includes lost productivity, soaring recruiting and retention costs, innovation drag, and lost opportunity.

∙ If the talent crunch is mishandled, addressed too late, or neglected, the cost of an eventual response will range from extreme (as in, the demise of the business) to painfully expensive.

∙ In the United States, the pipeline of future finance and accounting professionals is thinning out, and many companies already are bolstering their workforce strategies and tactics to stake their claims in this segment.

∙ There’s a fledgling move afoot to change U.S. accounting rules so that organizations can treat a wider range of training and development costs in the same fashion that they currently treat long-term investments in equipment, manufacturing plants, and other facilities.

I’ll be reporting more on the talent crunch and a closely related problem – the widening gap between the skills that organizations need and the capabilities that workers can offer – in the coming weeks and months. For now, I’ll leave you with some of the main drivers of the skills gap in the United States, according to a recent Manpower report:

∙ Times have changed – the jobs that are being lost in the United States to dynamic, emerging markets need to be replaced with different jobs.

∙ Generally speaking, the U.S. education system (like many others around the world) is grooming students for the wrong jobs and equipping them with outdated skills.

∙ U.S. universities are not producing enough graduates to fill the positions that companies currently have open (yes, even in this period of high unemployment).

∙ The retirement of the baby boomers, largely delayed due to the impact of the economic crisis on personal retirement accounts, will greatly accelerate in the next three to five years, adding to severe workforce challenges created by globalization and technological advances.