Within 20 years almost half of our current workforce will be gone. Starting now and increasing every year we will experience a shortage of workers to open positions.

The result of these changes will increase the need for companies to begin strategizing more about finding and keeping talent. With fewer workers for every open job, companies will increasingly need to identify and benchmark the workers with the talents to execute the job well. In addition, companies will need to prepare their leaders with the skills to keep those employees.

Starting in 1955, Predictive Index (www.predictivegroup.com), began helping companies to understand the critical behaviors associated with top performance. PI provides data to 75 of the Fortune 250 and benchmarks top performance in more than 120 countries. The PI tools provide simple, accurate, and easy to use data that enables companies to make decisions that impact their sales, turnover and talent retention.

Dave O'Brien, a vice president with PI, and a highly sought after and respected expert in this field, believes that great companies in today's climate understand the need to identify the talent that will perform in a specific job. He helps his clients understand key performance drivers: proactively vs. reactively, social vs. technical, risk tolerant vs. risk averse, careful with rules vs. casual with rules, quick to connect with people vs. cautious when connecting with people and formal vs. informal. While not a matter of good vs. bad, these factors allow clients to match talent to jobs and know how to support them.

The talent marketplace for the next 20 years will demand that great companies maintain and increase their vigilance to identify benchmark and retain the right team. While many tools exist to aid a company with this mission, PI has for over 50 years, studied and accumulated the key performance intelligence their clients need.

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Dave McLurg is the founding partner of Organic Growth International, a strategic advisory and venture capital firm.