We have to stop deluding ourselves. We have to let go of this baseless notion that the current skills shortage is somehow cyclical, and that someday soon we'll wake up to an economy where sourcing skilled staff is again a challenge but not an impossibility.

The problem is now critical. For the third year running a survey of our membership at the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia indicated that up to two thirds of projects are having to be delayed or put off indefinitely due to insufficient personnel to do the job.

When you look at that in the context of a proposed infrastructure spend of somewhere in the vicinity of $400 billion over the next ten years, the problem is significant for Australia's future productivity growth and economic development. Work that needs to be done to keep the rest of the economy ticking over, simply won't get completed.

CEOs are finally waking up to the reality that the current skills shortage, particularly for enginnering talent is not a localised cyclical crisis. The shortage is systemic, and global, and can only be dealt with through a change in the way we do business; starting from the top.

Two points became clear as I read through the results of IBM's Global Human Capital Study of 2008 [1]. The first was that building an adaptable flexible workforce requires organisations to also be adaptable to the needs of the current and future workforce.

And don't fall into the mistaken assumption that work/life balance is an issue for women, older or younger workers, workplace flexibility is an issue for ALL workers and ALL employers.

If we are going to attract and retain our staff we need to learn to be truly flexible in our approach and our attitude. Leaders must work to change organisational culture, not just policies and programs, and these need to be implemented from the top down.

There's no point in saying you support flexible work practices and work/life balance, if senior management are sitting behind their desks from 7am to 9pm, and only promoting those employees who emulate their antics.

We need to shift our organisational paradigm to one where we, as leaders,  measure our peers and ourselves based on results, not hours spent in the office (or on the road or whatever). If not, the subliminal cultural message will speak loader to our employees than our formal policy message does and we will continue to lose good staff.

The other message which came through loud and clear from is the increasing importance of the HR function within organisations.

The function of HR should not be marginalised and treated as a separate operational function that is not interlinked with strategy and management throughout the organisation.

Having policies that value the function of HR in place will be fundamentally redundant if the organisation is not training, coaching and mentoring all staff (especially those with supervisory roles) to understand and manifest the behaviours that are consistent with the policies which build your company's resilience from the inside out.

• HR is NOT just the function of the HR Manager, dealing with people is the responsibility of all staff (employees, peers, clients, customers), and in order to be successful employers organisations need to empower staff to have the confidence to take on the this role, and take it seriously.
• Not only do you need to find new staff, you need to win their commitment, and ensure they don't take their skills elsewhere, because they feel your organisation doesn't understand or respond to their needs.

Because if you don't, rest assured, someone else will.

Megan Motto is CEO for the Association of Conculting Engineers Australia and delivered this address as part of a cross-industry discussion hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia [2]. Sponsored by IBM, the discussion was one of a series of CEDA panels focused on what Australian governments, educational institutions and businesses need to do now to ensure we have the right kind of workforce, one that is capable of responding.