Diageo Tweaks Recruitment Approach to Retain Talent Amid Job Cuts

The global recruitment chief of drink making giant Diageo has revealed that the maker of Guinness and Bailey's is tweaking its hiring programme, and is still making some "big bets" on getting young talent through its doors, despite industry competition to win and retain high calibre staff.

Speaking at the Economist's Talent Management Conference, Diageo's Gary Elliott said that the group used to focus most of its talent investment on the "top couple hundred of leaders" in the company, but it has now modified its approach to recruitment and retention.

"We're still investing heavily in our top leadership and our development programmes," said Elliott, global talent and organisation effectiveness director at Diageo.

"But our focus has change much more to the diversity of that leadership group. We have a very strong female [workforce] and increasing international diversity within our board and management levels.

Elliott added that the firm has spent more time looking at "succession into that leadership group" and thinking about how the company can build diversity.

"We have been working really hard to build our future leaders and taking some big bets on fairly junior people in Diageo, very heavily skewed to emerging markets," said Elliot.

"It's early days, but it looks like that will pay off for us,"

The comments come after Diageo, which employs 36,000 people around the world and is headquartered in London, axed around 200 jobs.

The move followed Ivan Menezes, chief executive of the world's largest distiller, announcing in January that Diageo would cut costs by £200m ($336m, €247m) by 2017.