Survey: Half Of Large Companies Will Be Back To Normal...By 2012

This is what passes for good news these days: just over half of large companies plan to raise staffing back to pre-recession levels by 2012, according to a survey released from Accenture.

Meanwhile, 13 percent of execs still plan to downsize their staffs in the next year. Another 47 percent said they don’t plan to change the size of their staff at all.

The percentage of companies focused on “growth-oriented activities,” including but not limited to hiring, will rise from 24 percent today to 37 percent within the next 12 months.

However, nearly three quarters of companies surveyed did add staff within the past 12 months, either to support the launch of a new product or new market, to gain critical skills, to “strengthen the workforces that are most critical to the success of their businesses” or to acquire top talent at a lower cost.