the latest news & insights.
The Workforce Planning Institute Unveils New Branding Ahead of SWP Conference
The Workforce Planning Institute (WPI) is excited to announce the launch of its refreshed brand identity, in conjunction with the upcoming SWP Conference. This milestone marks a significant step forward for WPI and SWP Conference as they continue to lead the way in advancing workforce planning across industries worldwide.
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The Workforce Planning Institute Unveils New Branding Ahead of SWP Conference’s in London & Sydney
The Workforce Planning Institute (WPI) is excited to announce the launch of its refreshed brand identity, in conjunction with the upcoming SWP Conference. This milestone marks a significant step forward for WPI and SWP Conference as they continue to lead the way in advancing workforce planning across industries worldwide.
Our new visual identity reflects WPI’s and SWP Conference’s mission to be the foremost authority and advocate for Strategic Workforce Planning, bringing together innovative approaches, training, thought leadership, and actionable insights for businesses and professionals globally.
The refreshed brand highlights our commitment to driving strategic transformation in the workforce planning space. It aligns with our vision to empower organisations to build resilient, future-ready workforces that can adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.
A Fresh Look for a New Era
Nick Kennedy, Chief Executive commented: “As we prepare for the highly anticipated SWP Conference, this brand evolution allows us to better represent the innovative and forward-thinking nature of WPI and SWP. Our new visual identity celebrates the progress we’ve made while positioning us for continued growth in the ever-evolving world of strategic workforce planning.”
“Our objective was to honour the legacy of WPI while incorporating a modern, dynamic look that resonates with our global audience of workforce professionals, HR leaders, and corporate strategists. The refreshed branding reinforces our core values and signifies the agility and future-focus that are integral to our work.”
The new brand design features a sophisticated and modern aesthetic that moves away from WPI’s traditional orange, embracing a sleek, professional colour palette and typography that resonates with today’s global workforce planning community.
Launch at SWP Conference – London & Sydney
To mark the occasion, the new branding will be unveiled during the prestigious SWP Conference, where industry leaders and experts from around the world will gather to discuss the latest trends and insights in strategic workforce planning. The event will also feature exclusive sessions and keynote addresses showcasing how our refreshed identity aligns with its vision to revolutionise workforce strategies for the future.
WPI’s & SWP Conference’s reimagined brand will be gradually rolled out across digital platforms, event spaces, and communication materials in the lead-up to the SWP Conference and beyond.
Stay tuned as we continue to shape the future of workforce planning with a bold new look!
The War for Talent – Bursting the Bubble
The two most common questions clients pose to me as a workforce planner are what is best practice and how can we get best engage in the war for talent? Ironically these two questions are deeply connected yet neither need have any relevance in today’s business world.
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The two most common questions clients pose to me as a workforce planner are what is best practice and how can we get best engage in the war for talent? Ironically these two questions are deeply connected yet neither need have any relevance in today’s business world.
Let’s look at the term ‘best practice’ in terms of workforce design. What does it actually represent? It involves looking to those who are deemed industry leaders and developing workforce strategies that mimic theirs. Often, what we fail to realise is that these workforce strategies have been developed to align to the organisational strategies of these industry leaders. Hence, following what others are doing is actually developing a workforce strategy for our business based on the organisational strategy of another. Furthermore, the notion of ‘best practice’ often takes an academic lens and is not truly embodied within the context of real business opportunities and/or threats.
The economic impact of numerous organisations following ‘best practice’ cumulates in what we refer to today as ‘the war for talent’. The war for talent (first coined by McKinsey in 1997) is essentially a buzz term that has gathered momentum over time and has become a ‘scapegoat’ for poor planning processes and recruitment outcomes. It represents a false economy born from large numbers of organisations with fundamentally similar workforce strategies, competing for a relatively fixed pool of ‘ready now’ resources. The term ‘best practice’ is largely to blame for this false economy. Following the same set of processes and practices as other organisations leaves our workforce strategy fundamentally the same as that of our competitors. Basic economics tells us that high demand and low supply forces prices (salaries) up and places the balance of power firmly in the hands of talented job seekers.
Further compounding this issue is the fact that as ‘people’ we think in terms of ‘people’. The obvious solution to most workforce related problems is, you guessed it, ‘people’. If we can shift our mindset towards thinking in terms of ‘capability’ not ‘people’ we open up the options around sourcing capabilities far beyond traditional recruitment channels. Attached is a link to an article from the Australian Financial Review detailing how Newcrest Mining Limited CIO, Gavin Wood used a capability based approach to revamp his IT strategy by developing a set of reusable capabilities to support business outcomes. Through taking a capability based approach, Newcrest has been able to build a multi-faceted workforce strategy that doesn’t rely heavily on engaging in the so called ‘war for talent’. The strategy acknowledges trends like the gig economy and works with these emerging trends to borrow capabilities on a needs-be basis. Approaches such as this aren’t limited to the technology space, they are highly relevant across all business disciplines.
Through taking a capability based approach to strategic workforce planning, we can reduce our reliance on external recruitment to satisfy future workforce demand and significantly reduce the pressure on our internal recruitment teams. Relying exclusively on sourcing ‘people’ (permanent employees) to satisfy workforce demand is very much a ‘shot in the dark’ style strategy containing no certainty, no predictability and too much variability. Imagine a world where organisations knew with confidence the exact capability they required in order to deliver against their strategic objectives and, better still, had all of that capability on hand! Wouldn’t we sleep better at night knowing we could avoid the ‘war fortalent’ altogether?
In addition to providing a variety of alternatives to external recruitment, understanding an organisation’s enterprise capabilities also enhances talent planning and development as well as succession planning. Furthermore, enterprise capability mapping helps mitigate strategic risks through the alignment or workforce development initiatives to future capability requirements. The ability to understand future capability requirements and quantify the gaps is an incredibly powerful asset representing the cornerstone of contemporary workforce planning and design.
The journey towards greater workforce certainty through taking a capability based approach to strategic workforce planning starts with developing an understanding of enterprise capabilities – the capabilities responsible for implementing strategic objectives. Once these are understood, we can develop a map of where we currently sit (through a current state capability mapping activity) and a capability roadmap around sourcing new capabilities or enhancing existing ones can be developed.
The ‘war for talent’ is real…. but only because we, as a ‘best practice’ focused economy make it real. It’s merely a bubble and by taking a capability based approach to managing our organisational resources, we can burst it. Recruiting will always need to form part of our workforce strategies, organisational growth and a healthy level of turnover will continue to demand it, but it should form just that – a part.
For further information on taking a capability based approach to strategic workforce planning please contact the workforce planning institute at info@theworkforceplanninginstitute.com or investigate our Enterprise Capability Mapping training certification here.
The four key issues with most corporate strategies
We’re not experts in the development of corporate strategy. The nature of what we do, however, means that we see a wide variety of corporate strategies across the government, NFP and commercial sectors. Having reviewed literally hundreds of strategies over the years, we’ve compiled a list of the most common issues associated with what is widely regarded as the most important of all corporate documents.
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We’re not experts in the development of corporate strategy. The nature of what we do, however, means that we see a wide variety of corporate strategies across the government, NFP and commercial sectors. Having reviewed literally hundreds of strategies over the years, we’ve compiled a list of the most common issues associated with what is widely regarded as the most important of all corporate documents.
In the first instance, it’s important to look briefly at what a strategy is and why we bother developing one. The biggest problem with the way organisations think about strategy is they confuse strategy with plans (Forbes, 2017). This brings us to our most commonly identified strategy related issue…
Confusing ‘what we’re going to do’ with ‘how we’re going to do it’. Many (if not most) strategies are guilty of detailing implementation actions or plans where there should be strategic objectives. A prime example of this is ‘the people pillar’ present in many corporate strategies. There seems to be a fixation on referring directly to the workforce or ‘our people’ in these documents when, in reality, it simply isn’t necessary nor is it strategically correct. Whilst the notion of referring to the workforce in our strategy brings with it a ‘we care about our people’ flavor, what it does is delve too far into the realms of ‘implementation’. Caring about people is incredibly important, however, it is a notion best left to things like organisational values and behaviours. We must put strategy first – then develop the workforce to execute that strategy (The Differentiated Workforce, 2009).
Take the following objective as an example: ‘Develop and build a highly capable and engaged workforce’. Surprisingly these nine words exist (in roughly this order) in an alarming number of strategies. So what’s wrong here? Fundamentally, as a proposed objective, this doesn’t describe what we want to do achieve as an organisation. If you ask ‘why’ to a given objective and the answer is ‘to achieve one or more of your other objectives’ then your objective is more of an action or a response to a strategic objective rather than a strategic objective. In fact, most often, if the answer is anything other than ‘to deliver value to the customer’, ‘returns to shareholders’, ‘capital growth’, or ‘to support the realisation of our mission or purpose’ then again, its most likely what you have documented describes how you plan to implement the objective(s) and is not a strategic objective itself. Perhaps a good example of a people oriented strategic objective would go something like ‘Increase our training effectiveness ratio (revenue per dollar spent on training) by 25%’. If we asked ‘why’ to this objective then delivering ‘returns to shareholders’ and ‘capital growth’ are two obvious answers.
Most strategies are littered with ‘corporate gobbledygook’. As strategic workforce planners the first thing we do on any assignment is the strategy review. Sadly, the precursor to this strategy review is often the conversion of the strategic objectives to plain English. It’s not often we review a strategy document without reading at least one objective three times, scratching our respective heads and asking, ‘what on earth does that actually mean?’ It’s important to keep in mind that this document beats the drum to which your entire workforce will march. Why then do our executives often fail to consider the breadth of the audience during its development? The strategy should be able to be clearly understood by the entire workforce and unfortunately, is seldom written in that manner.
The socialisation of the strategy is often inadequate. I am yet to facilitate a Strategic Workforce Planning training course in which at least one person acknowledges they cannot easily access their organisation’s strategy or has no idea where it is. In fact, the number of attendees through the doors of the Workforce Planning Institute whose organisation has no strategy altogether is staggering. The strategy is the one document that ties our whole workforce together, the one common thread and the document from which every other plan, action or initiative should cascade. Why then do we so often fail to socialise it, make it impossible to find or neglect to positively reinforce it at every opportunity?
Too many ‘high level’ documents feel like a strategy. If not having a strategy is surprisingly common, organisations having too many strategic documents and/or cross over between strategic documents is all the more prevalent. As you might expect, this often causes widespread confusion. In the corporate sector, often ‘departments’ or even ‘teams’ seem to need their own strategy. This is most often a case of the naming convention gone wrong however ideally, the organisation has a strategy whilst departments such as HR, IT, Finance etc have plans that operationalise that strategy which detail how that department will support it. It is, however, inaccurate to refer to these plans as strategies. Often, employees from government departments, where the existence of documents such as white papers, policies and many other work plans is rife, complain of a lack of clarity as to which document they should be following leading to confusion, duplication and ultimately disengagement.
A strategy, regardless of the nature of the organisation, should be four things. Firstly, it needs to be strategic. It can’t afford to confuse operationalising the strategy with the strategy itself. Secondly, it needs to be clear and concise so the entire organisation can effectively follow it and therefore buy in to it. Documents written by executives, for executives will only ever captivate… executives. Thirdly, it needs to be readily accessible to the entire organisation and reinforced positively at every opportunity. Finally, avoid duplication, crossover and confusion. Your strategy shouldn’t look like a Venn diagram… there can be only one!
Moneyball – 6 corporate lessons from a Hollywood blockbuster
Workforce planning resources are relatively few and far between. There are only a handful of text books worth reading (in fairness, The Differentiated Workforce does comes to mind). When we’re asked by graduates of the Institute about further research and reading material the answer is always the same. Bust out the popcorn, put your feet up and press ‘play’. Moneyball is much more than a great story though. So many brilliant concepts and valuable lessons are littered throughout this brilliant film, many of which can be applied across traditional organisations to help deliver strategic outcomes whilst maintaining a focus on controlling costs.
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Workforce planning resources are relatively few and far between. There are only a handful of text books worth reading (in fairness, The Differentiated Workforce does comes to mind). When we’re asked by graduates of the Institute about further research and reading material the answer is always the same. Bust out the popcorn, put your feet up and press ‘play’. Moneyball is much more than a great story though. So many brilliant concepts and valuable lessons are littered throughout this brilliant film, many of which can be applied across traditional organisations to help deliver strategic outcomes whilst maintaining a focus on controlling costs.
In case you haven’t seen it, Moneyball is the story of Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Oakland Athletic’s (A’s) and the story behind their record breaking 2002 season which saw a record 20 consecutive victories and a place in the playoffs. After losing arguably its three best players over the offseason, general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pit) is forced to think differently about compiling a competitive team given a limited budget (approximately one third of some of the bigger teams) and resources. With the help of analyst Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane compiles a team comprised of players based primarily on their ability to get on base. Many of these players had been overlooked or undervalued by other teams for various reasons stemming from traditional recruitment biases leaving the A’s to secure them for a fraction of their real value. After a few teething problems (primarily the coach not implementing the agreed game plan) the A’s went on to have one of the most memorable seasons in MLB history.
In many ways, the challenges faced by Beane and Brand in 2001/2 are alarmingly similar to those faced by many organisations today, especially given the ever evolving economic and people landscape. More and more, our leaders are facing the same challenges – do more (or at the very least the same) with less. Less money, less resources, less people – the same messages Billy Beane was given by the Oakland A’s owners heading into the 2002 season.
Simon Sinek recently posted a solitary line on his LinkedIn page; (lack of time) + (lack of resources) + (optimism) = innovation. The Oakland A’s serve as a perfect example of living out this algorithm some 20 years before Sinek bought it to the table. We’ve extracted 6 key quotes from the movie which serve as important lessons for our own professional environments.
1. “People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players, your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins, and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.”
Often, people who run organisations think in terms of finding talent (getting more people). Our goal shouldn’t be to find talent, our goal should be to achieve our strategic objectives and in order to do that, you need capability. Capability comes in many forms however all too often the answer is going to market and recruiting a permanent employee. What if we really only need a portion of what that individual has to offer capability-wise or perhaps all of their capability but only some of the time? Are we then not potentially underutilising that person if we engage them permanently? By more clearly understanding exactly what the strategically critical capabilities required are, we can be far more targeted and efficient with how we source those capabilities.
2. “Baseball thinking is medieval; they are asking all the wrong questions.”
Conventional thinking around talent acquisition can be archaic. Every day, conferences are advertised, blogs are written and forums are created posing questions like; How do we win the war for talent? What are our competitors doing to source & secure top talent? How do we compete for talent if we can’t pay what others can? How can we ensure we have the right people, in the right place at the right time? Yes, we as hiring managers, talent professionals, organisations and leaders are asking all the wrong questions. So, what are the right questions? Well, we could consider asking questions like: What are we trying to achieve as an organisation? What are the most strategically aligned & critical capabilities we require to deliver our strategy? What are our options in terms of sourcing that capability? In short, conventional thinking could shift from ‘how do we find talent?’ to ‘how do we source capability?’
3. “When I look at Johnny Damon what I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from.”
Johnny Damon is one of the three ‘star’ players the A’s lose in the off season. He’s poached by a bigger team for significantly more money. This is essentially the same as what we call the ‘war for talent’ in the corporate world. When I look at the challenges faced by organisations in ‘securing top talent’ what I see is an imperfect understanding of where capability comes from. Engaging in the war for talent consumes a significant amount of time, money and resources, often for little to no return. If you’re swimming in the ocean and you get caught in the rip, what are you told to do? Stop struggling, go with it, when you’re out of it swim parallel to the shore (outside the rip) and then find your safe passage back to the beach. The war for talent is no different. What’s the best way to win the war for talent? Stop engaging in it! Stop fighting the war for talent and start waving your own war with your own capability.
4. “If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we’ll lose to the Yankees out there.”
One word – Benchmarking. Ok maybe three words, ‘Benchmarking’ and ‘Best Practice’. Here Beane is referring to his own scouts constantly pointing out which players other (bigger) teams are interested in and/or actively pursuing. We do this all the time don’t we? We benchmark ourselves against other organisations or compare what we’re doing to this notion of ‘best practice’. We look to industry leaders to see what they’re doing by way of workforce strategies and we follow them. How are they sourcing talent? What is best practice? Ok – that’s what we’ll do! When we do this, we essentially put in place workforce strategies, actions and initiatives derived by other organisations to implement their own unique organisational strategies. Why implement actions and initiatives derived to execute the strategies of our competitors? It seems like madness when put that way. Good workforce planning practice links strategic objectives to workforce related outputs via a structured methodology – that’s pretty much it. Good practice around talent acquisition is establishing a prioritised list of your most strategically aligned capabilities and developing a plan to source those capabilities. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated.
5. “People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws.”
Too often, we get caught up in the right fit for the role or the organisation. As a former recruiter, I can clearly recall phrases like ‘corporate presentation’, ‘polished’ and ‘good cultural fit’ being par for the course. I wonder how many candidates with the right mix of capabilities have been overlooked by organisations over the years because they may not have ‘looked the part’ or ‘sounded right’.
His legs are gone, we’ll be lucky to get 60 games out of him….
Why do you like him…?
Because he gets on base!
And there it is. In flagging our strategically critical capabilities, we can cut through biases and perceived flaws and get right to the nucleus of exactly what it is we need to succeed. In the Oakland A’s case, this was the capability to get on base, one way or another.
6. “Using stats the way we read them, we’ll find value in players no-body else can see.”
The identification of the A’s most critical capability (the ability to get on base) came about through the correlation of their key metric, on base percentage (OBP) with a corresponding number of runs to reach a projected number of wins. Organisations who can identify their own set of strategically aligned capabilities can then open themselves up to multiple ways of sourcing that capability including hiring individuals who may have been overlooked based on a number of biases in the past.
Watch Moneyball. If you’ve seen it, try watching it again. This time however, watch it through a different lens. Watch it through the lens of your own organisation or one you’ve been a part of previously. Do you see hiring managers saying the same sorts of things the Oakland A’s scouts were saying? The same old archaic comments about top talent? Hopefully not however I suspect a number of the comments, along with the style of thinking will be eerily familiar.
For support in establishing and mapping your strategically critical capabilities or any other workforce planning related matters, get in touch.
