Is Strategic Workforce Planning the Real End-to-End Solution for HR?
We have had numbers on the table for a long time now, numbers that describe to us what happens in our organisations in the people area; well, not what happens, but a piece of it, because, fortunately, there are many more things happening than numbers can describe.
Even so, from a business point of view, we are very used to being asked to relate the objective description of certain aspects to the company's objectives … how does the engagement of our employees impact their performance? Or how can we optimise team leadership to avoid voluntary turnover? These are questions that remain, still without a clear answer because we have not been able to develop tools that describe the relationship between somehow abstract concepts, such as engagement or leadership, with others that are not, such as performance or turnover.
We find ourselves in a dead end because we are not able to relate the people aspects to the business aspects. And without knowing it, or knowing it, we continue to remain in the background on executive decisions because we fail to show the consequences of managing teams in one way or another.
The feeling of not moving towards becoming an important strategic pillar in the company is likely to continue mainly because of the constant need to solve particular problems and not global ones in a reactive way.
What Happens When We Analyse
When we have the desire to start analysing, we have the not erroneous feeling that if we analyse the data that we have been reporting for a long time and extracting insights (or behavioural patterns), we will be able to understand the problems in more depth and with a strategic vision.
But ... where do we start? Let's not fool ourselves, it is not easy, we cannot start from nowhere. There is a basic and obvious premise: to be able to analyse data, first of all we must have data. And, secondly, assuming that we have data and of a certain quality, the result of our analysis must be something that matters to the business because, otherwise, we have the risk of going back to the starting point.
Ok then, once we have the data and some trend graphs, now we will be able to make statements such as: 'we have a higher turnover in the millennial generation than in the boomers, which shoots up among the new joiners', or 'employees who train more hours than the company average, have a higher growth rate than those who don't'.
In both cases they are interesting statements and provide a value that goes beyond the conclusion itself because they open the door to monitor what we are studying. In other words, they allow us to know the history and normality in our culture both in terms of turnover and growth rate, for example. The tools that we will obtain will become an asset of the department also for future actions, but going back to the beginning, at a business level, what is the link between what we have identified and what has been set as a goal for this fiscal year? Are we going in the same direction as the rest of the company or is it 'simply' the observation of isolated facts?
The partial actions that would come to HR to improve in these two specific cases would be like: 'if we take an action aimed at improving the engagement of this segment we can reverse the trend and lower the turnover' ... And they could be appropriate (or not!) but we might not be doing other types of actions with a real impact that would be strategic to achieve the objectives of the company.
The conclusion is that analysing does not help much ... Of course it helps! And I will never be the one to deny it: analysing is the only way to begin to understand, and only with knowledge can we act appropriately.
The question is what should we analyse and to achieve what objective? This is the crux of the matter.
An End to End Solution
The reality is that identifying what we should analyse (and why) is easier than we think. We are just not used to doing it.
You don't need a large number of tools, far from it, nor do you need profiles with a very high scientific depth. What is required is a way of working, a way to really incorporate the strategy in managing teams, the famous link between the consequence of our actions and the achievement of global objectives.
The answer will always be to set up an END to END SOLUTION and work based on it as follows.
First of all, we must be clear that we need global solutions rather than particular interventions because our organisation is global in the sense that its strategic objectives are global.
For example, in two companies ‘randomly’ chosen we could have these strategic objectives:
Google: Reach 95% of the market share of search engines in Spain.
Amazon: Reach a 50% market share of e-books in Spain.
Apple: Reach 10% penetration of its iPhone.
These are fictitious examples, of course, but they could be perfectly real.
We will agree that at this rather nebulous level, it is very complicated to translate to our teams in order to define a workable strategy. But what if we approach it differently?
Google: Reach 95% of the market share of search engines in Spain, increasing 5% of the current share, with an increase of only 1% of the staff in the COMMERCIAL area and a decrease of 2% of the BACK OFFICE positions.
It would already be a little different wouldn't it? Although I agree that it's still not enough...
Interested in learning more about the Strategic Workforce Planning? Take a look at our online Workforce Planning Certifications on myHRfuture.
We must remember that the result of the work of our teams is in each and every corner of our company. In everything that happens, of course! So, any objective of the company must be translatable to the field of people in order to guarantee the “how”, otherwise it is just a vision.
This is the beginning of an END to END SOLUTION, identifying the company's objectives and translating them to the people level.
Translating strategic business objectives into people does not mean wanting to fit our work into the global scope, in fact, it’s closer to the opposite. As simple and powerful as this:
The second and definitive step in the construction of an END to END SOLUTIONS is, once we have made the translation to people, we must identify which specific characteristics we are referring to in each strategic objective.
The most widespread option in terms of characteristics is the development of skills , but it can also be the optimisation of costs in remuneration, the analysis of the tasks/activities performed, the trainings and positions developed, ... SKILLS, COSTS, TASKS, ACTIVITY, TRAININGS, POSITIONS ... the basis is not relevant for the construction that will always be the same, but it will define the framework and the improvement that should help to achieve the objective.
The Answer to all Questions (Current and Future)
I am aware that the title of the section is very ambitious, but at this point I think I can say, with some knowledge of cause, that good solutions are not those that respond to a certain particular problem but those that have the ability to do so always.
Reward Analytics, Leave Management, Reskilling Management, Learning Analytics, Employee Experience, Employee Genome, Payroll & Benefits, Career Development, Retention Analytics, Leadership Optimization, ....
Each and every one of the above solutions are partial and, above all, are built on a specific problem in the field of people and not business.
Our proposal is that the path should be the following for each strategic business objective:
Complemented with the use, if possible, of the best END to END SOLUTION that exists today, the SWP - Strategic Workforce Planning, defined in a broad way as the global strategic planning tool of our employees with a specific time horizon and based on an area of improvement (SKILLS, COSTS, TASKS, ACTIVITY, TRAINING, POSITIONS ...).
The best thing about this approach is that it will be the business itself that through its strategic objectives will drive, according to their usefulness, the new attributes of the employees that will need to be incorporated successively.
A Final Reflection
The reason for everything shared so far is nothing more than to simplify the work of anyone who is embarking on an analytical project in the field of people.
We have seen too many times the disorientation of professionals in the field who want to start bringing tangible value to their companies, but are disoriented because there are too many possibilities to glimpse a clear path to follow.
There is a global idea that seems to me transcendental: it is not possible to advance in the analytical pyramid if we do not manage to build on what has already been built, and to be able to do so, it is essential to incorporate the knowledge about the people we are identifying to what we want to identify in each new iteration.
END to END SOLUTIONS are tools that allow the analysis of all the company's employees at the same historical moment and under the same criteria established beforehand. These solutions are the best backbone for each calendar year in which new global strategic objectives are established.
It will be from them, and only from this construction, that we will be able to make a map of everything that is around each collaborator so that, little by little, we will obtain the intrinsic knowledge.
What to know in order to act: this is the challenge. It is also the ultimate goal of those of us who one day decided that we would dedicate the rest of our professional career to working in People Analytics.
Still want more? Why not check out some of our blog content and Strategic Workforce Planning certifications
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marta Gascón Corella has a degree in Mathematics (UPC), a postgraduate degree in Mathematical Modelling (UDG) and a postgraduate degree in Training and Development of People (BSM-UPF).
Her passion is the alignment of business, culture and people through evidence and Data Analysis in order to achieve shared goals moving forward in an objective way.
With more than 15 years leading teams of Data Scientists in multinationals, in 2015 she founded PersonKPI to dedicate herself exclusively to People Analytics and be a partner in HR metrics for companies. Currently, she co-leads the T&O People Analytics function at Accenture's Applied Intelligence Center of Excellence in Barcelona.
She combines her tasks as a consultant with those of teacher and disseminator in different universities and business centers also promoting, with other colleagues in the field, Meetups and specific meetings of People Analytics nationwide.