How to Accelerate the Impact of Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) through the Organisation Strategy Ecosystem
At the beginning of November 2023, days into my tenure at Insight222, the Workforce Planning Institute’s Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) Conference was held in London. Having been in the privileged position of co-host I was able to engage with many of the speakers and reflect on the event as a whole and recently, I’ve been giving thought to the way that the disciplines of organisation design and strategic workforce planning have had a real blurring of boundaries.
Philip de Neve of Talent on Demand speaks of a journey Back to Future in the evolution of strategic workforce planning, plotting the path that planners have taken since inception of our practice after the second world war, through the ups and downs of technical revolutions, and financial crises, to workforce planning as we know it today, that means many things to many people, from tactical, day to day planning, operational workforce planning and the tie to financial planning out to multiyear strategic planning incorporating the new currency in planning…..skills.
Source: The Organisation Strategy Ecosystem Insight222 Masterclass 2023
The disciplines of organisation design and strategic workforce planning seem to be approaching an existence as part of an ecosystem, linking organisation strategy, through operating model decisions, into organisation design and strategic workforce planning and landing in a tactical/operational space called organisation effectiveness by some, and managing organisation health by others, but typified by practices working hand in hand with financial planning and analysis teams to operationalise longer term plans into costed monthly indications of the organisation shape and size, the changing profile of the organisation in terms of positions and capabilities, and progress toward longer term outcomes by measuring the leading indicators of strategic differentiation identified in the strategy planning cycles. This is the subject of a new Masterclass launched this week on myHRfuture, focussed on better understanding the organisation strategy ecosystem.
In practice the ecosystem is driven by the executive leadership team owning and understanding the development of mid and long term business strategic plans, on an annual basis, and leveraging the decisions made in the strategy development cycle to make deliberate adjustments to the business’ operating model to meet those plans. This could be through the entry to or exit from markets, geographically defined or otherwise, choosing a new technology strategy, or identifying an opportunity to exploit organisational capabilities that had not been available to them as an executive group previously.
Taking both the organisation strategy and the operating model as inputs, the Organisation Design and Strategic Workforce Planning cycles either take a macro view, engaging in full scale design and planning to meet new strategic plans and operating model changes on an annual basis, or smaller, micro, delta or roll forward based views of the same practices, where enhancements are made to existing landscapes and interventions to endure mid and long term strategic outcomes are on track to be delivered.
Where I believe there is enormous opportunity for the People Analytics leader, and by extension HR leadership to have significant influence over the approach to executing against business strategy is in distilling this activity down to a more tactical, and ongoing set of activities that I’m labelling organisation effectiveness. These practices bring together the strategically aligned requirements for the organisation, it’s people and their capabilities and pairs them with the rigour of financial planning and operational tracking of leading indicators of the success of HR interventions. Armed with that data, and taking the seat at the proverbial organisation strategy table, HR leadership could seek to influence the strategic decisions being made about the execution of business plans based on real organisational insight, delivered through this end to end strategy ecosystem.
But, you don’t have to take my word for it. I don’t see myself as the originator of thought in this space – indeed, brighter lights than mine have been shed on the idea that data driven organisation strategy execution as a ecosystem of activity for some time now. My favourite light to reflect with is one Rupert Morison – Founder and former CEO of OrgVue, multiple time guest on the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, and instructor of Understanding Macro-Level Organisational Design on myHRfuture. As well the author of both “Data Driven Organisation Design”, and “Organisational Planning and Analysis” Rupert has long held, and shared the view that the data sets we use, and the outcomes we seek in these practices that are, by design, to support the business to have both the organisation and workforce they need to execute against mid and long term business goals, mean that these practices are tied very closely together, whether or not they co-exist organisationally. You can hear more of Rupert’s point of view on the Future of HR and data driven workforce planning and org design.
It seems to me, that in the current world of work, it behooves organisations to consider their total view of organisation strategy through to the continual measurement of leading indicators of their workforce success to execute on business outcomes. The WEF published the Future of Jobs Report in May of 2023, outlining that there is an expected 23% churn in current jobs in the workforce – churn being made up of jobs that cease to exist entirely, and jobs that are completely net new, and a further 60% of current jobs will shift sufficiently to require new skills to be developed to continue performing in them. That’s a lot of change! Were an organisation able to:
Regularly re-assess it’s best laid plans for organisational success?
Continually update the way it thinks about the way it will operate to execute against them?
And then, ongoing, connect it’s employees with the skills they need to have the jobs the organisation will want, at the right time?
Taking this approach the organisation stands to create a virtuous cycle of evidence lead design and planning. In Carrie Bradshaw’s inimitable style “I wondered…. Could it be a role for people in my profession to help individuals and businesses connect those dots?” I’d be interested to hear the views of other experts in the field. Are you seeing a merging of practice in service of single strategic narrative at the executive layer of the business? Or are these practices still separate from each other, in service of separate outcomes?
In anticipation of my sharing more of my learnings in the space across 2024, let me know your thoughts on the ecosystem, or on areas of content you’d like to explore in the world of organisation and people strategy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jordan Pettman: With degrees in psychology and business, Jordan has worked in HR for two decades. Over 15 of those years have been dedicated to the field of people analytics. He has been based in Australia, Switzerland, and UK, with experience as an external consultant and in internal functions. Jordan has seven years’ experience leading people analytics practices globally with Nestlé and London Stock Exchange Group, with the full scope of analytics responsibilities: data governance, reporting and business intelligence, advanced analytics, workforce planning and strategy, organisation design and employee listening.