In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, join host David Green, as he and guest Alex Browne, Head of People Analytics Innovation and Data Science at Nestlé discuss the intricacies of reinvigorating strategic workforce planning, with a particular focus on incorporating a skills-based approach for anticipating future skills needs. 

Alex has a unique story to tell, as he and his team have experienced the ups and downs of strategic workforce planning first-hand. They’ve faced challenges, celebrated successes, and rekindled their strategic approach in ways that are both enlightening and inspiring.

In this episode, listeners can expect to learn:

• The hidden challenges and complexities of strategic workforce planning;

• Insights into the unique approach Nestlé has taken to blend centralized and decentralized methods in their strategic workforce planning;

• Nestlé's innovative "4B methodology" for addressing workforce needs: Buy, Build, Borrow, and Bot.

• The pivotal role of technology in the success of Nestlé's strategic workforce planning efforts;

• How Nestlé is preparing for the rise of digital workers and automation;

• The key skills that Alex Browne believes will be crucial for HR and business leaders in the evolving workforce landscape.

This episode is for HR professionals, business leaders, and anyone curious about the future of work and how to revitalise strategic workforce planning in a changing world.

Don't miss this opportunity to gain exclusive insights that will propel your employee experience to new heights. This episode was brought to you in partnership with eQ8, a strategic workforce management tool. Explore eQ8's cutting-edge solutions at eQ8.ai/Insight222.

[0:00:00] David Green: One of the findings from Insight222's recently published People Analytics Trend Study confirmed that in 31% of companies, people analytics is playing an instrumental role in helping anticipate skills for the future.  But how do you incorporate a skills-based approach into strategic workforce planning; what are the key challenges; who are the key stakeholders you need to involve; how can technology help you to scale; and, how do you demonstrate value?  This episode of the podcast will seek to answer these questions. 

My guest is Alex Browne, the Head of People Analytics, Innovation and Data Science at Nestlé, a global powerhouse in the food and beverage industry.  Alex shares insights from Nestlé's ten-year journey with strategic workforce planning, their shift towards a skills-based approach, how they've scaled this across the organisation through people, process, technology and data, and he also shares their 4B methodology: Buy, Build, Borrow and Bot.  Nestlé's strategic workforce planning journey is a testament to perseverance and the continuous quest for excellence.  Alex shares the insights, challenges and strategies behind what is a powerful example of how strategic workforce planning can enable business strategy and create value.  So, let's get started where Alex starts by sharing his background and path to his current role at Nestlé.

Alex, welcome to the show.  Before we get started, can you share a little bit about your background and the journey that led you to your current role at Nestlé? 

[0:01:49] Alex Browne: Yeah.  Firstly, David, thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here.  I would say that I'm not traditionally an analytics person, so I've not come from the traditional analytics roots or backgrounds.  So, maybe a good example for those out there that are aspiring to move through people analytics, that you can come from a lot of different places; before Nestlé, I did varied roles, I even owned a recording studio at one time, so completely different to where we are today.  But I've been at Nestlé since 2010, started in IT, quickly moved across into HR, where I would say I found my home and moved through various operational roles, through that into HR project management.  And ultimately the last few years, I would say I've been gigging in Nestlé. 

So, Nestlé gives a great opportunity to allow you to move around, and so every 12 to 18 months, I've rotated and switched into different roles, predominantly around the HR transformation space, so process design, technology design, technology implementation and continuing with the HR project management.  So, that's really the core and the comfort zone, if you like, that I've had up until the last couple of years.  Amongst that, I have done some gigs in people analytics in the UK&I team, when it was just a market team, and then in the Zone Europe team with my colleague, Michael Cox.  But in the last couple of years, I rejoined into the Head of People Analytics for Asia, Oceania, and Africa, and the Middle East, so quite a big zone for Nestlé, new experience, new adventure. 

But I think it was that experience, all the different elements of HR that I was learning along the way that allowed me to come across into people analytics and head up the team.  It's a scary experience, when you've not got that strong analytics background to back you up.  But I think it's also about the human skills that you can bring, you know, complex problem solving, about collaboration, communication and the other various things.  So, I think that really helped me to develop in people analytics.  And from this year, I've moved into heading up what we call the People Analytics, Innovation and Data Science team, as you mentioned, which is a brand-new team.  So, it's a global team, it's a brand-new team, and it's something that we think is going to put us in a good position to really move forward with solutions and people analytics. 

What I would say as a final comment is, I think that's a strength.  I think diverse teams, diverse people analytics teams, from people coming not just from varied parts of HR, but outside of HR, I'm seeing more and more that that is really driving quite successful people analytics teams, and that diversity of thought really does drive productivity and various other things in the team. 

[0:04:43] David Green: Before I dig deeper into your current role, because I'm intrigued by the people analytics, innovation and data side, can you give listeners a sense of the size of Nestlé, because it's a very large organisation in terms of number of employees and markets that you serve as well, isn't it?

[0:04:58] Alex Browne: Yeah, absolutely.  I mean, we're significant in size in the region of, depending how you count, who you count, 270,000 employees across most countries in the world.  We're quite a small people analytics team in comparison to the size of Nestlé overall, but we do operate a global people analytics team that I'm part of, and then zone hubs within each of the five zones.  So, we split across five different zones globally, roughly an equal headcount amongst most of those zones. 

[0:05:36] David Green: Yeah, I remember coming to a session, way before the pandemic, I think the whole team were together in London, this must be going back to 2019 now, and the energy obviously coming from different parts of the world that's so important, isn't it?  Because you have to be close to the business that's going on in there, particularly if you're in a kind of consulting facing role, to understand the challenges, the local challenges; but then obviously the global hub to kind of give you those economies of scale, but also to the consistency as well, which I think is important.  And obviously for workforce planning, it's that size organisation, it's a really important topic.  I know we're going to dive into that in a minute. 

But Alex, before we do that, I love the title, Head of People Analytics, Innovation and Data Science.  Can you tell us a little bit about that role and maybe what your biggest priorities are at the moment? 

[0:06:29] Alex Browne: Absolutely.  So, I think from the Insight222 operating model, this would largely be the product engine and the data engine as you have that described, so I think of it that way.  But really, for us, it's a central team, much like a centre of expertise that's driving global solutions, global methodology across people analytics, both on the buy and the build.  So, it's really how do we scale the products that we have in people analytics?  This is across business intelligence, data science, and strategic workforce planning from a global method perspective.  So, how do we productise solutions, data products, how do we scale them across the business, how do we create that shared value, was really the key thing behind the team.  So, we've had data science, we've driven SWP in the past, but it was very much from each of the individual zone teams and the smaller components within the business. 

That was working, but we felt there was an opportunity to move faster, to be more effective, to have greater impact, and therefore we've centralised it and we're going to see how that goes.  And really there, in terms of the data science side, is to design, to build, to deploy those models, those data products that are based on data science techniques, to automate, to predict, to help prescribe successful outcomes for the business.  So really, data for us is at the centre, is core, and how do we harness the value, how do we drive those data assets, how do we create a people analytics ecosystem around that data for the different contextual views, the different personas that we may be supporting.  So, we very much as a team face into our internal colleagues and our people analytics colleagues, how do we enable them, how do we make them successful so they can help their customers; but also directly with the, I say, customers and internal customer, whether that's HR, whether that's the business, but how do we face into them directly as well with some of the products and make them the best products we can deliver the best experiences we can. 

From a strategic workforce planning perspective, I'm responsible and my team is responsible for the global methodology.  So, that's the process, the tools, the design, and we're very much responsible for the constant adaption, the iteration of that process, how do we make it better, how do we make it quicker, in particular, how do we automate?  It's quite a manual, time-consuming process for us, how do we really automate and improve that and deliver best practice, and ultimately impact and value?  Everything we do comes back to impact and value. 

[0:09:14] David Green: So, focusing on workforce planning, or strategic workforce planning, how long has Nestlé been focusing on this?

[0:10:13] Alex Browne: Yeah, so it's a topic, an area, a subject I'm very passionate about, heavily involved in.  As you know, David, we've been working on workforce planning, strategic workforce planning since 2014, and probably variations before that, to be honest.  So, we had a great core, a great foundation already in the business.  We've had some great practitioners and thought leaders through the business that have added a lot of value in terms of that core component for workforce planning, what that should look like, how we should deliver supply demand in the business, and so on, and we've largely focused that on individual business units, markets and countries.  So, you could say, if it's working well and you're happy with it, why change it? 

Whilst it was good, we did find there was a couple of triggers within Nestlé that made us think about how we might want to review, adjust and evolve our strategic workforce planning design.  And in all honesty, you know, it's an annual process now.  So, very much every year, what have we learned; what would we do differently; what can we improve; what can we change?  And we go again.  And I don't see that changing, quite honestly.  I think that will be the theme to come probably for every year for the foreseeable future.  But those two triggers that really made us review our strategic workforce planning and make it what it is today was a couple of years ago, so when I joined back into people analytics.

Whilst it was working at that more granular market country level, I would say we had a reduced impact, a dip in perceived value at that more senior strategic level, the higher levels, let's say, within our very, as you mentioned, our very complex structure that we have at Nestlé.  So, it was working with the markets, maybe delivering the insights, but what we were seeing is it stayed isolated within that bubble, if you like, there wasn't really a lot of impact outside of that.  So, that was the first thing.  What did that lead to?  That led to some challenges with less investment in workforce planning, a lack of impact meant maybe a lack of that perceived value as I mentioned.  But also, what we found with having it quite granular and singly at that market level was, almost allowing too many different scopes, allowing too many different methods.  So, whilst we had a way to approach SWP, it was very much allowing markets to do different things in different ways.  And therefore, actually, if we did want to roll that up, if we did want to consolidate some of that into a bigger picture, that more macro level view, it was real struggle, to be honest.  So, part one was maybe the reduced value. 

The second part, I would say, the second trigger would be what we've all experienced, this disruption, this change, what we're seeing in terms of the workforce changing, the workplace changing, the work changing.  I think everybody is experiencing that.  I don't think Nestlé is any different to any other business, that high demand for critical and key talent across all industries.  And start to see people move across industries that maybe wasn't there in the past is now a new dynamic, which is a new challenge to overcome.  Technology, of course, we're seeing that already with generative AI as an immediate impact, but I think we'll continue to see more and more of this.  And of course, the more we automate, the more we bring technology into the workplace, the more it takes on the same characteristics as technology does, as digital does, exponential growth in the capabilities of that technology. 

We've seen the changes in where and how people work, this hybrid, flexible working, they're not necessarily in the office 9.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.  The new employment models and the flexible staffing, the gig economy, which I talked about, which not all of these are necessarily challenges and remain in those challenges, they also open up opportunities.  So, it's not necessarily that they're all negative, but they certainly have an impact in terms of how we workforce plan, what our workforce plan should look like, how we incorporate these concepts into our thinking, our planning, and ultimately our action taken at the end of it.  The growth of the internal Talent Marketplace, very topical at the moment.  And ultimately what I see from a lot of this is that unbundling of jobs into tasks and skills, and then how do we match those skills into the work that we do, how do we utilise those skills. 

So, we've had very good strategic workforce planning, but we have seen these two triggers in the last couple of years.  We've decided to continue to evolve our design and develop our design and that's part of that iterative best-practice approach that my team will be leading going forward.

[0:15:17] David Green: That's really good, actually, thanks for laying it out like that.  I think it's disruptive, good or bad, it's disruptive, technology automation, shrinking labour markets, demographics in the G7 countries, all those sorts of factors really add to the mix.  Employee expectations are maybe different to what they were a few years ago, they're probably different to a few weeks ago!

[0:15:43] Alex Browne: Well, it could change that quick, David, you never know!

[0:15:47] David Green: Yeah, I was about to say, I've heard it described as going from episodic transformation to continuous transformation, it does seem that that's the case and then you continuously need to be doing workforce planning to adjust and plan for different scenarios and everything else, so I know we get it.  What was really interesting, Alex, all of it was interesting, but the first point you mentioned that you believe that your previous way you've been doing workforce planning at Nestlé had dipped in value.  What are you doing now then to reinvigorate it?

[0:16:21] Alex Browne: Yeah, absolutely.  So, I think the first part of that is really, what's our ambition, where are we trying to get to, and there's different parts to that point, but where we're trying to get to from a strategic workforce planning perspective.  So, I think the first point is we have the ambition to have that fully integrated, that highest level of maturity on workforce planning, as you say, transition from skill-based workforce planning across into fully integrated.  What do I mean by that?  That feed of information and data at the right time to the right people, so within HR, various functions outside of HR, but more importantly, how do we drive the annual business planning activities; how is it a core component; how is it a core feature?  So, we're on a journey, we're on that evolution through. 

But as I mentioned, the dip really I think the core was good, technically it was good, it was working.  But as I described, so jumping in a little bit deeper, what we were basically finding is with the lack of that senior stakeholder buy-in, we were finding the feeling that we weren't really utilising the full value of strategic workforce planning, it wasn't necessarily having the visibility, it was too focused on the markets.  Yes, Nestlé is very complex, there's a lot of moving parts, we have different businesses, markets, zones, functions at various different levels, we're across different parts in terms of coffee, dairy, nutrition, confectionery, you know, we've got lots of different components of our business.  But we felt that not only was that something that we needed to face into, but it was an opportunity as well to take.

The key questions I would say that we're asking ourselves to try and tackle that dip was, how can we make SWP contribute to the bigger picture; how can we help the senior leaders understand what those key risks are; and how can we help them see how SWP can drive increased chances of success for the business, for the business strategy?  And I think there's a danger sometimes, and I do it myself, you know, you stay in HR, you talk about HR, but we need to keep remembering to push back to the business.  So for us, the first point of that was really looking at how we operated.  So, we had that ambition of where we wanted to get to, we had those key questions we wanted to help the business with.  So, what did we need to do about it? 

So, I think the first thing for us is, the way we operated before, I would describe it more of a decentralised bottom-up approach, if you like.  So, working for markets but lacking that impact above, and I think that's one of the challenges with a decentralised approach, certainly from our perspective.  But I also think that the centralised top-down approach, where we have just a global team and they do everything for every entity, you're restricted by capacity, so therefore you cherry-pick and sometimes it can be a bit disconnected, it could lack action and impact at the more granular levels.  It depends on the business context but I think it depends on where the action happens, if you like, where are the feet on the ground, what's actually making a difference to the business, and you need to make sure that it's delivering at that level as well. 

So, for us, we needed to engage to the different levels of the business.  So, we needed a new approach, but we still wanted to drive that action within the markets as well.  So, we basically created this hybrid approach between the two.  I would say, you know, not fully centralised, not fully decentralised, trying to take the benefits of the two and bring those together.  But it wasn't just about creating a hybrid approach, "There we go, we're done, it'll work".  I think what we probably all find is, and you mentioned it near the start as one of the key skills in people analytics, I think the same applies for strategic workforce planning, is stakeholder management, stakeholder relationships. 

So, bringing the hybrid approach, we also wanted to change the stakeholders we worked with, how we worked with the business, and the sequencing of that.  So, how could we incorporate all those different elements and parts into our strategic workforce planning?  How could we consider those new stakeholders and the stakeholders we had, and what's their reach and impact, so ultimately what's their influence?  Because we've basically felt the greater the influence they had, the greater we had a chance of being successful and having impact with strategic workforce planning.  So, back to value and impact.

But whilst we were looking at this, whilst we were sort of looking at how we reinvigorate, we found an opportunity, whilst the global HR team was reviewing global priorities for HR.  So, we tried to create that drive for change through that mechanism.  So we said, "Okay, we need to do this, and this is the perfect time, and the external conditions are also perfect for us to be able to drive changes, so how can we bring the data to the global HR leadership team, have both internal and external data, new data, new insights, and reintroduce the concept of strategic workforce planning as the tool to help the business?"  So, we could really help them to say, "Using this, you can understand what's happening in the business, you can forecast the impact on the business, and you can focus on the skills to be future ready.  So, that future work things that you're seeing externally that you're worried about, let's try and see how that's actually going to influence and impact the business".

[0:21:56] David Green: What are some of the challenges that you're facing at Nestlé as you kind of progress along your strategic workforce planning journey?

[0:22:54] Alex Browne: I think strategic workforce planning for most, it might seem a simple concept but it's quite difficult, it's quite complicated, and I was listening to the podcast from Alicia and Chris from eQ8 that was recently published, and they talked a lot about the measuring of the business value, and I think there's some really good strong points there.  And I would say from the four key challenges that I see, and at Nestlé, we're not immune from these either, is demonstrating value and impact, as I've mentioned a number of times.  It shouldn't be a process for the sake of a process.  So, it has to have business impact but that business impact is not always clear and tangible, and that's something that's just true.  You're avoiding the worst case happening, so you're not always recognised for that success.  But it's got to create the foundation of the people, plan and drive action, that's ultimately the key thing. 

Some of the things we weren't doing in the past was that, you know, we maybe would stop at insights, we'd hand that over to the stakeholder, we'd say, "There you go, you're done.  Thanks, David, we're going to the next project", and not necessarily seeing through the action and what the value of that action was and the true impact on the business.  So, I think that's the first challenge that we all need to overcome and we need to continue to drive in Nestlé as well. 

I think generating awareness within the business and the stakeholders you're working with, you're going to have a lot of variability.  It's difficult to be consistent with strategic workforce planning, I would say, in terms of different businesses or functions will have different perspectives and different views.  But I think they don't know what they don't know.  So, it's fine for them to help refine the focus and the approach to strategic workforce planning.  But what I would say is don't let them just drive, "I only want to look at this".  I don't think that that is a good approach because I think you lose then some of the holistic view of what strategic workforce planning is trying to deliver, and how you could deliver some of those actions in a more holistic and rounded way.  And again, I think the decentralised approach, if you're fully down that route, certainly for us we felt that that would be one of the key risks. 

The third would be around limitations of HR to deliver strategic workforce planning, and I mean that in the kindest way, I'm part of HR, I've come from HR.  But I think this is more around leveraging strengths, leveraging knowledge.  It's really that HR business partners in particular, a lot of us will flow through HR business partners to deliver strategic workforce planning in many businesses, and they're a key partner for us in Nestlé.  But they're stretched, especially in the current climate, you know, they're stretched, they're not always equipped to best use strategic workforce planning.  So, I think it's how we support them, how we help them, how we facilitate the connection with the business.  So, it's really important not to hide behind HR, and this is one of the key things we're working on and actively trying to progress is, how do we respectfully, because we don't want to undermine any of our colleagues within HR that look after that part of the business we may work with, but how do we connect with the business, how do we connect with HR and how do we work together to leverage what we're doing. 

The final one, the big one, skills, skills integration, and probably the biggest challenge maybe for us at the moment.  I think skills are critical to business success and rightly so, but I think they pose a big challenge.  I'm not sure that we all know exactly how this is going to play out, my personal view, you know, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of ambition, I'm not certain that that's quite how we'll see it at the end.  But definitely, yeah, skills requires multiple teams to work together, especially in HR, you can't work in isolation.  There may be one team that owns skills, but they cannot deliver that skills agenda on their own.  And it may be the learning development team, but they can't work in isolation, and this is where at Nestlé, we talk about the four Bs.

It's the talent concept, it's been around before, and I know we've heard six, eight, I think ten was the most I might've heard.  Not that I can remember all the ten, but... 

[0:27:31] David Green: No, we're not going to through those!  We'll stick the four with this one.

[0:27:35] Alex Browne: Yeah, four.  But we purposely chose four, David, and the reason being is to simplify the narrative with the business.  We do practise the other Bs, we just don't advertise them or promote them as part of our narrative necessarily.  So, the four Bs: build, buy, borrow, bot, and we kept it really simple.  Very, very quickly we found our business leaders reflecting that language back to us, so we'd not had that previously.  Within a few weeks of starting that dialogue, that narrative if you like, bringing that concept in, they were saying it in their descriptions back to us, "Okay, yeah, I need to start building over here", not that it was new alien words that people analytics had made up, but just in the context and how it was being positioned, it was new. 

So, what skills do we need; when; but in which roles?  Skills do not exist as a standalone entity.  They belong to people that sit in roles.  How do we see which employees have the skills today, which don't; what skills do they need in the future; and, what learning journeys do we need to provide to get them there?  How do we leverage Talent Marketplace and connect that into this ecosystem and way of working, and use that to develop skills, to develop talent; but more importantly, to identify new talent pipelines that were not visible before? 

So, maybe I have a set of skills that are not core to what I do today, not part of my key role, but I can grow those skills and maybe I become new talent for your team that you had no visibility or any idea that I was there, and you may then go to buy externally, which typically is one of the more expensive routes.  We can negate that through Talent Marketplace and through developing the talent.  Even with buying in this ecosystem of skills, what are the skills we need in the future?  Now we buy in those skills, making sure that we're not still hiring for the skills of yesterday but we're hiring for the skills of tomorrow.  But as part of that skills pieces and all of those components, you've got to be talking the same skills language. 

What won't work in my opinion is if across those different platforms and processes, you're calling the same skill a different name, because then all of a sudden as an employee, "Well, if I go to Talent Marketplace and it is labelled differently to my learning experience platform, are they the same thing, are they different?  I'm confused, I've lost engagement".  All of a sudden we've lost traction.  So, I think those are the key challenges around skills, is how do we integrate it across all the processes, the platforms, the technologies; and how do we influence outside of HR into planning cycles and into the business again with those skills and the impact of what skills we might need. 

[0:30:30] David Green: Continuing on the subject of technology, I guess, for many organisations, managing the rise of digital workers and automation is becoming a critical issue. I guess that's the bot element that you talked about.  How are you preparing for this digital workforce transformation at Nestlé? 

[0:30:48] David Green: Yeah, I mean we all know about technology, but we see more and more sort of influence and impact from technology in lots of different ways.  I think from a strategic workforce planning perspective, we need to consider the technology impact in a few dimensions.  So, the first is when we're demand planning, incorporating those digital transformation programmes into that forecasting horizon and into the demand changes that maybe have been already sort of pre-agreed and validated.  But also, being able to scenario plan with any potential future transformations and new things the business might want to do.  And of course with scenario planning, you may look at, say, more aggressive application, you may look at less aggressive application, and then typically you may land somewhere in the middle with the most likely. 

But technology has a big part to play in the future of work in terms of driving that increased effectiveness and efficiency, driving productivity.  But add in that sometimes people are worried about that, and I understand that, but also I think we can look at it as driving value in terms of removing the mundane tasks, potentially the repetitive low-value activities and tasks, so making jobs more attractive, making you more effective, removing the things that really slow you down; and also generating new opportunities for employees in the business, new opportunities to learn new skills, new opportunities to move into different career paths that maybe were never there before and brand new roles that never existed before that technology may have been implemented. 

But with technology comes data, lots of data, so how do you manage and harness that data, process it, drive increased value from that additional data?  But I think the main thing that we need to think about, and I would say this is a general statement, is what's the impact on our people managers through the application of technology?  And I think this can sometimes be overlooked.  The digital worker I see very much could be part of the team, much like where we work with colleagues and employees that are part of our teams, we're going to have to hire, train, transfer and probably fire digital workers at some point in the future, and are our people leaders ready for this; do they have the skills that they need to do that; do they have the knowledge to even understand what that might look like and how to best apply that; and do they know, do we know what success looks like in that transformation journey and their role in order of delivering that? 

So I think, yeah, technology has got a big part to play, but I think it's multidimensional in terms of its impact. 

[0:33:39] David Green: No, really good, and I guess it's a key part of workforce planning, isn't it, understanding the impact of technology and automation on different tasks, how much of a role is going to be potentially automated; when; what does that mean for the role; what does that mean about new skills that we might need?  Yeah, it's as we said, strategic workforce planning is not simple.

So, on that respect, we talked a little bit about skills, in terms of thinking about HR and business leaders themselves.  In your experience, what are the key skills that you think will be crucial for HR and business leaders in the future, given the evolving workforce landscape that we're talking about?

[0:34:19] Alex Browne: I think understanding how leadership and people leaders will impact our business initiatives, how they deliver the business success.  I would also almost describe them as a multiplier; they'll either accelerate and amplify what we're trying to achieve, or they'll reduce and derail.  So, we can come up with all the best plans through strategic workforce planning linked to business strategy.  But if the reality on the ground is that that's not translated and that's not driving through and HR can't do it alone, it takes the full business to deliver, then that's going to be a challenge. 

So, I think probably a core skill, maybe an overall capability or a mindset change for business leaders and HR, is this switch from what I would class as from me to we, so moving away from that individual contribution to how do we focus on a partnership, a collaboration, on win-win opportunities to drive business growth and employee engagement; how do we, as business leaders in HR, support the individual's career development within our business and drive those opportunities through Talent Marketplace and learning opportunities; how does everyone have the opportunity to be ready for that and what that looks like, and to enable that?  I think very much our business leaders, it shouldn't just be a Talent Marketplace arrives as another piece of technology, but actually why does this drive value for me; how can I best use this; how can it make me, my team, my department, my area successful; and ultimately then, what support and investment do we need to provide into our people leaders in HR in order to achieve that? 

So, I think for people leaders we've talked through this podcast already, I think development of leadership skills, I think the leaders of the future are very much going to need different skills and probably largely human skills, listening, collaboration, influencing, problem-solving.  There's going to be growth in digital and data literacies, how do we prepare for that, how do we get ready for that?  And these leaders and HR teams, we're all managing multi-generational workforce and we've got the rise of the digital worker that we've talked about before, so it's very complex.  I think those are the kinds of skills that we need to develop.  And ultimately, I think, sometimes I don't like to use the word "agile" too much now because it may be overused, but I think we need to prepare our business and ourselves and HR to be ready for the uncomfortable, for it to be unpredictable, but to be okay with that and to be able to constantly adapt and change to those dynamics.

[0:37:03] David Green: It's a fascinating time for us to be in HR and in business frankly and, yeah, I mean I can't believe we've already reached pretty much the end of the episode, Alex.  But there is time still for the question of the series, and this may be a good opportunity for you to summarise some of the points that you've made, I guess, because we've been talking about this in many respects.  So, the question of the series is, what is the role of HR in helping companies plan effectively for the future of work?

[0:37:32] Alex Browne: It's a great question.  I mean the future of work is here.  I think HR needs to step up, to a certain degree, if it's not done so already, but it needs to be a co-pilot for the business.  It needs to understand the direction, the challenges of the business, what the success looks like, what risks the business is facing.  But I think more importantly, and you mentioned this earlier, is elevating beyond service delivery, which HR has typically seen as doing to being value delivery and that trusted strategic partner.  I think you mentioned that before and I think that's critical in terms of what we do.  And as part of that is, how do we align on the vision with our leaders for the future workforce?  This is not for HR, it's for the business and the business driving in collaboration in partnership with HR, what's the size and composition of workforce I need; what support is needed for the future processes, the technology, the data transformations that the business will bring in; how do we identify and plan for the external internal factors and build the future ready workforce with the right skills?  It's SWP, you know, strategic workforce planning is what's going to make a big difference, I think, for HR and the business, and support a lot of the future of work. 

But it's important that it's not a once every three- or five-year cycle, it's embedded day-to-day and HR and the business regularly monitor, touch base, see where they're progressing, see what's working, see what's not working and course correct, reset the baseline if needed, readjust the forecast, change the scenario if they need to.  But it needs to be an always-on agile, dare I say, approach in order to realise that business success.  So for me, yeah, workforce planning and HR being the co-pilot are the key things going forward.

[0:39:33] David Green: I'm afraid we come to the end of our conversation, Alex.  Thank you so much for joining me and sharing the journey of strategic workforce planning at Nestlé.  I know it's going to inspire, I think, a lot of listeners, this episode.  Before we go, can you let listeners know how they can get in touch with you, follow you on social media, if you're doing social media, and find out more about what you're doing at Nestlé?

[0:39:54] Alex Browne: Absolutely.  It's been a pleasure to be with you, David, and well done for putting up with me for an hour.  But absolute, LinkedIn of course is the place to find me, so Alex Browne, Nestlé, if you search for that, you'll be able to find me on LinkedIn and follow what we're doing. 

[0:40:16] David Green: That's brilliant.  Well, from Browne to Green, there we are; it's been a colourful episode, there we are!  God, I'm coming out with all the dad jokes today.  Alex, thank you so much, it's been a pleasure, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

[0:40:29] Alex Browne: Thanks, David.