Episode 79: Taking a Skills-Based Approach to Workforce Planning (Interview with Ralf Buechsenschuss)

In this episode of the podcast, Ralf Buechsenschuss, Global Head of Org Design, Analytics and Digitalisation at Zurich Insurance Company, speaks about the future of work, which we both agree is most definitely already here, and how it necessitates a skills-based approach to workforce planning. 


The unpredictability and pace of change facing organisations today is, without a doubt a major challenge, a challenge only exacerbated since the start of the pandemic. It is a skills-based approach to workforce planning that has the potential to position the HR function as a strategic partner to the business, by addressing business priorities as they arise.  


Throughout this episode, Ralf and I discuss:

• Why it is high time to stop viewing workforce planning as a cyclical process, and instead view the starting points of any workforce planning activity as the business strategy and in particular specific business challenges, as they arise

• Ralph's ingenious use of organisational network analysis and workforce planning to understand the flow of expertise throughout the organisation

• How workforce planning and org design can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, and how bringing both under the same umbrella can help HR deliver more value to the business

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Techwolf. To learn more, visit techwolf.ai.

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome Ralf Buechsenschuss, Global Head of Org Design, Analytics and Digitalisation at Zurich Insurance Company, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Welcome to the show, Ralf, it is great to have you on the show. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your role at Zurich Insurance?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: Of course. So, at the moment I am head of org design, analytics and digitalisation and we look very broadly on the topics of people analytics, workforce planning, data driven org design, and digitalisation, to really ensure that we bring those insights, not only to our senior stakeholders but also I would say to our employees, to ensure that we make data-based decisions about what people know in our workforce. 


David Green: It is great that you have got all those elements together. What is the thinking of bringing people analytics, org design, and workforce planning together?

Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, in detail I will touch on that at a later stage, but I think it is very important to not look at, for example analytics, in isolation. It is really leveraging that analytical capability and link it to a purpose or to your strategy and that comes to life through strategic workforce planning. So really understanding where do we want to take our business and bringing in the right insights, through our analytics capability, into these strategic conversations.  


David Green: We have met before in previous roles that you have done. You have been in the people analytics field for around a decade now, if we think back to 2011, 10 years ago, people analytics has changed dramatically since then. What are some of the big changes that you have seen during that time?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: I think technology is a huge driver because at the end of performing quite sophisticated analysis, back in the day, it was quite complicated. There were tools like Excel Advanced Analysis and then in the early stages, some other statistical tools you could use. I think today technology changed significantly how you perform at your analysis and bring analytics to life and also scale that up to the whole entire workforce. Also, I would say, analytics isn’t staying anymore within HR, you can really scale it up across the whole business thanks to new technologies.  


David Green: Yeah, it is interesting actually, we do an annual research survey at Insight222, and last year we actually asked over 60 global companies, where are the three areas where people analytics is adding most value in your organisation? And actually, the category that came out top was business. Business being things like understanding sales, thinking about compliance, thinking about risk, and everything else, which is very different to what we would have seen 10 years ago when it probably would have been that the top use cases that would have come out, would be to study attrition, to help make recruiting more efficient, and everything else. 


So, as you said, there does seems to have been a little move away from people analytics focused on HR, to people analytics focused on the business and the workforce as I know you are looking at the moment.

So, we have looked briefly on how people analytics has evolved. What are your views on the role that people analytics has to play in the future of work?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: I think in the future of work, and I think the future of work may already be here, especially as we saw that digitalisation and the use of new technology got accelerated at a very fast pace. I think the role of people analytics in many companies and what we could see is that it is helping people to really understand how they really can stay relevant in the labour market. And where we do have to up-skill, re-skill, analytics can actually provide a very clear view where you as a professional, have to re-skill and up-skill based on new technologies, or new requirements with your job, and really can give you this tailored view instead of saying, well, go to the learning management system and good luck with the 10,000 courses we have there. 
I would say that analytics is really flipping it around and actually saying, hey, look, you are a professional and you have these kinds of skills, you have this profile and actually, if you want to progress in your career towards job ABC, you have to actually close this skill gap. So, go to the learning management system, these are your recommendations, and this is the way you can grow. 

And analytics is, in the end I think, the enabler to help people navigate, especially through these times of uncertainty. 


David Green: Yeah, I like that because it is like using analytics to help guide employees make decisions, as you said, around what they learn and how that helps them develop their careers within an organisation. And I guess then at the same time by doing that, it gives the organisation itself, information that supports around workforce planning, around investment in particular learning resources etc.

So, let's get into some of the recent work that you have been doing on workforce planning. This is an area that is seeing huge interest amongst our audience and also clients at Insight222. We have worked with about 80 organisations as part of the Insight222 people analytics program, and actually the topic they really wanted us to work on a co-creation basis with, over the last sort of 12 to 18 months, was around workforce planning.

That research that we then undertook in workforce planning, shows in particular how organisations are keen to adopt a skills-based approach to workforce planning.

What do you think are some of the things driving this trend?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: Well, I think workforce planning, in a very traditional sense, was always looking at more capacity planning. How many people do we need? What is the supply and demand of the workforce?

Potentially, if you are going through the huge disruption in many industries like digitalisation, you are also factoring automation to say okay, how can I actually perform the same amount of work with less people? Because technology is actually enabling me, or me as a company, to do work more efficiently.  

I think building on that, what we see is that if you give employees new technologies and actually you are augmenting employees to be more efficient and being able to do more work, or work in a better way, you also have to think about the skills. And I think that adds a very new dimensions to workforce planning, to not only think about how many people will I need, what is the supply and the demand, it is also, which kind of employee do I need and what are actually the critical skills and capabilities we need as an organisation, and then break it down to an individual level to say, okay, what is it we have today? 


Then looking at the strategy overall of the company, of a function, of the line of business, and actually saying the people we have today to which extent are they actually set up for success, in terms of capabilities, to execute on our priorities?

 And I think this is really a crucial element where we see, especially in the context of digitalisation to say, how can we really set up our employees with the right skills? 
Then building in a third dimension which is org design, to say, we know how many people we need, which kind of skills and capabilities do we need? What is also then the right organisational setting? And then in the end closing the loop, also looking into the org design to really ensure that we can execute our business priority in the right way and really leveraging the full analytic capability through data revenue.  


David Green: The automation seems to be driving a lot of this shift towards skills-based because as you said, certain tasks can be automated and that means that we need to look at some of the skills. So new skills are going to be required, if we think about how industries are being disrupted by technology, and by automation, and what that means from a customer perspective, it means that probably even traditional organisations and traditional industries are delivering things in a different way, in new ways. 


That requires different skills, and it is important to understand what those skills are, isn't it? As you said, understand do we have those skills in the organisation at the moment? Can we grow those skills within the organisation? Do we need to bring new skills in? I liked that way that you have got that third dimension of, okay, how do we structure the organisation moving forward?  

I guess that question I asked you at the start about why you pull those areas of people analytics, workforce planning, and org design together? You have just kind of answered that with your answer there.

So, in a practical sense, how does workforce planning deliver value to the business? And how do you communicate that value to gain further buy-in and engagement from business stakeholders? 
Because I think the challenge around workforce planning is it can just become a tick box exercise, but you can actually measure the impact that it can have.  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: Well, I think it is really bringing people planning together with business planning and really ensuring that we look at our business strategy sitting at the same table and actually laying out what are the people related risks, if we want to implement our strategic priorities?

 Workforce planning comes to life there, I think in a very natural way, but it is not perceived as a HR process, so we don't go through the workforce planning each year. That is a process and as you say, we just tick the box. No, it is really to say, how can we actually ensure that when we launch a plan and execute on our business priorities, 
what is the impact on the workforce? Are we really set up for success? And what are the different areas where we have to ensure that we have the right amount of people, the right skills and capabilities, and also the right organisational set up, to really deliver what we want to deliver and not to say, oh actually we want to enter into a new market, launch a new product, but we actually don't have the right people. Or actually our organisation is not really ready to move into a new business venture. And then workforce planning comes alive in a very natural way because it is part of that strategic discussion with the business.

I think it also lifts up the understanding of HR, because it's not looking at an HR process, it is really trying to say, how can we be delivering on our business strategy? And having that conversation with the different business stakeholders and then pulling in the right expert across HR. If it is about capability building, we bring in the experts on training, capability building. If it is about recruitment, you bring in the experts on recruitment, and so on, and so on.  


David Green: Yeah. What I would be interested in as well is how do you understand the skills of the workforce? What ways do you understand the skills that you got?

I guess the skills that you need comes a little bit from looking at the business, looking at some external data out there, maybe looking at what competitors are doing and where they are hiring, but I am really interested to understand how you understand the skills of the people you have got?


Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, it all starts the same as the strategic priorities. So, we say, okay we really understand where do we want to take the business? And then from there we identify what are the organisational capabilities we need? For example, saying okay, we have to automate certain processes, we have to create an outstanding customer experience, we have to build certain data science capability. I think these are all certain elements that everybody is seeing, when we go through digitalisation.  

Then if you break that down and say actually, if we look at the different functions, what are the trainable skills at an employee level? 


So, if you think about a professional in a specific function, what are the skills this employee needs to deliver on the strategic priorities? And then we run assessments on the skills to see what is the proficiency level of an individual or of all individuals in these specific functions, on all of these strategic skills we will need?

Then in line, as a business you can quickly identify what are the gaps to the desired end stage? And you can then bring in the content on training. How can we up-skill and re-skill people? And define the up- skilling and re-skilling plans, as well as seeing how do we have to actually mobilise people internally? And how can we actually bring the right people where they are most needed? And so on, and so on.  


David Green: Obviously this is a process that just goes on, because you are always having to adapt, and develop, and learn.

What is some of the feedback that you have had from the business to date? And what is particularly working well? 


Ralf Buechsenschuss: I think when it comes to especially the digital skills and the digital capabilities, I think there is quiet a good understanding and generalisation on the skills we have needed all our lives, it is quite well known who has which kind of skills and capabilities.

When it comes to the new digital capabilities, in many cases, it is not that clear who has which kind of skill or if you even have people with these new skills.

So, in the end getting a clear baseline, where do we stand, and getting an inventory, is very helpful. To actually know what we have, to be aware of certain needs to develop some capabilities so that we are actually in a good position to deliver on our priorities. 
 

But just having that clarity and that baseline is the first value we deliver to the business.  


David Green: Yeah, it is that clarity, isn't it, because you need to know that starting point so you know what actions to take and then you can track progress and understand if you are closing that gap and how quickly. 


I also know, from previous conversations, that you are using organisational network analysis as part of your skill-based approach. I think that is something that I know listeners would be really interested to understand more about, can you tell us a bit more about how you using organisational network analysis as part of your skills-based approach to workforce planning? 


Ralf Buechsenschuss: That is actually quite an exciting story because we started some years ago. When we were exactly in these kinds of conversations, we have to build this digital capability in a specific business, it was yeah, well actually we don't really know who has these digital capabilities. Potentially, I know somebody there, but he is actually in a different function, we always ask that guy because he is really good. 
And actually, if we have this critical capability sitting across the whole organisation, in different pockets here and there, we can apply network analysis so we can actually understand the network of expertise and how expertise is flowing through the organisation.

We all know the org chart and the formal structure, but actually if you look at critical capabilities, they are not mapped out on an org chart, their expertise is getting hold by experts and they sit all across the organisation. Are they needed in a specific function in the business or is it all across?

That is when we said, okay, let's try to identify on specific capabilities, what actually are the capability networks in different parts of the organisation. We actually said, again, what is the whole baseline when it comes to this capability? Who do people reach out to when they need expert advice in specific areas of expertise? And how can we actually strengthen this expertise network and leverage, for example, the hidden experts, giving them more visibility and really leveraging and tapping into the capabilities we already have.

Then also let's combine it with some re-skilling and up-skilling to see how can we actually build on the capability we have, the visible one, the hidden one? But also bring in new capabilities and plug them into the network. 


And that is also a nice link to our org design because in the end you are making an organisation work and you leverage the informal network and the informal organisation, which actually without analytical capability and network analysis wouldn't be possible because you don't know how people are connected, how expertise is flowing through the organisation. 


Bringing our analytical capability into the planning process to really decode how different expertise networks, or capability networks are connected, created quite huge demand directly from the business to deliver these kinds of analytical propositions as part of strategic workforce planning. 


David Green: That is fascinating. It is really interesting. That is a great use of network analysis. How did you actually do that? Was that active base in terms of survey, or was there a passive network analysis as well, or a bit of both?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, we do it consciously, always with the active approach. So we really reach out directly to the people, explaining to them the whole purpose of the exercise and really asking them who they reach out to get certain experts advice on specific critical capabilities?

Then in the end in the back office we just stitched it together and then created the different views on the different networks.  


David Green: I suppose, what is fascinating there is you can see how people collaborate or reach out to that, that expertise both within teams, but between teams. You can see teams that are working well together, and I guess you can, I don't know if you have done it yet, you probably have, but then you can start linking it to performance of a certain business unit as well. You can see networks of teams that work well together, are they delivering better outcomes for the customer?

That helps give you some learnings which you can then, as you said, build in as you try and develop those capabilities more widely across the organisation.  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, at the moment we are applying organisational network analysis mainly on two types of networks. One is, as mentioned there, the expertise networks. So, to really understand, what is the capability we have and who is part of that network? And then also a collaboration network. So how do people work together and get work done?

But if you think about for example, if you want to launch a new product in a global product line or in a global product category, how does a corporate centre, a region, and the country, actually have to work together to develop and get the product into the market?

With network analysis, you can actually visualise all of a sudden, things come together. Where are people or teams working closely with each other and where are certain connects and where are certain silos and you can actually tap in and say well, in some cases, silos make sense. For example, to drive innovation, in some other cases, actually silos and isolated teams should be connected much more than some of the rest of the organisation to ensure that we can bring products fast to the market.

Those are the two types, expertise networks, and collaboration networks and all the connections to the priorities of the given business need.  


David Green: Do you see that work evolving in the coming years, or is there not that clarity at the moment?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: I think as we always link our projects and initiatives to the needs of the business, we just flow with the different requirements and demands we get from the business, and then try to bring in the different analytical proposition, or solution, or approach, to solve the problem.

So as analytics is, I think, very close to research and how research is working, it is really just saying, okay, how can we understand what is the need of the business? And then we just bring in the right tools and methods with the corresponding data, to support the best way of decision making.


David Green: It must create some great, powerful stories to communicate in the business, in terms of understanding expertise networks and collaboration as well, and how that can be used to support the transformation, and the development and delivery of new products to customers as well.

Must be something that really resonates with the business as well as with your colleagues in HR?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: Yeah. And I think it comes back to the point I mentioned at the beginning, it is not doing analytics because we want to do it, we do analytics to show that actually in a HR intervention is working well.

It always starts with what are the business priorities and how can we bring the right insights into these conversations? And I think that is how you create this very natural connection to really say, okay, where do we want to take the business? Where could be certain pain points and what can we do about it? And then just bringing in the right insights into the right conversation.

Instead of saying, hey, we do people analytics, here is an interesting use case, it is really about the connection with the business that is important. 


David Green: Really really fascinating, I am sure we could talk about that element for a lot longer, but I'm conscious of time.

Let’s get back to what we were talking about at the start, how should workforce planning connect with organisational design, in your opinion? Even less than an opinion, how are you actually connecting the two?  

Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, I think, especially as a lot of companies have to reinvent themselves, they go through a disruption, new competitors in the market, digitalisation and so on. I think also organisations have to evolve.

In the past, I think a lot of companies in general look at organisational design, we look at span of control, layers in the organisation and then potentially we just reach out for the organisation. Then the more advanced companies, they all talk about agile and say from the current stage, we want to move into an agile organisational set up.

But I think it is very important to really start with, what are our business priorities? Where do we want to take the business? And how can we actually adjust the organisational setting? I set up the organisation the right way and say, okay, how can we make certain things more flexible? How can we, when it comes to the knowledge networks, how can we optimise extra flow of information in the organisation? Potentially also, how work is getting defined? So, what are the different work packages? Is it still your line manager who is telling you the different work packages you have to do? Or is it actually up to the team, in a very staff organised way, to decide what are the different work packages they have to perform, and even select which work they want to do, instead of the line manager saying, this is the work, and you do that, you do that, and you do that. 


I would say, bringing more autonomy and self-organisation into the organisational design, as well as looking into compensation and reward. How do we actually reward performance in a more agile or self-organised setting?

And I think bringing in, again the analytical capability, into these conversations to really run different assessments and actually saying, at the moment we have quiet hierarchical organisation, because we can measure different dimensions of how work is getting defined, how work was getting distributed, how do we reward people.

And if we move to a more self-organised and agile set up, how can we be certain of dimensions actually changing and how can we be sure that also, through data, to actually say we are making progress, moving into a more autonomous, agile, or self-organised setting, ensuring that we still deliver against our priorities and finding the right organisational type. 

And even moving the whole organisation, I think different parts of the organisation, they always move at a different pace because certain things work better on some parts of the organisation than for other parts.

So it is really finding the right balance for the whole organisation.

David Green: It is fascinating because then you can start seeing what the impact is positive or negative around customer outcomes, business outcomes, employee outcomes as well. It kind of links it all together. And I guess analytics is the thread that links all of that together a little bit as well.

And as you said, particularly in industries that are transforming or may be being disrupted, you have got certain parts of the business which are still, maybe still traditional, and you might organise those differently to how you might organise a more innovative part of the organisation, perhaps, where you are looking to expand. I guess that is where workforce planning and then org design can help to help inform that and the analytics can help you to look at the impact of that on an ongoing basis.

So fascinating, really good stuff, Ralph. I could have these podcasts go on for a couple of hours if it was up to me, but it is not up to me, unfortunately. 


That leads on to the question that we are asking everyone on this particular series. And you have certainly touched on this throughout really, so you may want to summarise a little bit here. 

How can HR help the business identify the critical skills for the future?  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: So, I think it is really looking at the strategic priorities or the company's strategy and where we really want to develop the business to. What are the end critical organisational capabilities. You always start them with, we want to develop our data science and analytic capability. We want to be a customer centric organisation. We want to use technology and leverage all the opportunities of technology, and so on, and so on.

I think it really depends on each company what your abilities look like and also how you want to create a competitive advantage.

But then I think really to break that down to a level of critical skills and what works quite well, in my experience, the right level you can achieve when it is really trainable. So when you really can say, I can actually train that because sometimes you stop at the competence level and say, everybody has to be proficient in data science or in leadership. We say, well, actually that is very, very broad. What does it mean for a CEO to be proficient in data science? Or for the data scientists to be proficient in data science? It is just useless, I would say.

So, you really have to get to a level where it is okay, we can really provide the right training to a specific skill because then you can really make it also relevant for the employee. Because then the employee can go on a re-skilling or up-skilling journey, define a plan and say, actually, these are the top five skills and all three are related to that organisational capability and the other two to another capability. If I really want myself to stay relevant so that I can really contribute and to help the company to achieve their strategic goal. 


Also, for the company it is easier to tailor certain development opportunities to different individuals, it can take them on that journey and be successful in their job.  


David Green: Great. And I love how you use all that information from the start, about strategic priorities and then bring it down, but make it relevant for the employee and help guide them on what they can do to acquire those skills to help them, but also it helps the company as well. So I think it is so important to make it real, isn't it.  


Ralf Buechsenschuss: And back to one of the first questions, what is the difference compared to 10 years ago when we all embarked on the analytics journey?

It is really to say today, we at a stage where we can use machine learning at scale and actually tailor recommendations to individuals because we know what the skills are of an individual and what are the skill gaps.

And at scale, we can actually bring certain recommendations to an employee, the same way we bring specific marketing campaigns to our customers, which I think is now at a stage where we can use these techniques to really add scale and tailor our HR interventions to our employees and bring people analytics from being a buzzword from 10 years ago, into something very tangible and tailored to our employees.  


David Green: And how powerful is that, as an employee, if you are recommending sudden learning interventions to acquire three or four new skills, and if you acquire those three or four skills, these are the career paths that we have got within the company that you may or may not want to do. And then I think you even talked about how you link that to compensation as well. And if you acquire these skills, you can expect this to be your compensation path as well. It kind of plays to those different motivators, that motivate employees, because we're all different at the end.

But I love that using that technology, that machine learning and providing those recommendations, helps employees and helps the company. It is a great use of people data because of course, we are custodians of the people data as it were, in our organisations and if we can help it work for employees, that has got to be the right thing to do as well. 


So, a great way to end Ralf, and I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being a guest on the show.

Can you let people know how they can stay in touch with you or follow you on social media?   

Ralf Buechsenschuss: Yeah. Just reach out on LinkedIn and happy to come back on any questions.  And also, happy to answer any questions on posts. Happy to keep in touch.  


David Green: Great. Well, thanks for being on the show, Ralf, and hopefully we will see each other again, in person, at some point in the future.