How to Drive Greater Value Through Workforce Planning

We’ve just wrapped up Series 24 of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast at Insight222 , which was sponsored by strategic workforce planning platform eQ8 . While the conversation with the guests in each episode explored a myriad of different topics, the one common question for each episode was themed around: What does HR need to do to add business value as we hopefully emerge on the other side of the pandemic?

A summary of each episode together with associated links is provided below – please feel free to add your own thoughts on the question for the series in the comments section below: What does HR need to do to add business value in the post-pandemic workplace?

EP1: JENNIFER MOSS - How to Combat the Burnout Epidemic

The first episode of the series is all about burnout, and what we can do as individuals, colleagues, managers and organisations to prevent it. My guest is Jennifer Moss, whose own experience of burnout inspired her to write her acclaimed book: ‘The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It.’

In our conversation, we discuss:

• Top tips on recognising and tackling burnout to improve wellbeing at the employee, team and organisation levels
• Data highlighting how the pandemic has triggered employee burnout
• The strategies that people leaders can take to keep employees happy and healthy including a powerful example from Hewlett Packard
• Hiring initiatives designed to create a culture of burnout prevention.

Listen to my conversation with Jennifer on Apple, Spotify or your podcast app of choice, by visiting the Digital HR Leaders podcast homepage and clicking the corresponding image.

Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn , on Twitter @JenLeighMoss and also visit Jennifer’s website to find out more about her work.

EP2: KEVIN WHEELER – How Analytics, Data and Technology are Shaping the Future of Recruitment

In the second episode of series 24, my guest was Kevin Wheeler, Founder of the Future of Talent Institute. I’ve been fortunate to know Kevin for many years and have always valued his prescient, insightful and data informed vision of the future of work. Our conversation was shaped by Kevin’s ideas of a new model for recruitment, and sees us cover topics including:

• Why RPO’s can be key to gaining access to wider talent intelligence,
• The role of technology and marketing in talent attraction,
• How technology can help prevent human bias during the candidate selection stage,
• Going beyond traditional reporting metrics such as time-to-hire and cost-per-hire and pivot towards predictive recruitment analytics
• Some of the best new recruitment technologies to look out for

Listen to my conversation with Kevin on Apple, Spotify or your podcast app of choice, by visiting the Digital HR Leaders podcast homepage and clicking the corresponding image.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn , follow his Future of Talent Institute on Twitter @FutureOfTalent , and subscribe to the Future of Talent weekly newsletter .

EP3: ALICIA ROACH - How Strategic Workforce Planning Contributes to Business Success

Alicia Roach, co-founder and joint CEO of eQ8, joined me for the middle episode of the series. A former practitioner and recognised thought leader in all things strategic workforce planning, Alicia explains to me in our conversation that “the workforce is the execution vehicle for an organisation's purpose, strategy and operations.”

Along with some astute advice on setting strategic workforce planning up for success, my discussion with Alicia covers:

• How to connect people to purpose through strategic workforce planning (see also FIG 1)
• How to avoid common pitfalls and raise your SWP to the next level
• The importance of focusing SWP on your organisation’s unique challenges
• The role of technology and the need to combine ‘philosophy, process and platform’ for success
• Ideas on how to measure success of strategic workforce planning

FIG 1: Connecting people to purpose through strategic workforce planning (Source: eQ8)

Listen to my conversation with Alicia on Apple, Spotify or your podcast app of choice, by visiting the Digital HR Leaders podcast homepage and clicking the corresponding image.

Connect with Alicia on LinkedIn and find out more about eQ8 ’s strategic workforce planning platform.

EP4: PAUL LEONARDI - How To Help Your Teams Develop A Digital Mindset

In the penultimate episode of the series, my guest is Dr Paul Leonardi, Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara and an award-winning researcher and professor in digital transformation and organisational change. Together with Tsedal Neeley, Paul has recently co-authored - The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI .

My conversation with Paul builds on the key themes explored in the book through the lens of HR, and how as HR professionals and leaders, we can help ourselves and our teams become more digitally fluent. Our conversation also draws on Paul’s work in the area of relational analytics – including with his co-collaborator Noshir Contractor – and it can improve workforce efficiency, collaboration and inclusion.

Tune in to hear my discussion with Paul on:

• Three fundamental approaches - Collaboration, Computation and Change – that you need to develop a digital mindset
• How HR leaders and professionals get to 30% digital fluency themselves and help the rest of the organisation to also develop their 30%.
• The Adoption Matrix for digital transformation (see FIG 2)
• How to use relational analytics (or ONA) to accelerate DEI
• Three challenges – privacy, data and data translation – that slow companies when it comes to using relational analytics at scale

FIG 2: The Adoption Matrix (Source: Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business Review)

Listen to my conversation with Paul on Apple, Spotify or your podcast app of choice, by visiting the Digital HR Leaders podcast homepage and clicking the corresponding image.

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn , follow him on Twitter @pleonardi1 , visit Paul’s website , and read two of his articles for Harvard Business Review – Developing a Digital Mindset (with Tsedal Neeley), and Better People Analytics (with Noshir Contractor)

EP5: LAURA SHUBERT - How MetLife Made a Success of their Strategic Workforce Planning

In the final episode of the series, is Laura Shubert, Vice President of People Planning and Insights at MetLife. In our discussion, Laura shares insights from MetLife’s journey to successfully forge strategic workforce planning in the company.

With some great insight into how to get buy-in and investment from the business for strategic workforce planning and associated technology platforms, my conversation with Laura also covers:

• How shifting to an outside-in approach encompassing analysis on disruptive technologies and competitor activity drove the SWP journey
• How SWP helps shape the internal development of the 5,000 leaders in MetLife’s Leading the Future program
• Why being able to infer skills is a ‘gamechanger’ for workforce planning
• How the eQ8 platform supports MetLife in scenario planning
• How people analytics and finance collaborate at MetLife

Listen to my conversation with Laura on Apple, Spotify or your podcast app of choice, by visiting the Digital HR Leaders podcast homepage and clicking the corresponding image.

Connect with Laura on LinkedIn.

WATCH THE VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS OF SERIES 24

As well as the full podcast recording of each episode, there are two videos per episode available on the?myHRfuture YouTube channel .?A playlist collating these videos together can be viewed below – with each guest tackling the common question for the series: What does HR need to do to add business value in the post-pandemic workplace?

THANK YOU

Thanks to all our guests as well as well as Alicia Roach, Chris Hare and. The team at eQ8 for sponsoring series 24 of the podcast. Additional thanks to Manpreet Randhawa and the team at myHRfuture and Insight222 for bringing the podcast to life.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work.?As Managing Partner and Executive Director at?Insight222 , he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 90 global organisations.?Prior to co-founding Insight222 and taking up a board advisor role at?TrustSphere , David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics.?David also hosts the?Digital HR Leaders Podcast ?and is an instructor for Insight222's?myHRfuture Academy . His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar,?Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value ?was published in the summer of 2021.