Digital acceleration is happening at a record pace across the globe.  From Quantum biology, nanotechnology, and exoplanet astronomy to blockchain and metaverse, the digital frontiers are expanding at a rapid pace (Michael Bhaskar – Human Frontiers-2021).  Yet Economists like Tyler Cowen have rung the alarm around Great Stagnation, and many similar economists have called this a big idea famine or an innovation illusion.  (the famous Peter Theil quote – “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140 characters.” — Peter Thiel).  Despite all the criticisms, the acceleration is happening at a record pace.  But the question is, why do such stagnation theories gain momentum?  There is perhaps an Alignment Problem between ground-level realities.  In our recent focus group discussions with mid-size and large-sized companies, Recruiters reported the following Mis-Alignment between the company’s vision and execution (a sample of 20 executives spread across ten companies – so please treat this as a small sample study)

Here are some examples of misalignment

• Remote Hiring:  Executive Leadership pushing for Remote hiring without fully understanding the tactical labor law challenges that may arise
• Flexibility:  Many call center leaders/supervisors  do not fully understand Cloud Call Centers, and trying to manage the pre-pandemic way that results in attrition
• Ever Expanding Recruiter Responsibility:  As attrition happens, existing Recruiters are often expected to pick up additional responsibilities without additional bandwidth
• Changing recruiter Role:  Recruiters play a significant Digital Marketing role to ensure candidates will join
• Compensation Data Challenge:  All the data sources often have a “lagging effect,” so we are often using a dataset that is not setting us for success
• Automation not understood well:  Many Job descriptions do not reflect the modern stack and the effect of Digital and Automation on the job

Few more pointers came out of the discussions.  But you can see the trend.  There is an apparent misalignment in certain areas between planning and execution

As we were reflecting on what could be a good set of utilities for Workforce Planners and Recruiters, one thing that came to the rescue was Models and Metrics.  Not necessarily as a solution to all the problems but as a mechanism to communicate the challenges.  (As I am typing, subconsciously, I have been reminded of the George Box quote – All Models are wrong).  But all models have utility value.  So we believe in them, provided the assumptions are documented well

We believe the following models can bring more alignment between Workforce Planners, Recruiters, and Executive Leadership