As we continue to hear the news about staff adjustments and reductions across the globe, we at Draup would like to provide this week’s view on the bottom line effects that Recruiters and Workforce planners may bring to your organization.  We believe that Recruiters and Workforce Planners are helpful in top-line and bottom-line planning.  Why do we say so?  Let us look at this aspect in this email. 

To fully understand this, we must understand that the very definition of the Workforce today is changing.  Several segments of Employees, Contingent Workers, and Automation Agents are part of the Workforce.  In the recent MIT Platform Strategy Summit 2022, I heard about a case study where the company had to provide employee IDs to Chatbots so that they could extract information from various systems.  Also, within the context of the Workforce is Opportunity Verse available through reskilling and upskilling.  And it is a flexible space that expands into universities, community colleges for early talent, the third-party vendors you may work with, and so on.  In a digital evolving product offering, it has become very challenging to truly understand who is all working on your product and solution.  Say, for example, a coffee shop like Starbucks.  The recipes are delivered through IoT by Microsoft Azure.  So the Baristas (humans) are working with Automated Agents to deliver the experience. 

One simple way to at the Workforce is, therefore, as follows:

Workforce = Employees+Contingent Labor+Automation Agents+Opportunity_Verse*

*The term Opportunity_Verse is inspired by Metaverse but has nothing to do with it?

There are a lot of case studies around Automation and its effect coming into the core of Workforce Planning.  Let us look at the case study of Lemonade.  Lemonade examined all work aspects and created a model supporting over 1.2 million policies with just 1000+ employees.  It is a perfect example of merging AI with Behavioral Economics.  Such critical skills identification has become even more important as we head into

But how do we genuinely get there?  This aspect is where we have to leverage the assets of Workforce Planners and Recruiters and what Draup calls the Opportunity_Verse

1.0  Critical Skill Mapping:  To be led by Workforce Planners:  What are the groundbreaking skill combinations required to disrupt and innovate fundamentally?

(Please note that we have used the Word Skill combinations.  In the Lemonade case, they did not win because of AI; they won because they brought an element of behavioral economics with it.  You may need to identify nonobvious talent and skills to make this a differentiating experience truly.  This definition may lead you to find early career talent, community college talent, veterans talent, and other avenues of talent.  Defining the skill combinations will be the most innovative chapter a workforce planner can write. 

2.0  Location Intelligence Library:  Recruiters and Workforce Planners:  Locations are changing rapidly.  Just look at the last week’s labor market movements

• Telus International invests in a new AI hub in Ballina, County Mayo – Ireland
• LiveU rapidly expands in Spain for both market and labor opportunity

Many financial and digital media companies are trying to find lower cost/optimal cost support centers in the Midwestern US.  Greendot is the latest example opening a customer support site near Cincinnati- Ohio

Vertiv sets testing labs and manufacturing facilities in Mexico

Switzerland-based SHL Medical is building a manufacturing site in North Charleston – SC

Our understanding of the locations is changing with changing supply chain and talent dynamics.  It would help if you had a team of Recruiters and Workforce Planners to monitor this

3.0 Salary and Benefits Insights: Salaries and Benefits are changing in an inflationary economy, and even large benchmarking houses are finding it difficult.  Recruiters often are a wealth of information around this.  Here are the things I learned from my Recruiter conversations last week

• In Japan, electronics retailer Nojima has introduced an inflation allowance for frontline workers
• There is more focus on benefits from candidates as they switch to look for “Sturdy Companies.”
• Benefits Benchmarking insights from candidate interviews have been beneficial to understanding how to compete in different

Even if you pause hiring short-term, these are opportunities to streamline and launch at a later date

4.0  Internal Employee Interviews for New Skills:  Who best to assess/interview the existing internal employees other than your star recruitment team?  This approach can be a foundational input for Talent Market Place.  For example, some of your internal IT team may be useful for your AI and Software development.  We conducted one quick experiment around this

5.0  Employee Sentiments for peers and Industry:  Recruiters can also help understand the sentiments leading to your EVP models.  Here is an example of the same using external reviews and sentiments