At the World Economic Forum last week at Davos WEF22, an exciting panel discussion on Responding to the Great Resignation was insightful.  The panel was attended by the secretary of the international trade union and a few more eminent leaders.  The crux of the discussions was that the Great Resignation was not a Resignation, and it was more of a Reevaluation.  The Reevaluation happened through the lenses of Flexibility, Purpose, new skills, and better pay.  If the economic market conditions had not changed, the leaders could have expressed different sentiments about the same data sets.  (meaning they might have discussed more the non-participation of the labor).  But in this panel, the discussions centered more around Reevaluation.  Therefore, it is evident that while the magnitude of the labor required will vary over the next ten years, what type of talent is required and how we grow the talent that we acquire will dictate the success of the organizations.

Let us look at some very macro numbers.  Sixty-one percent of the global population lives in Asia (4.7 Billion), 17 percent in Africa (1.3 billion), 10 percent in Europe (750 Million), 8 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean (650 million), and the remaining 5 percent in North America (370 million) and Oceania (43 million).  Here are some forecasts for the world population

• Around 2027, India is projected to overtake China as the World’s Populous country
• More than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa
• Several countries in Europe are expected to shrink in population

(Source:  World Population Prospects study 2019)

Why are we bringing attention to this?  A global workforce execution strategy will have a mix of people purposes across the globe for the same skills-family and functions.  Ambitions across locations will differ as the generations serving will be very different.   This challenge requires a clear Investment of ideas in developing a good forecasting model.  The most influential leader Ruth Porat of Alphabet, said this last week.  “The most visible reflection of our focus on long-term performance is our continued investment in talent and compute capacity across the company.  Many companies often need some nonlinear innovation to survive.  A few weeks back, we wrote about Starbucks Deep Brew that a few Starbucks employees dreamt that went on to almost save the company.  Today, it is not only a customer-facing app but also a sophisticated supply chain platform.  Some innovations are far-fetching as well.  In 1989, an Apple Employee and Intellectual Visionary Marc Porat developed a sketch of the pocket crystal in his big red notebook.  On this, he wrote, “it must offer the kind of a personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry brings” This pocket crystal sketch was the origin of touchscreen mobile computing (Adapted from the book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making).  Such is the power of employee ideas. 

Workforce Planning cannot be a mere function of Supply-Demand gap modeling.  In the last few years, we have witnessed a few incredible projects in assisting our customers)

• We helped a bleeding-edge tech company in the healthcare space set up in Jakarta – Indonesia, as the expected retention was higher as opposed to other global locations
• Identified African American talent pool in  Systems Testing talent pool as ideal for Level5 Tech support talent for a Software Support (that improved Diversity with some reskilling)
• A predictive attrition model for global markets based on expected movements and as we see from external data sets
• Mexico as an emerging software hub by studying the university curriculum
• The reemergence of Western Europe by monitoring VC funds
• The transformation of IT ecosystems of Dallas and Atlanta in the US into broader digital ecosystems
• Sentiment Analysis and battle cards on how Recruiters can provide convincing messages to target candidates (marketing tools for Recruiters)
• Helping a global company set up a Japanese language support center in Brazil due to historical connections resulting in talent availability
• And several similar global projects

In the next few months, we want to focus more on the impact of Digital Transformation on the workload itself.  For example, let us look at the sample customer service (call center) projections model.  As companies are expected to implement several digital initiatives, workforce planning should consider this in their Staffing Models.  The following exhibit shows the impact of the original demand and various Automation and AI initiatives.

Using such models of identified digital initiatives, you can develop the Required Skills cheat sheet critical to making these initiatives successful.  By documenting the specific digital platforms and skills and mapping whether those skills are easy to learn/available to existing talent, Workforce planners and Recruiters can have a laser target plan and cater to the organization’s entire purpose.  A matrix that a WFP planner and Recruiter should have could look like this

Immediate Opportunity: No need to hire externally – with some training, the existing workforce should be transformed to do this

Data as Fuel: All your business analysts, Risk Analysts, and IT analysts should get into this stack ASAP.  This skill is going to be very critical

Big Bets: A higher degree of training is required.  External Hiring is required, but internal learning should also be emphasized.  You have to understand the global markets also

Future opportunity: More research and more global market trends need to be analyzed in emerging skill areas.  Understanding global locations is a must.

Here is an example BlockChain Talent Pool Model across Global locations

An integrated Workforce Planning and Recruitment will bring the desired success in all your Digital Transformation activities.  So when you meet your Recruiter next time, remember that your stock price going up depends on their success.