In organizations or the world in general, sometimes it may take decades to convert wisdom into action.   About 2000 years ago, Roman Architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio wrote, “Water should by no means be conducted in lead pipes if we want to have it wholesome.” It took a lot of time for the world to translate this into action.  Sometimes, this inertia is driven by a lack of technology alternatives, and sometimes there may be no explanation for why this is the case.

How can we genuinely run transformative Workforce Planning and Recruitment functions?  We were doing some research and reflection on this.  The book Zero to One by Peter Theil inspired this illustration.  This simple graph explains what needs to be done.  HR generally supports many necessary scale-related initiatives such as accelerating hiring, identifying the next-important location, implementing a hybrid way of working, and several similar initiatives.  These are mainly represented in the X-Axis (primarily driven towards Scaling the business).  We must work on New Ideas and climb the Y-Axis to innovate truly.  (Innovation axis).  There are several strategic imperatives in this area that you could evaluate

• How do we implement an intelligent job architecture without disrupting existing systems?
• What are the 10 locations in the world that no one is thinking about now but could become skill hubs?
• What should be our replacement science?  As more people leave the organization, what talent do we want to replace?
• What forward-looking benefits can we truly compete with to attract the best talent
• How to understand executives/engineers beyond LinkedIn-type data
• What should we do for the rapidly shrinking frontline talent?

Recruiters and Workforce Planners can develop several such narratives and be on the innovation path.  Something for you to think about, and if you need our help, we are here.

Let us begin by looking at a few labor market initiatives and trends

• Accenture has launched its new Intelligent Operations center in Bangkok, Thailand.  The center aims to provide real-time business insights leveraging a portfolio of Digital Tools
• As more Process Automation enters shared services, Call centers, Customer Service centers, and Employee service centers are thinking about transforming into Experience centers.  This approach will bring more Workforce Planning parameters into consideration
• Marketing is evolving more scientific – distinct functions across product marketing, brand marketing, Digital Marketing, Lifecycle/Campaign Marketing, and Content Marketing are the critical sub-functions that companies are scaling.
• More Synergies of Workforce between India and Latin America.  Whether IT companies or Research data providers, there is a concentrated effort to synchronize labor scaling in India and Latin American locations.  This combination can be a winning combination with best practices from India flowing into Latin America and vice versa.  More signals are emerging from Mexico emerging as a Research and Analytics hub.  Online Research company YouGov recently opened an office in Mexico City, intending to hire researchers (Yougov also has a presence in India)
• We are observing a trend in hiring hybrid Business Analyst/Data Engineer type roles.  As the cloud expands, we can expect multi-utility roles (more common in startups) but entering big enterprises as well
• The expected shortage of frontline workers continues to grow, and technology solutions to fully automate are slow or may act more as a digital companion.  Here is a model we developed of how severe this problem could be. 

Unless we have a solid Frontline strategy by Job role, we may be in deep trouble in the following areas:

• Delivery Truck Drivers
• Warehouse Workers
• Maintenance Technicians
• Retail Frontline Workers
• Restaurant Workers
• Nursing Professionals
• Pharmaceutical Techs

Fanuc Robotics (A company specializing in developing robots for work automation) says their demand is increasing.  Mike Cicco, their CEO, said this.  “Interest in robotics and automation remains strong with new demand coming from various industries,” Cicco said.  “EV, warehousing and logistics as well as food and beverage are all looking to automation to increase production and solve the growing labor shortage.”

This challenge applied to all advanced economies, and emerging economies as more people shift from frontline work to knowledge work through digital learning

(This model is US specific model, but we can build Europe or a specific country model as per your needs)

One Strategic imperative that HR can work on from a job architecture standpoint is to differentiate between Data Engineering, Data Analytics, and Data Science.  The market often confuses the skillsets due to the continuous spectrum of skills across these areas.  This type of mapping should go into your Narrative documents that can trigger conversations within the company.