THE BIG IDEA
A quick scan of the media hubbub this week finds that it’s all about job cuts, particularly in the tech sector.
Mostly this has been fueled by ongoing almost cult-like devotion to following what the Elon will do next, closely followed by other Silicon Valley firms shedding by the thousands.
I have two words for you…
Great Resignation
Remember when that was a thing? When companies were scrambling to hire and keep people in the face of remote working and a re-negotiated employment value proposition?
Remember?
It was literally still a thing just a month ago!
I had a few days off this week spending time with visiting family and, as always happens, this slight remove from focus had me thinking about the overall picture. So what did I find myself concerned with during a walk through a cool but pleasant Boston morning?
Workforce planning.
Yup, that’s how my brain works.
More specifically, I was wondering how Twitter’s workforce plan looks this week compared to the start of the year.
Now, I don’t work at Twitter, nor know anyone who does, so I don’t have facts to back this up – don’t even know if the company had/has a workforce plan. But I’m pretty sure that in all the forecasting and skills-ranking and competency-matching and succession-mapping that January’s workforce plan categorically didn’t specify what’s happening now.
And I’m willing to bet that Twitter HR is in a pretty reactive state right now
(I might be wrong, but I’m probably not)
TRY THIS
Back before COVID-19, I posted Your Workforce Plan Won’t Save You and, because the more the world changes, the more it stays the same, I think it worth revisiting the key points.
- Your Workforce Plan is not a panacea for every organizational ill
- At best, your workforce plan will always be a guesstimate – an exercise in probabilities
- We lose when we focus too much on the Workforce and less on the Plan
Based on this, I argued that we must increase the speed and agility of our workforce planning even if that comes at the expense of having a Workforce Plan.
“Instead, let’s think of our Workforce Strategy as a “best guess” for where the journey is going, and what the road/conditions may look like…
And let’s construct a Workforce Plan that delivers short-term actions and decisions to put in place the capability and capacity to deliver current and emerging business goals.”
Given where the world is at right now, I might argue that this is about finding the balance between strategic planning and tactical delivery.
Or maybe it’s better to think of it as PLANFUL REACTIVITY!
USE THIS
FORECAST:
- Business projections
- Internal trends (promotion, turnover, etc.)
- Skills inventory (what, where, quantity)
SOURCE:
- In-house vs. out-source vs. off-shore
CAPABILITY/CAPACITY:
- Hire
- Acquire
- Develop
- Move
- Remove
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
“He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man.” ~Albert Camus, The Stranger
I’m really pleased to let you know that my new book, PROCESS DESIGN FOR HUMAN RESOURCES, is now available.
