SWP - The Strategic Workforce Planning Podcast

Episode 26 of the SWP podcast welcomes Ben Zwieg – Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Revelio Labs – a global leader in workforce intelligence. Ben is an Adjunct professor with both the NYU Stern School of business and Columbia Business School.  Before joining Revelio, Ben spent three and a half years with IBM as a managing data scientist. Ben’s career history in the data science education and advisory space is incredibly impressive – he is a true captain of industry.  This highly engaging and interesting discussion looks at just what’s possible through the enhanced utilisation of external data.  A fantastic session that explores how, despite how much tech exists in the world, many barriers to enablement are largely cultural and behavioural!

Episode 27 of the SWP podcast welcomes Steve Brown Head of Talent Strategy & Workforce Planning at Electronic Arts, the world’s leading video gaming and interactive entertainment company. Throughout his career, Steve has worked across HR, Finance, and Operations on talent strategy, workforce planning, compensation program design & consulting, M&A, HRIS implementation, relocation, tax and immigration initiatives. Steve has lived and worked in Belgium, Austria, and Spain and has an MBA from Northeastern University, Boston. Steve has worked with organisations including Nike, EY, Accenture as well as EA.  This is such an important discussion for any organisation starting their SWP journey to have as it sets out the building blocks and fundamentals to success.   

Episode 25 of the SWP podcast welcomes Peter Louch - founder and chief executive of Vemo.  Vemo brings to market a state-of-the-art workforce planning software and services offering that enables organizations to more proactively manage their business, align talent management and acquisition with what drives business success, and provide HR and Line professionals the strategic HR tool that integrates their approach to talent management and improves their effectiveness.  Peter is a wonderful advocate of our amazing profession and our discussion looked at how organisations can move from role-based planning to skill-based planning, how a flexible approach is required based on the specific nature of the organisation and how organisations can start small and grow their SWP activity from there. Great discussion with an intelligent, insightful person!  

Episode 24 of the SWP podcast welcomes Jakob Ejlsted - Workforce Planning Specialist to the pod.  Jakob has significant global experience across industries including Oil & Gas, Transport & Logistics, Management Consulting, and Industrial Chemicals. Fantastic discussion with Jakob which focused mainly around how we can better understand and utilise the contingent workforce for superior SWP outcomes. 

Episode 23 of the SWP podcast welcomes AJ Herrmann from Cleveland Clinic.  AJ is the Executive Director Strategic Workforce Planning at Cleveland Clinic and, across his career, has worked with organisations including  BCG, Nestle, Homeland Security, NBC and the Central Intelligence Agency . This long-awaited episode (for us) delivers everything we hoped and more.  AJ is a phenomenal advocate of our profession and we go deep on all things task and role design, war for talent, global people shortages and shifting our thinking and biases around common workforce planning ‘constraints’.  No shortages of laughs in this fantastic episode! 

Episode 21 of the SWP podcast welcomes Gergo Safar, Strategic Workforce Manager at BT to the Pod.  Gergo is an experienced SWP leader who has worked across organisations including BT, Unilever, McKinsey and Vodafone and countries including Hungary, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and the UK. This was such an important discussion to have with so many new themes raised including the opportunity to utilise the concept of risk far more frequently across SWP methodologies and the increasing importance of using data to tell stories.  Gergo’s session at The SWP Global Online conference took an important look at defining measures for SWP success.  A great chat with a global SWP champion! 

Episode 22 of the SWP podcast welcomes Antony Ebelle-ebanda, Digital Surgery Integration Lead & Talent Insights at Johnson & Johnson to the Pod.  Antony is an experienced SWP leader who has worked across organisations including Johnson & Johnson, Allianz, Barclay’s and Deutsche bank (to name but a few). Fantastic chat with Antony which explored the potential homes of SWP within the org structure then highlighted the importance of not only considering SWP an enterprise capability but also the cultural understanding and acceptance of strategic workforce planning as ‘the way we work’.  The conversation touched on the potential shift from role-based organisations to skills-based organisations and we looked at whether we’d see a total shift to thinking purely in terms of ‘skills’ as opposed to ‘roles’ in the future.  Finally, the need to think and act differently to our competitors through strategic workforce planning was a fantastic way to wind up this highly engaging chat. 

Episode 19 of the SWP podcast welcomes one of our very own – Jen Allen.  A member of The Institute's GSCC, Jen is the Workforce Planning and Design Manager at Police Scotland.  With a recent career history spanning health and police, Jen has deep insight into the challenges faced by governments of the world across critical workforce segments.  Jen’s insights into stakeholder related challenges when developing a strategic workforce plans serve as an important reminder that SWP is most certainly not just an HR thing.  We love the notion of SWP sitting with strategy as an org chart option given the relative synergies. Jen wowed us at our Launch event in November with her panel discussion on blending data sources for commercial impact and we're very much looking to welcoming her back across multiple events across 2023!  What a delightful, kind and engaging person to chat SWP with!    

Episode 20 of the SWP podcast welcomes David Edwards of Visier.  Like many of us, David’s introduction to SWP happened through working on a large-scale workforce reduction project.  David has a strong background in resource management and strategic workforce planning in the banking and financial servises sector across Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest Group ahead of joining Visier as the director of product management in mid 2022.  Currently the Advisory Services Director, David supports clients through ensuring the underlying structures are in place within organisations to enable effective software implementations.  Always a rich and thorough discussion with David highlights during which include exploring the skill-based organisation and looking at the future as far as skills taxonomies and job architectures are concerned.  A true advocate for our profession, one of the inaugural members of The Institute and an absolute pleasure to chat to. 

Episode 18 of the SWP podcast welcomes Emanuele Poletti, Group Workforce Planning and Analytics Manager at Campari. Emanuele found Strategic Workforce Planning originally through his time at GE where he spent a number of years as an analytics specialist, organisation and staffing. Through his time at both Sky and Generali, Emanuele has transitioned his focus from data and analytics into strategic workforce planning, a craft he now plies at Campari in Milan.  The nature of SWP for an organisation with Campari’s complexity is fascinating and I was interested to hear Emanuele discuss the differences between the operational workforce and corporate side of the business coupled with the fact that Campari’s growth is both organic and by acquisition which means integrating new workforces from time to time.  Also of particular interest is the concept of predicting turnover modelling which we discuss during at length. We’re looking forward to having Emanuele join our Global Online event next month to discuss Campari’s approach.