SWP - The Strategic Workforce Planning Podcast

Episode 16 of the SWP podcast welcomes Matt Higgs from Babcock International Group to share his refreshing insights around practical and executable strategic workforce planning.  For us, one of the light bulb moments was Matt’s quote ‘the plan we develop today, is seldom what actually gets implemented’.  Our fascinating conversation was a staunch reminder that SWP is not intended to be a precise tool, we won’t always get it right but we’ll understand the associated risks and have contingency plans in place when the future landscape doesn’t evolve as we initially thought.  An enjoyable, entertaining and informative conversation with an authentic, humble and intelligent thought leader.  

Episode 17 of the SWP podcast welcomes Gill Aggus from, Jaguar Land Rover. Originally an economist, Gill found Strategic Workforce Planning following numerous roles working across the JLR business which has helped arm her with deep insights into the challenges faced the JLR leaders. Developing a job architecture is a critical part of any SWP process and Gill’s presentation at The Institute’s Global Launch event provided valuable information around how this can be done. Sadly I wasn’t able to get hold of a loan car while I was in the UK however it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying!

Episode 15 of the SWP podcast welcomes Suzie Custerson – Director of Strategic Workforce Planning and Talent Acquisition at Seek. When the recipe starts with business and strategy related study and early career work and branches out into HR, the combination is the perfect tonic for a strategic workforce planner. I loved my conversation with Suzie which provides a unique look at an organisation who as Suzie puts it ‘owns the platform’.  Interestingly, the unique position Seek finds themselves in brings about a whole different set of challenges.  I found the discussion around how difficult organisations find it difficult to articulate their current capability profile as opposed to finding it relatively easy to articulate their future capabilities. The future landscape of technology talent is set to change dramatically moving forward with cyber security, the gig economy and remote working all set to create complexity whilst enabling opportunity.  Great chat with one of SWPs good people! 

Episode 14 of the SWP podcast welcomes Rob Major – Director – Workforce Planning at Raytheon Technologies. Rob graduated his masters with a qualification in executive coaching having developed a passion for connecting psychology with business.  Having developed an interest in people analytics, Rob secured a role with World Vision which propelled his career in workforce planning and analytics. Rob’s role with Raytheon Technologies sees him supporting workforce planning across multiple business units within an organisation with 170,000+ staff and the sheer size of the undertaking is hugely impressive. Interestingly, with a large workforce, the ‘build’ strategy seems to be a real priority for Raytheon with a focus on how they develop and reskill the workforce of the future. The willingness of Rob’s workforce planning function to develop capability across the broader HR team having identified them as key stakeholders in the process is critical.   Loved the phrase ‘making friends with shadows’ to describe finding the right balance between encouraging the pre-existing workforce planning done by various parts of the business and maintaining a degree of consistency, rigor and control over the approach and application.  Super impressive guy who is always incredibly generous with his time.  

Episode 13 of the SWP podcast welcomes Justin Strharsky founder and director of Unearthed Solutions and Humyn.ai. Justin’s early career included time in Silicon Valley at Sun Microsytems  then spending a decade fostering start-ups and innovation hubs before founding Unearthed Solutions, an organisation who connects mining and resources companies with innovators to deliver a unique way of supplementing workforce demand.  Humyn.ai was born out of Unearthed along the way and focuses on tech innovators delivering hard to source capabilities through utilising hack-a-thon style thinking development solutions. One of the things that strikes me the most about Justin is his passion for leveraging communities to solve problems.  This was an incredible discussion that covered so many great topics, none more important than how culture, attitudes, policies and procedures need to change if the thinking behind how workforce demand is to extend beyond the traditional ‘buy’ bucket. Great guy and a thoroughly engaging chat! 

Episode 12 of the SWP podcast welcomes Oksana Jawabreh.  Oksana is an experienced SWP Leader and passionate advocate who has worked across organisations including Westpac, EY, Deloitte and Woolworths.  Oksana brings a wealth of experience and perspective having spent years consulting to the government on major transformations and reform projects prior to her time in the fin services space.  Such a great conversation with an incredibly intelligent and engaging person.  Personal highlights included a discussion around the importance of strategy to the SWP process along with some of the common strategic pitfalls,  referencing our favourite SWP reading material and where SWP can, and should fit in the traditional org structure.  Really interesting person to chat with, great episode!        

Episode 11 of the SWP podcast welcomes Kath Hume, founder and director of Workforce Transformations.  Kath has a long history building strategic workforce planning capability from the inside with NSW Health and is an incredible SWP advocate.  Kath’s insights and thinking about the workforce of the future are highly innovative and have led to the development of her own podcast, The Reimagined Workforce.  Kath’s background combines teaching, economics and HR, the latter two of which make for an interestingly commercial take on the people, data and transformation landscape.  Always an engaging, rich and productive discussion with Kath and this episode is no exception. Really excited to have Kath and the NSW Health crew joining our Asia Pac conference across two highly informative sessions on critical Health related topics. 

Episode 7 of the SWP podcast welcomes Adam Gibson, Director and Strategic Workforce Planning Leader at EY and author of the recognised go-to text for SWP, Agile Workforce Planning. We’ve been dying to pick Adam’s brain on the critical role capability plays in the strategic workforce planning process and the ensuing conversation didn’t disappoint.  You just get the sense that had there not been adjacent calendar appointments, this conversation could have gone for hours.  A wonderful conversation with a true captain of our industry and engaging person.  We loved the chat about the common pitfalls of many organisations strategies – something only too familiar! 

Episode 9 of the SWP podcast welcomes Jess Murphy, Head of Workforce Strategy and Future Workforce Design at Bupa.  Wonderful discussion with Jess who found SWP through a traditional HR career pathway.  What strikes me most about Jess is her relentless focus on capability and the critical role understanding enterprise capabilities plays in the SWP process.  One of the absolute hidden gems in this episode is most certainly the approach towards existing HR strategies and capability frameworks when introducing SWP, an activity which runs the risk of potentially threatening existing plans and frameworks developed prior to any SWP related work – fascinating to hear Jess’s views on how it can be handled! Really looking forward to Jess taking delegates through creating a ‘red thread’ with your critical capabilities at our Asia Pacific SWP conference! 

Episode 10 of the SWP podcast welcomes James McKay, Head of Workforce Strategy and Strategic Workforce Planning and Sravan Rajupalem, Senior Data Scientist from ANZ. Really insightful and engaging conversation with James and Sravan.  James found Strategic Workforce Planning through a large restructure a number of years back which is fairly common for professionals in our space however something we’re seeing less and less of these days. Sravan has a combined Chemical Engineering and Actuarial degree and spent years modelling financial data before moving into the people space.  Interestingly, skills across different areas of data aren't atomically transferrable a it was interesting to chat about the specific nuances with Sravan. Always interesting to chat about stakeholder challenges in large organisations and James’s insights into taking stakeholders along for the SWP journey are a must for listeners. I found it fascinating how Sravan is applying methods which come from outside the people analytics space to provide people data outcomes. Great chat with interesting, engaging humans!