(gentle music)
- Hi, Andrew from SACS and welcome to our six video sequence
on Workforce Planning for the New Normal.
So in this sequence, we'll start out with a video,
which is about, what is the new normal?
Workforce considerations that seem to be part of
the process of where we are in this post-COVID world,
or perhaps evolving post-COVID world.
We'll talk about some trends that were happening
before COVID and some trends that have been
accelerated by COVID.
The second video in the sequence will be
a brief introduction to workforce planning.
What is workforce planning?
We'll give you a conceptual framework of what
workforce planning is trying to achieve.
The third is all about strategy and role clarity.
You know, if you want to build a workforce plan,
it's really interesting to be able to determine
a workforce plan for what?
In other words, if you've got a clarity of what your
organisation needs to achieve and deliver,
of course, you're going to build a better workforce plan.
So we'll tell you what we know about the
organisational psychology of clarity.
The fourth is about the SACS model of workforce planning
and that's where we will take you through
a workforce planning exercise for a theoretical organisation
called XYZ Corporation.
And we'll explain to you the stages that you undertake
in a workforce planning process in order to get
the greatest deal of benefit out of it.
The fifth is about leadership of workforce planning.
In other words, workforce planning is not just a
mechanistic process where you forecast
the workforce of the future.
It's actually a leadership development exercise as well.
And so it needs to be led well.
And we'll talk about how to maximise the levels
of engagement of staff in this process by virtue of
leading the process effectively.
And finally, we'll finish off in module six about
the type of person and that copes best
with challenging times.
So six videos, all on the topic of workforce planning
for the new normal.
And that really requires us to make some predictions
about the new normal.
Now, this is a table which outlines a range of different
management consulting firms and what they forecast
the new normal is likely to be in this rapidly evolving
post-COVID world.
So you'll see that all of them say that there are going to
be significant changes in workforce and work.
And in particular, an increase in remote working,
re-skilling of employees, growth in the gig economy.
And I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail
just in a few slides.
But things like upskilling, things like remote work,
things like greater flexibility of how work is done.
And certainly that seems to be a trend
from right across the world.
The concept of enforcing the situation where people
come to an office and work only in that office,
that's a very rapidly receding characteristic.
And certainly the organisations that are winning the war
for talent right now, are the ones that are bringing
the greatest degree of flexibility to the approach
that they bring to getting work done.
Culture, organisational culture, lots of focus here
from different consulting firms about there will be
a greater focus on employee safety and wellbeing.
And certainly that does seem to be the case.
I don't think I've ever seen in my entire career
such an emphasis on wellbeing.
I'm not sure always that people are aware of what they mean
by wellbeing when they say that,
but there is a science based approach to wellbeing
and I have some separate videos on that topic.
But certainly people are very keen on wellbeing.
They've seen that the importance of wellbeing
was absolutely crucial during the COVID period
and it's really interesting how that's persisting
as we move out of the COVID world and into
a kind of a new normal.
The next one is about technology and infrastructure.
And certainly because of the fact that so much work is done
remotely these days, that's required a rejigging
of organisational infrastructure to be able to cope
with remote work and things like sharing platforms,
SharePoint and those sorts of things have become,
have really accelerated in their growth of uptake
in organisations so that people can share
and work on documents remotely.
Business and operating model.
A range of forecasts here, but in particular things like
consumer behaviour and certainly an uptake of online shopping
has been an observation of everybody.
A number of the consulting firms forecast that there will be
a reassuring of business, where a business will be
brought back to localities close to head office.
Well, that forecast was made about a year ago now
and that doesn't seem to be holding up.
If anything, COVID seems to have made people more
broad minded about where their services might come from.
I mean, if you can do things digitally, what does it matter
if the person who's providing you a service is in Germany
or the office next door.
As long as you can find an overlapping time zone
that seems to be fine for most people
in terms of getting stuff done.
So a range of interesting forecasts about
what the workplace of the future will be.
So if we summarise some of these observations,
there's a lot about rapidly evolving business models.
In other words, as mobility increases the way that we have
done things historically needs to evolve very rapidly
and that requires your workforce to evolve very rapidly.
A focus on role and organisational clarity of purpose.
And certainly as people moved from working in the office
to working from home that really shook up the whole question
of role clarity.
The job that I'm doing at home is that the same
as the job that I was doing in the office?
Well, most employees don't think so.
And certainly there needs to be effort put in to create
organisational clarity and we have a video later in this
sequence specifically about that.
New competencies to enable delivery,
such as technology usage.
There's been a lot of research done about remote working
and I'll be also talking about that in a few slides down
the track, but remote work does require
different competencies.
The ability of course to use technology
is an obvious competency.
But how about the ability to collaborate effectively
when you're not in the same office as your colleagues?
That's a capability which is also something that needs
to be learned when people are working in this remote form.
Wellbeing and employee resilience.
Well, not just the wellbeing of employees,
but also the leadership skills which cause leaders
to be able to lead for wellbeing, a very strong focus.
The competencies of employees to become more resilient
and to manage their own wellbeing better
and also leadership to do that.
Now I think that one of the things that's a very key
evolving concept in all of this,
is that there used to be more of a kind of a
custodial perspective of organisations.
We will look after our employees wellbeing.
And of course that is important.
The organisation needs to take that view,
but we are seeing increasingly a much more evidence-based
perspective which is a partnership approach.
Yes, we will do what we can to look after your wellbeing
but we will also create a situation where you develop
your skills in order to be able to
support your own wellbeing.
Resilience is not just about saving people,
resilience is about creating a situation where people
are more independently able to manage their own wellbeing.
A reexamination of corporate culture.
Now I've put the word maybe after that.
You know, people talk a lot about corporate culture
and I think that their perspective on corporate culture
is often very theoretical and vague.
And in fact, we know that people are reflecting
on this question of corporate culture,
but there's a very simple contemporary organisational
psychology definition of corporate culture.
It's really the balance of good things you experience
at work and the balance of bad things that you
experience at work.
And if you are lucky enough to be at a workplace
where you experience, let's say six or seven good things
for every bad things, that seems to be a positive
corporate culture.
So I think that people are reviewing their
corporate culture, but the mistake that some are making is
that they're turning it into a very vague conceptual,
almost quasi-religious, kind of a thing about the
optimum corporate culture.
I think you should simplify it and think about
how many good experiences we are giving our employees
versus how many bad experiences.
Now, how do you tell?
Well, of course you ask them and this is simple stuff
to measure.
And candidate shortage and talent generally.
Certainly, COVID slowed down the movement of candidates
around the world.
And in many economies that has meant that people are very
short of candidates.
And so candidate attraction is something that we
are getting enormous numbers of inquiries about
from clients at the moment.
People just can't find the candidates that they need.
And so in this brave new world, candidate attraction
and talent availability is going to be a critical issue
for organisations across the world.
Evolving models of work delivery.
In other words, if you are delivering a service
which previously was delivered face to face,
but now is delivered online,
well, that may mean that you need slightly different
employees or employees skilled up in a different way.
And that's where workforce planning comes in.
And it's also to address issues such as working from home.
What capabilities do we need to work effectively from home?
Let's talk a little bit about working from home.
And so here's some stats about how working from home
has changed.
This is from the Productivity Commission in Australia
and you see working from home bumbled along in a
pretty stable fashion from before 2003 up to 2021,
when COVID hit.
And then all of a sudden you have this effect where
in Australia, somewhere between 35 and 45% of the workforce
was sent to work from home.
Massive change and a massive revolution in the workforces
around the world.
People working from home who had never done this before.
Do we have the technology to do it?
Do we have the skills to do it?
Have we been inducted into how to do this well?
So a big challenge for the workforce.
Workforce suitability for working from home
varies from sector to sector.
So to use the example of mining,
the proportion of people working from home
before the pandemic in comparison with in response
to the pandemic, it actually dropped slightly
but many increased rapidly.
So for instance, rental hiring and real estate services
21% jumped up to 34%.
If we look at education and training, 24% jumped up to 41%.
And for instance, in things like arts
and recreational services 7% jumped up to 28%.
Massive increases in the amount of people working from home.
Why?
Certain sectors are just more suited to working from home.
It's often said that it's very difficult to outsource
a haircut.
So the nature of work, particularly if it's the sort of work
that might be called knowledge management work
lend itself particularly well to people working from home.
If your job is to dig stuff up out of the ground,
it's very difficult to do that from anywhere other than
the mine site.
So it's not surprising that that didn't respond
so significantly to the work from home trend
that was introduced by COVID-19.
And so working from home by job type,
this is also really stark.
You'll see that professionals tended to work from home
much more than, let's say, a machine operator.
Clerical people could work from home.
Managers could work from home,
but technician sales, community workers, labourers,
didn't respond anywhere near as much to working from home
by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So that really raises an interesting question
about working from home.
Is it a good thing?
Well, yes, it is.
In fact, if you take 1000 employees and send them
to work from home, you'll find that they are slightly
more productive, in general and slightly happier,
slightly more engaged in their work.
So it's a good thing from that point of view.
But it's not a perfect thing because there are also some
negatives and we know that research across the world
has shown that there tends to be more blurred boundaries
around work and family.
So when you finish your work, you don't tend to walk away
from it in the same way that you would if you'd left
an office, got into a bus and went home.
So it's much more difficult to have the clear boundaries
between work and home if you are working from home.
Secondly, too much working from home can lead to
worse relationships with colleagues.
In other words, you don't build that sort of interpersonal
relationship that you do if you have the opportunity to
witness the non-verbals of other people and thereby
bond with them more deeply.
And finally, some people are not suited
to working from home.
And so for instance, if you happen to be a strong extrovert
and also a little bit emotionally unstable,
the sort of person who feels things very deeply,
that appears to be almost the worst combination
for working from home.
Whereas a person who's a natural introvert,
particularly if they're an emotionally stable introvert,
that seems to be the best combination that empowers
already somebody to work effectively from home.
There is an opportunity to measure this in people.
SACS has an instrument that we call
the Remote Worker Assessment and in effect,
what it means is that here are some characteristics
that have been shown to be effective for causing a person
to be comfortable in working from home, but also productive.
And you'll see these characteristics in this particular
candidate are largely green ticks,
which means that the person is judged by this instrument
to be largely suitable to work from home.
I just really want to talk a little bit about the gig economy.
A number of the forecasting firms that we mentioned earlier
say that they expect an upturn in the gig economy.
In fact, the gig economy, at least in Australia
and New Zealand, has been vastly overestimated.
And in fact, the evidence is that more people are actually
working in jobs, stable jobs for corporations as a
proportion of employment than virtually at any other time.
So a guy called Robert Sobyra as part of his PhD,
did a bunch of research on this topic,
and was able to identify that the concept of the gig economy
in Australia at least, is basically a myth.
Because what this shows is that casual work in Australia is
it peaked around about 2002.
And in fact, in recent times it's gone nowhere
from the point of view of increasing as a proportion
of work.
And also if we look at self-employment,
you'll see this graph here, and this is again
courtesy of Robert Sobyra and his work,
self-employment has collapsed.
So the idea is that we're all going to be drivers
for Uber or something like that, or delivering food,
well that's just not born out by the evidence.
In fact, most people are employed and more people are
employed in non-casual employment than virtually
any other time in the last 20, 25 years.
So the gig economy, I doubt strongly whether that's going
to flourish in response to the COVID-19 thing.
But some other things such as different ways of doing work
and flexibility of work location and things like
a focus on wellbeing, there is no doubt that these
are trends that are likely to stay.
So join us for the next video where we'll talk a little bit
more about workforce planning,
specifically what workforce planning is
and how it can help you to be ready
for the new world of work.
(gentle music)