Episode 14

Cia: Welcome to Employee Activation, the HR podcast that takes you inside the minds of some of the world's brightest workforce strategists to uncover how they help their people and their organisations thrive. I'm your host, Cia Kouparitsas.

When we talk about the future of work, the conversation often turns to technology, automation and AI, but behind every strategic transformation is something even more important, the people, and that's where today's guest comes in. David Edwards is the author of The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook, and he spent his entire career helping global organisations from RBS and NatWest Group to his current role at Ericsson plan for the future of work.

David has a knack for turning what many see as a technical exercise into something deeply human connecting data with purpose and business strategy with real people's lives. In today's episode, we are gonna explore how workforce planning can go from an annual spreadsheet task to a true business superpower, one that builds capability, resilience, and confidence across an organisation.

David, welcome to Employee Activation.

David: Well, thank you very much Cia, it’s very nice to be here.

Cia: We are thrilled to have you.

David: It looks very dark where you are. It's nice and sort of well, I, I was gonna say bright. There's no such thing as a bright morning in the UK at this time of year, but you know what I mean.

Cia: It's nice to hear it's bright over there and I do love that we can be on opposite, uh, sides of the world, but having a conversation I think that transcends location. Um, when we come to this topic of workforce planning and, and transformation and, um, I'm really excited, David, because your background fascinates me.

You've obviously spent your career helping incredible organisations that I mentioned before. You know, RBS, Natwest Group and now Ericsson, um, plan for the workforce of the future.

And I would love to understand, for you personally, you know, what drew you to this work in the first place and what, what keeps you still really passionate about it?

David: I kind of stumbled into this almost by accident, which I think is sort of, probably how I'd describe my career as being somehow accidental because it is so eclectic. But to cut an extremely long story short, I was, um, working for RBS as a, uh, program manager in finance technology. And, um, I got asked if I would help to run the project for what at the time was called right-shoring, which was essentially moving roles from the expensive city of London across, uh, into our hub, our technology hub in India.

And that was my first exposure really to people data. I found myself involved in running redundancy programs, uh, for people in the UK and the, the data kind of appealed to me and it appalled me as well because there was so much there and yet so little, somehow. We didn't really know terribly much about sort of the people that we were letting go other than that they were a number and that they had a certain sort of redundancy or cost value attached to them.

I developed a few ideas because I, I believed that it was possible for us to, uh, to redeploy people from one part of the organisation to another 'cause I knew that we were hiring. At any one time, we were hiring 15, 16,000 people a year out of a, uh, a company of a hundred thousand or so. It stood to reason that there were bound to be some of those hires that could have been taken up by people who were being let go at the same time.

I set about to prove that using about five or six different lumps of data, none of which were joined together except by a bit of, uh, string and glue, and discovered that yeah, sure enough, there were at least 900 people who had been let go, While at the same time we were hiring into the company, the same number in the same town, in more or less, the same time zone, uh, into more or less the same role, just in different parts of the organisation.

It didn't make sense. And to this day it doesn't make sense. And you asked me why I'm still passionate about this, it’s because we're still doing that. We're still not, not remotely good at being able to genuinely find opportunities for people whose career for perfectly you know, perfectly good business reasons, are coming to an end in that part of the organisation.

Cia: It's fascinating because this is a conversation I'm having a lot lately, David, because I think we are seeing, you know, the impact of AI automation and augmentation change the very fabric of roles within organisations and the scenario you're describing was literally a conversation I had with an organisation last week.

You've got different divisions or areas of businesses that are not talking to each other, so you know when you are making some roles redundant, there is no visibility as how you can keep those people engaged or potentially move them around.

How do you, or how did you previously tackle that? You know, you were talking about the different data types that you could access to be able to enable that tradition. What sort of data are you talking about?

David: I, down in London and a dear friend of mine, Tom Carrigan, up in, in Edinburgh, whose, uh, whose capacity for vitriolic despair is a thing of beauty, frankly. We together formed, uh, what we called a clearing house. Which is a bit, sort of, kind of functional by name, but essentially it was a dating agency for people who were at risk of redundancy.

We learned about packages of people who were being let go, uh, who were at risk of being let go. Um, and with the most rudimentary bits of data about them, often little more than sort of where they were, um, what job role they had. Uh, we would then talk to them, find out what it was that they, you know, what their situation was, what their interests were, and then we would literally scan across the organisation looking for, uh, for, for vacancies or for people that we knew.

So it really was a very manual and, and therefore quite personal activity. The upshot of it was 'cause there was an upshot, uh, that despite an awful lot of resistance and belief that you simply couldn't put somebody from one area or specialism into a different one. Um, when in actual fact you could, uh, that be, people are much more transferrable than, uh, than folk realise.

Uh, we managed to basically redirect over 500 people who had been at risk into a a different position. And this may pre-empt a question that you're going to ask me about, sort of, you know, what gives me the greatest satisfaction? But, you know, that's number one on my list. Beyond a shadow of doubt, it's beyond a shadow of doubt, not just because it was a good thing to do in the face of really quite intense opposition.

Also because it was so personal, um, because you would get people, individuals coming up to you and saying, look, thank you so much. You know, you have kept me in a role, which, uh, you know, I didn't think I was going to have. You know, that means stuff, you know, that's, that's stuff you can actually grab hold of.

Cia: Absolutely. And this is what I absolutely love about the skills-based view of strategic workforce planning, Because if you can understand the skills that an organisation needs to achieve its objectives and have that view of all of the skills and the diverse capabilities your people have and match that up, you're gonna, you know, achieve that alignment for both the individual and the organisation, which I love.

And I think you, you know, you started to segue there into something I do genuinely wanna ask, which is, you know, you've done workforce planning across very different environments from banking to telco. What are some of those great achievements? You know, you mentioned one of them already in terms of that ability to make a real difference, um, at the individual level and make it deeply personal.

What are some other areas where you have been able to deliver real measurable difference?

David: There are a couple of things that I have a, a, a really strong belief in, um, and this is where perhaps I'm sort of. I'm not gonna say ahead of the curve, but I certainly sort of, uh, have a different view to sort of some of the more conventional thinking on SWP. The first of which is, uh, that you cannot, and especially in today's environment, you cannot plan for just one part of the workforce.

Uh, traditionally we seem to have thought of, uh, SWP as being about employees. Well, in most large enterprises, yes, employees may represent the majority of the workforce, but they absolutely do not represent its entirety. And there's this growing cohort of workers, uh, you know, whether it be contractors, statement of work, gig workers, and now of course, AI agents as well, all of whom are a part of the workforce, an intrinsic part of the workforce.

And it seems to me bizarre that, you know, we, we only talk about the sort of the, uh, the number of headcount when we know full well that labour costs an awful lot more than just the surface headcount. Therefore, we should look at how we manage all of that.

Um, and that is something that, uh, that I and a brilliant team of people managed to develop while we were, were working in the UK Bank Natwest. That, for me, remains the proof and is not something which has been applied very much elsewhere, that strategic workforce planning is, uh, is, is a lot more than just headcount forecasting.

It is about how you determine the needs of the business and apply the best possible mix to the workforce demand so that you remain competitive, uh, but also in the longer term, keep costs under control and also, uh, enhance the employee value proposition. Because your employees, despite what I've just said, remain at the very heart of the, uh, the organisation's own prospects for its wellbeing.

The second thing for me is not so much an achievement as much as a, a revelation come realisation over time that strategic workforce planning is seen as, um, perhaps a, uh, an endpoint for some parts of the organisation in that it is a, uh, a way of addressing particular problems. Uh, I find it ironic that we don't talk about the workforce as a risk factor in the business, and yet it is a fundamental risk factor for the business.

My revelation has been that we need to talk much more about the workforce as a source of business risk, because otherwise we will, as a function, as an HR function, continue to be thought of, perhaps as just a transactional responder to business strategy as opposed to a genuine influencer in it.

The second realisation was that SWP is not an end, um, in itself it is a means to an end, and unless you see SWP as part of a workforce management ecosystem, and therefore engage all parts of that ecosystem in order to optimise the process although I don't that word process, um, you will never see the true value that's possible out of it.

Cia: That is fascinating and I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head there in where strategic workforce planning sometimes does not get the attention it deserves perhaps that executive and board level as well, and we are time to see that shift from my perspective because of the profile of AI automation and augmentation.

But I am curious as to how you've seen the function shift from that board level. Do you find that, you know, over the years when you look at your career historically to where you are today, that it's being taken more seriously because of the external pressures that are coming inwards?

David: I want to say yes, unambiguously, but I can't.

Cia: Yeah.

David: I think that it has drawn board attention, um, in moments of concern and crisis, but even then, not always. Um, and yeah, there's a basket of reasons as to why that might not, uh, might be the case. Part of it, I believe, is because HR as a function is, has not historically been good at highlighting those risk factors and technology and HR itself perhaps has not been as good as it could be in going beyond just the problem statement into what the action statement is as well.

You know, I notice with interest that, uh, you know, one or two of the people analytics technology vendors are saying, oh, this, you know, you can deliver value through people analytics. Well, you gotta tell people how. It's not enough just to say, you know, there's a fire over there. You know, you've gotta be able to say, there's a fire over there and I know where we can get a, uh, a tender to actually put it out. Until we join those dots up and are seen as not only, you know, not just transactional, but, but as being influential and having solutions to hand, which is where the ecosystem comes in.

Then I think we'll continue to struggle to get the attention, and therefore the consequence that you see is things like what are now happening, which is reductions taking place, which I think are front running the advent of AI as opposed to being consequential of its application. I don't wanna set up us for the, you know, of us versus them, but its finance is basically raising the threat level, saying, unless we reduce our costs, our competitors are going to get ahead of us.

Therefore we've got to apply AI. So we're not looking at it as a, how do we redefine work in an optimal way. We are looking at how do we cut costs and then force the AI and the workforce into whatever it is we've got left.

Cia: I think you're touching on a really important point, and this is kind of, um, merging two different perspectives here. I know in your book you talk about, and really challenge the idea that workforce planning is just an HR function. But to what you just said there as well, I think, you know, getting alignment between HR, finance and operations can be really tough. From your experience, what, what works in terms of bringing those groups together around a shared workforce strategy?

David: An awful lot of resilience, an awful lot of patience. Um, thank you for the, uh, for the book mention. I mean, I, there is a chapter that's devoted literally to the personal struggles that people have, uh, have experienced. I'm, I am a, a proud one in four and I think that there have been a lot of mental health challenges for people doing this, um, because you are trying to bring together perhaps the biggest herd of cats that there is in a business function. It is the ultimate in consultation and collaboration because you are trying to both identify business situations where the workforce can be of value, establish a different form of credibility for a function which has, let's be honest, not always had the greatest, and you are trying to get people to do things in a different way.

You can't just go in waving a flag saying, Hey, I've got this fantastic idea and we're all going to be rich. You've got to go in and say, I know stuff that I think you ought to be aware of, that I think has an influence on your, you know, on our business future. Um, which means you need to talk the language of finance.

I happen to be an accountant in my past life. You need to be able to talk the language of business. I happen to have been an operations director in a past life. You need to be able to talk the language of change as well. And I've been a project manager, so I think people who succeed in this, uh, tend to be pretty eclectic in their career backgrounds.

Good at listening. Good at asking questions and good at flipping the narrative towards its audience as opposed to what matters necessarily to you. Now, that's not the perfect formula, but it works better than most. Yeah, it takes a village. I spoke to 70 people in all heaven only knows, uh, how, you know, how much transcript I still waded through.

They all recognise that the best outcomes involve pretty much everybody across HR, or at least representatives from across HR, as well as representatives from the business and from finance and strategy if you're going to make any headway at all.

Cia: Absolutely. I think that's great advice, and I think you know, something you said earlier as well was just the sheer volume of data that you consider across as an HR professional as well, and helping spin that into something that is valuable for the business beyond seeing someone as, you know, a bum in a seat or a line item on a budget, what other data can you be accessing that could possibly influence some of those, um, those other metrics that those other divisions are looking on as well?

Um, it's fascinating stuff. Now we've had so much to talk about and I'm conscious we're, we're running outta time so I, I did just wanna jump to, I suppose a final thought from you. And I think a really valuable thing here would be for our listeners, if there was one mindset shift about workforce planning, one thing that they could take back to their teams, um, you know, whether it's a, a learning for something they're dealing with, um, right now in terms of skills disruption, automation, ai, or just general workforce challenges, what would that be?

David: Here's something I suggest anybody tries and, and anybody can if you have access to your company's annual report and Chat GPT. Upload the annual report into Chat GPT. It's in the public domain, so you are not breaking any rules. And ask it a simple question, having looked at this report, what are the 10 most important workforce segments?

And it will tell you, it will go through that report and it will come out with the 10 parts of the workforce, which that report, because it talks about all the, you know, the, the, the revenues and uh, and the plans, um, are the ones which make the most difference.

Now you can then sort of quiz it a little bit more about its sort of its approaches, but use that as a basis and ask yourself then using available people analytics or any available data, what's the health of that particular segment of, of each of those segments, you know?

What do the demographics look like? What's AI going to sort of do to those? How difficult is the market just at the moment for that, uh, that particular segment? Because that's gonna give you a real sense as to whether or not the workforce that you rely on is safe, at risk, needs to change.

Cia: That is an absolutely brilliant tip. I am actually gonna go and do that a bit later on, David. So thank you. I love to hear these super practical things and I always, it begs the question, what did we do before AI and Chat GPT? Um, so look, thank you so much for doing this. David.

David: Cia, it's been a pleasure. I'm sorry I've rambled on rather a lot, haven't I?

Cia: No, not at all, Like I think this is the thing with someone like you who has this incredible career, um, enough so that you've written an entire book. There is so much that we could talk about. But I did just wanna say that, you know, what really stood out for me from this conversation was how you have this way of framing workforce planning as both strategic and human.

You know, it's not just the data or the financial numbers game, it's about really understanding and unlocking the capability of your people as a competitive advantage. And, you know, really helping organisations understand what they have today, who they'll need tomorrow, and how they can bridge that gap in a way that grows people and performance together.

Because I think at the end of the day, um, organisations that succeed are the ones who are doing the right things by people and creating really sustainable workforces. So, um, thank you for sharing that. And, uh, for those who do wanna dive deeper into David's work, uh, you can find The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook wherever you get your business reads, but we'll also pop it onto our website, um, so if you visit the Employee Activation Podcast page, you'll be able to get a direct link there and also some other practical tools to help you build a workforce that's ready for what's next. So thank you again, David, for joining us.

David: It'd been my real pleasure, Cia, thank you.

Cia: Great. We'll see you next time. Thank you.

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