Earlier this week I read a blog post about a recruiter being shocked by a Millennial candidate asking if they were free to do as they wish with downtime if they accomplished the job (objectives) as designed in a fraction of the time expected (work week). While some may be shocked at the concept of downtime on the job, it’s a question that is popping up more and more as digitally uber-literate Millennials take on more visible project and management tasks. The posting reminded me of a key lesson I try to impart when advising talent management leaders on effective workforce planning, that lesson being that labor gaps are not always shortages.
If you look at most workforce planning models, you will realize immediately that they are pretty shortsighted. They ask the organization to forecast labor needs based on near- and medium-term demands and to determine if the best way of closing identified gaps between existing supply and projected demand is development, recruitment, or alternative labor procurement. The emphasis is always on what knowledge, skills, and abilities need to be added to the current mix.
At no point in most workforce planning processes does anyone ever ask if the organization is organizing tasks in the most effective way given labor market conditions, or if recent innovations in technology, tools, or approaches render the current organizational design dated and inefficient. With knowledge work, organizations must also consider whether or not work is deployed to the region offering the highest quality workforce at the best price.
One reason most workforce planning processes may be so shortsighted is that conversations about labor shortages are easy; after all, they are about resources that don’t have a face or personality, yet. Surpluses on the other hand are attached to people, and for many managers and HR professionals telling someone they are no longer needed is not a pleasant activity.
Failing to deal with organizational designs that do not leverage labor market conditions in the most cost-beneficial way contributes to massive amounts of salary waste, and should be considered a form of financial wrongdoing. Today it is not uncommon for a majority of an organization’s variable expenses to be labor related expenses. This being the case, driving incremental improvements in the efficiency of transactional HR processes is silly. Even if the HR budget were 3% of your organization’s variable spend, a 200% increase in the HR functions productivity would not yield nearly as much ROI as a 1% improvement in the productivity of the overall workforce.
Effective workforce planning requires that the process force the question of whether or not the organization is organized in the most effective way, and whether composite groups are leveraging the latest technology, tools, and approaches to deliver best in class performance.
A lot changes in a year and how developments could be leveraged to improve group performance may escape the logic of managers consumed with day-to-day operations. One practice that can help counter this is collaborative workforce planning (CWP). In CWP, an organizational group’s goals and objectives are shared with all members of the current team and the group collaborates over time about what new technologies and approaches are relevant and should be considered by management. (Internal wiki’s are a great platform for hosting such a dialogue.) In some organizations, CWP has resulted in 300% plus gains in workforce productivity. In most cases, the gains came because employees who were intimately familiar with how the work was actually getting done played a much larger role in organizational design.
The Millennial candidate’s question mentioned earlier is a good indicator that they may see a more effective way of getting the work done than those who designed the role. While many Millennials have yet to learn what they don’t know, it doesn’t mean their vantage point shouldn’t be consulted in developing modern organizational designs.
Master Burnett is the managing director of Dr. John Sullivan & Associates, an advisory services organization dedicated to emerging issue research, thought leadership, and talent management best practice evangelism. As a talent management strategy advisor, Master Burnett’s role is to partner with organizations to identify and develop innovative solutions to emerging talent issues that leverage the latest global thinking and technology. He has worked with leading organizations in more than 37 nations and is an avid proponent of taping the wisdom of crowds. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him via LinkedIn, or friend him on Facebook.
Image: limaoscarjuliet
