We were delighted to have QHR present at our Lunch event yesterday. Alicia Roach and Chris Hare shared insights into how organisations can successfully apply the principles of Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) to align their organisation and workforce to the future now.
Businesses must navigate their way through a rapidly changing world to survive, and HR should be the function to bring this sense into company strategy. QHR argued that for this to happen, HR must change. It is not good enough to remain stuck in the era of the best practice toolkit nor to fully cede the agenda to the other members of the leadership team. Rather, HR must speak the language of business to define both its priorities and the path forward for the business.
Everyday we see something around the Future of Work (FOW), the 4th Industrial Revolution or “The Robots are coming!!!” QHR believes that whilst understanding external trends and the emergence of technology as a driver for both organisational strategy and workforce change is critical, organisations often get caught in the hype around this data. HR is responsible for contextualising FoW within their own company’s critical strategic and operating imperatives. Otherwise, organisations misplace their effort and investment in the wrong workforce (and business) initiatives.
Through setting the context of key strategic and operating imperatives and translating that into workforce implications, organisations are able to distil the meaningful from the noise. QHR demonstrated how organisations draw incorrect conclusions and make the wrong decisions, with significant commercial impact, without a holistic and integrated approach in place. They emphasised that the business case for SWP should be thought of in terms of percentage of revenue because getting it wrong will have operational impact and cost customers.
QHR illustrated that most organisations are unclear and misaligned on their own business strategy, much less the workforce they need today or five years from now. However, HR can solve its own prioritisation needs and the business strategy clarity by facilitating conversations grounded in SWP. QHR concluded by stating that, “SWP is the foundation, not an aspiration.”
QHR is a unique consulting firm that is leading the market in applying the latest strategic workforce planning and HR analytics approaches, enabling clients to unlock the value of their human capital. Clients are able to increase company performance and mitigate the risk of their organisation not having the workforce required to execute their strategic and operating imperatives. QHR is about to launch the eQ8 Strategic Workforce Planning Platform, to bring an accessibility to the market for SWP, putting SWP “on rails”. This will enable organisations to accelerate how they proactively and holistically plan for the Future of Work.
