Episode 120: How MetLife Made a Success of their Strategic Workforce Planning (interview with Laura Shubert)
To ensure your workforce requirements are directly aligned with your company's business plan and have a clear direction, strategic workforce planning is paramount. In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David will be joined by Laura Shubert, Vice President of People Planning and Insights at MetLife. Having successfully driven the organisation’s Strategic Workforce Planning Initiatives, Laura will be sharing her journey.
The conversation will cover Laura’s top learnings and advice on:
Successfully getting buy-in from the organisation’s leaders
How to overcome the challenge of obtaining quality data for the organisation’s strategic workforce planning analysis
The shift in demand for skills in post-pandemic leadership
How technology helped MetLife go beyond the Excel sheet analysis.
Support from this podcast comes from eQ8. You can learn more by visiting:
https://www.eq8.ai/
You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.
Interview Transcript
David Green: Today, I'm talking to Laura Shubert, Vice President of People Planning and Insights at MetLife. Laura and her team have been doing a lot of work recently on strategic workforce planning. And with MetLife being such a large organisation, I'm particularly interested in understanding their journey towards successfully driving SWP within the organisation.
Laura Shubert: We started doing a lot of internal research and then external research, what are our competitors doing; what are they hiring for; are there potentially disruptive technologies on the horizon that may change the way we need to do work? And so, we showed up to our leaders now with a straw model based on all this research, and it actually helped engage them in a faster and more effective way; and we developed credibility with them, because we showed up with a point of view, with data, we knew their business, and in some cases we had external information that they didn't already know, and so that really helped us work with them.
David Green: With some great insight into how they got buy-in from MetLife's leaders, my conversation with Laura also covers the shift in demand for skills in post-pandemic leaders; overcoming the challenge of obtaining quality data for strategic workforce planning analysis; we look at how technology has helped MetLife scale strategic workforce planning and help them go beyond Excel; and there's much more too.
I started by asking Laura to tell me a little bit about MetLife and her People Planning and Insights team.
Laura Shubert: We'll start off with a little bit about MetLife. We are one of the world's leading financial services companies. We are number 50 on the Fortune 100. We provide insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management services to both individual and institutional customers. We operate in more than 40 markets globally, we have just shy of $670 billion in assets under management, and we have about 43,000 employees across the world.
I lead a team of about 14 people. We are known as People Planning and Insights. We are responsible for people analytics, employee listening and strategic workforce planning, and we report directly into the CHRO.
David Green: And that's certainly something, with the research that we're doing at Insight222, we're seeing more often now, that your peers in other organisations increasingly now are reporting directly into the CHRO. And increasingly, it's not just people analytics; you're looking at employee listening and workforce planning, so it's good to hear. I guess the journey of people analytics at MetLife has seen you do that, has it, Laura, the team grow in size and responsibility over the years?
Laura Shubert: Yeah. When I first started with MetLife, we were really a reporting shop calling ourselves the analytics, and we went through a journey to do some offshoring and then some automation of our basic reporting, focused more on solving problems, answering questions, doing more research; and the change to report directly to our CHRO occurred at the end of last year, so it's relatively new.
David Green: And perhaps one of those reasons, and I know a big focus of our conversation today, you've recently been focusing on strategic workforce planning. For our listeners, what does the strategic workforce planning journey look like at MetLife, what are some of the challenges that you have faced or are facing, and what have you done that has worked well?
Laura Shubert: Sure. Well, let me give a little bit of context of how we got started with SWP in the first place. In 2018 in the US, there was a Tax Reform Bill passed, and our then CEO said, "We're going to take $10 million and develop our employees". So, we started off with some programmes, some learning pathways, and at a certain point we said, "Are we spending this money to its greatest effect? Where do we have the biggest need?" and we couldn't really answer that question holistically across the organisation, because we didn't have strategic workforce plans. So, that was the burning platform for standing up strategic workforce planning at MetLife, as we realised we were probably spending our learning and development dollars in an inefficient manner, because we weren't able to do it targeted.
When it comes to our journey, we've evolved quite a bit. We began with a really traditional approach, where we interviewed the leaders and we created a supply and a demand model, then we went back and we validated, we had scenario-planning sessions. It just took way too long to deliver anything. And as I'm sure is true in many companies, it was hard to get on leaders' calendars, let alone get them all together in a room. So, we decided to take a step back and say, "We really know a lot about our business. There are strategic documents available, we can listen to town halls. How far can we go before we engage leaders?"
So, we started doing a lot of internal research and then external research, what are our competitors doing; what are they hiring for; are there potentially disruptive technologies on the horizon that may change the way we need to do work? And so, we showed up to our leaders now with a straw model based on all this research, and it actually helped engage them in a faster and more effective way; and we developed credibility with them, because we showed up with a point of view, with data, we knew their business, and in some cases we had external information that they didn't already know, and so that really helped us work with them.
David Green: What skills do you see are in higher demand for leaders than they were pre-pandemic, and how has that impacted on your hiring strategies at MetLife?
Laura Shubert: So, when we think about the skills and how they changed during the pandemic, let me start with the broad population, then we can talk a little bit about our leaders. We sort of brought a shift to digital selling. There's a lot of places in the world where, if you're selling something personal like life insurance, or a retirement plan, that's based on a face-to-face relationship. Latin America's a great example; it's a culture of in-person relationship building. And all of a sudden, that was removed from our salesforce; they couldn't have those direct conversations, because everyone was in lockdown.
Now, we had already been migrating to more digital channels anyhow, but all of a sudden the rubber met the road, out of leftfield, so we spent a lot of time investing and developing skills in digital marketing, digital selling, digital servicing, to really help our sales folks continue to be successful and deliver for our business. That's probably the example that comes to mind first.
Another one I'll say where we have a little bit of a different approach to solving is cybersecurity. So, I think experts say that during the pandemic, cyberattacks increased anywhere from 300% to 600%, and everybody was being pushed into a networking, internet-type environment, and these hack attempts were coming fast and furious. So, cybersecurity became incredible high in demand. And it's difficult to hire as well, as demand goes up, of course, and expensive. So, we have kind of a buy-build strategy there, because we have to fill our short-term need, but we want to plan to be out of those short-term actions, so we've kind of developed a hybrid approach to solving those needs.
David Green: And maybe if we're looking to the future now, how do you balance developing the skills of your existing leaders, for example, or existing people, whilst also hiring for the future?
Laura Shubert: MetLife has a strong preference for internal development, particularly when it comes to our leaders. Frankly, we believe the greatest contribution we can make to our employees is great leadership. So, we rolled out a programme in February 2021, that we refer to as Leading the Future, to over 5,000 leaders across the organisation. We just finished phase 1 this year, so more than a 12-month programme.
It was endorsed directly by our CEO, was connected to our strategic direction, and it included a variety of learning experiences. Of course we hired externally, particularly in emerging areas, where external thinking and perspective will be a step change for us, but our primary focus with leadership is growing it internally. So again, strategic workforce planning helps to give us that longer time horizon, so that we can put programmes like that in place.
David Green: And I think what's really interesting, and obviously part of the purpose, if you want to call it, of the organisation, is to develop people internally, and that linking strategic workforce planning as a purpose piece is really important I think for organisations; I don't know if you'd agree, Laura?
Laura Shubert: Of course it is. That's why it's strategic workforce planning and not operational or tactical. We have to be developing the right skills that connect to what our objectives are. At the same time, another cornerstone of it is scenario planning. We're in a world where things are changing lightning fast and we have to be able to pivot quickly and adjust to those changes, so it can also help us in that regard as well.
David Green: I think that's probably underestimating the speed of change at the moment! It's been an incredible couple of years, hasn't it? So, Laura, often with strategic workforce planning, the work can get conflated with the budget process, and it ends up as an exercise run by finance. For our listeners out there that are currently working towards taking their ownership and buy-in from the organisation, can you share how you successfully got everyone at MetLife onboard, and working together on it?
Laura Shubert: Yeah, that's a great question, and it's not even just finance. So, finance does what they call "workforce planning", which is usually 12 months out, based on the fiscal year, and it's intended to develop a cost projection for the organisation for its people cost. Our IT department also does workforce planning, and that's really about, how do we manage capacity, staffing projects, making sure that the right skills are available for those projects to be successful.
In order to separate ourselves from what finance and IT was doing, we actually don't use the term "strategic workforce planning" internally; we rebranded it to be "demand planning", because we didn't want preconceived notions or ideas of what we would or would not be delivering. And we also focused on the fact that the output, the valuable output, is not a projection of what you need, it's the action plan that solves what you need.
So, by focusing on these ways, we keep ourselves separate really from what finance is doing and what IT does. Of course, we bring our finance partners in, because we need to ensure that any solutions we develop, or approaches, are affordable; but it's more an after-the-fact exercise than being in the room with them at the moment.
David Green: That makes a lot of sense. I think it's something you kindly shared a case study in, in the book Jonathan Ferrar and I published last year, Excellence in People Analytics, and I was reading the case study again; and I think generally with people analytics, something really struck me as to the approach that you take. You're saying you involve finance analysts, or relevant analysts, in an early stage of the work, but always translate HR's actions into business outcomes.
That strikes me of what you're talking about there; it's the action plan, it's the actions that you need to take, rather than the actual exercise of the demand planning itself. It's, "Okay, this is what the data is telling us, these are the actions we need to take, and this is what we can expect to happen". It's so important to get everyone on the same page within an organisation and, as you say, get action taken on the work that you're doing.
Laura Shubert: In HR, I think another important aspect when working with finance is we share, obviously not personal data, but we share our models, and we open up our assumptions and we let them test it and push on it and probe, so that we're not having a debate about the numbers with finance, because they've already gotten themselves comfortable with it, they're already on board. They appreciate being able to kick the tyres on the model, rather than having a theoretical conversation.
David Green: And then the next step, I guess, is once we get past that buy-in stage, the next challenge is, or can be, to overcome the quality of data. MetLife's such a large, global organisation, I can imagine you have a lot of data. What are some of the top tips that you would give to some of our listeners, maybe people working in people analytics teams themselves and HR leaders listening to the show, to help them overcome the challenge of obtaining quality data for their strategic workforce planning analysis?
Laura Shubert: Well, I will say that I'm pretty lucky at MetLife, because we're on a single HRIS system, we have global job architecture, global grades, and clearly defined pay scales, so we're not having to spend time pulling data from multiple systems and aggregating it, and making sure that it all fits together well.
What I would say though is that strategic workforce planning is not a budget, it's not an exercise in precision. It doesn't matter if you need 53 data analysts, or 62 data analysts, if you only have 20 now and you need more, and you need to plan for how to provide more to the organisation. So, we tend to talk in round numbers and rounded percentages, to avoid that perception that we have a very precise model. It's not about precision, it's about directionality, and it's about allowing adequate lead time for HR and the business to work together to close those gaps.
David Green: And I guess, Laura, that's one of the reasons why you mention the importance of scenario planning?
Laura Shubert: Absolutely. And again, especially in this crazy environment that we're operating in these days, we need to be able to move quickly. And having different scenarios, if there's a change in regulation, if the political environment turns, if a competitor does something disruptive in the market, we need to be able to figure out, how will that impact the demands on our workforce and how will we meet those demands.
David Green: Any other top tips? So, it's not about precision, it's about directionality; any other top tips that you would offer listeners around strategic workforce planning?
Laura Shubert: Well, I would say what we're struggling with right now is skills. Skills are increasingly important. You're seeing more and more organisations talk about skills workforce planning, and it's difficult to know what you have in your organisation, where are those skills; where do they sit; who has them? We recently deployed a platform to create an internal marketplace, and it does do some skills inference, so we're trying to harness that data.
But I would say, look for creative ways to fill the gaps of what you don't know. You can even look at LinkedIn to do skills inference on your own employees. So, there's different ways to try to fill what you don't have. And again, progress over protection; some data is better than no data, and you do the best you can with it.
David Green: And it's definitely a big area within the people analytics wider field at the moment in organisations, and we've got the technologies in place that can help us to do this more so now, as you said, to do some of the skills inference, whether it's from LinkedIn or from our internal systems; because in the past, we've asked employees what their skills are, and (a) it takes a very long time, (b) you need a process in place to validate that, and then (c) the information is out-of-date very quickly, isn't it?
This is why we're increasingly looking, as a profession, to tools that help us infer skills, isn't it, because you can do it on a continuous basis, and it can support things like learning and development and mobility within the organisation as well? So, it's quite an exciting time to be working in the workforce planning space, I think.
Laura Shubert: It is. There's been so much innovation over the past ten years, and I'm continually astounded as it progresses. But this is a game-changer really, being able to infer skills, for exactly the reasons you said. I remember at organisations, where we used to have these big programmes and, "We're going to do skills assessments across the organisation". And even if you managed to get through the organisation, it's got gaps and it's stale by the time you're done, and it would be a full-time job, just constantly assessing people to make it useful.
David Green: You mentioned you've invested in a talent marketplace, but you've also invested in a dedicated strategic workforce planning platform. How has this helped solve some of the challenges that you've spoken about, and others; and what has it allowed you to do beyond the famous Excel sheet, which I know a lot of our people analytics teams are still using for a variety of their work?
Laura Shubert: Well, I do like an Excel spreadsheet, but not in this case. So, we used eQ8 for our strategic workforce planning platform. When I first started looking for a tool to use for strategic workforce planning, I had a very specific vision in mind, and it took me a while to find one that fit what I was looking for; and specifically, and I mentioned it earlier, it was around scenario planning. I wanted a product that would allow us to create lots of different scenarios.
You only want to plan for one scenario, right, otherwise you're wasting a lot of resources. You pick the most likely one, but you need to be able to pivot. eQ8 really allowed us to create these multiple models, where if we were trying to do that in Excel, we would just be overloaded with spreadsheets and version control and the inability to consolidate, and all of the things that hold us back when we use Excel spreadsheets. So, it's really been incredibly helpful in that regard.
David Green: It sounds like it's helped you speed the process up and scale the work that you're doing around workforce planning as well, by the sounds of it?
Laura Shubert: That's exactly right. It may not speed up the stand-up, but afterwards it does. So, it's a big investment to build that model out, but once you have it, you can create new ones, you can adjust the one you have. It creates a lot of flexibility and allows you to move quickly.
David Green: What questions do our listeners need to ask their prospective HR technology partners, in your experience, to ensure that they are purchasing the right HR technology that meets their unique goals and challenges?
Laura Shubert: Well, I think that's just it. You need to know what's most important for your organisation, what do you need from the software, what do you need it to do. In my case, I was very focused on scenarios; somebody else may want ease of consolidation, or being able to push out plans easily, or allowing a multitude of people to touch and build the plans. It depends on your individual goals and objectives for workforce planning.
But what I would say also is, don't allow the software to define your process. Figure out what you want SWP to look like, how you want it to flow, what you want the outputs to be, and then find the software that supports that. A lot of times, you'll see people's first step will be to purchase a product, and they haven't spent enough time really thinking about what they want to accomplish and how they're going to accomplish it. And then the gaps sort of appear as you start to develop the work you want to do. So, have a clear perspective going in, and don't let the product run your process.
So, Laura, looking at your journey so far, is there any advice that you can give to other organisations that are going down a similar route with strategic workforce planning, something that you wish you knew when you first embarked on your strategic workforce planning journey at MetLife, or demand planning journey, as I should call it?
Laura Shubert: Yeah, so like anyone starting off in a new field, we did a lot of research on best practices, and best practices told us how we should operate and run strategic workforce planning. We spent a lot of time trying to make that work, and we're perhaps a little purist about what it meant to do strategic workforce planning. In the end, we evolved quite dramatically from what those so-called best practices were.
So, I think the advice I would give is that the best practice is the one that produces results in your ecosystem at your organisation. And don't be too precious about the way you want to approach it. Producing results and having impact is the goal. And if you get there through a method that's a little different than you set out to, that's okay, as long as you're delivering value to your company.
David Green: I guess, back to what you were saying near the start, Laura, when you were bringing insight to the conversations some things that people in the business didn't know, then you had an audience. When you were going just to get information from them, it was harder to get on the calendars.
Laura Shubert: It's true. And the other thing I'll say is that sometimes, and it's hard for a people analytics team, we like to uncover the unknown; that's what analysts want to do. Sometimes, it was confirmative, and the team would sometimes feel a little flat, because you go and you lay out all this great work, and the leader goes, "Yeah, that's exactly right, I experience that every day". But that's actually a success. That means that you're completely on point with your research. And so, you don't always have to uncover something for it to be valuable and create credibility with the leaders.
David Green: Exactly. By telling them stuff that they're experiencing, that gives credibility, doesn't it, because you're almost saying, "We understand your challenges, and we've got data to show that those are your challenges as well"?
Laura Shubert: That's exactly right. I had a quote from one leader who said, "Wow, this is a more scientific way for me to plan my workforce needs", because he'd not seen data applied that way. So, that was quite validating.
David Green: That's definitely a quote to remember as well; that's a very strong endorsement of the work that you and the team are doing. So, if we peer into our crystal balls, Laura, and look five years ahead, what do you think is next for strategic workforce planning?
Laura Shubert: Well, I think it's going to take us that long to get skills right, in all honesty, just getting at the data. And the other thing is that you can't have a purely skills-based planning methodology, because the unit that houses skills is people, so you're always going to have some volume as well as the skills.
I think that the companies that are going to be really sophisticated doing strategic workforce planning will be looking at that composition and availability of skills, and how can we create talent pools so that skills can be deployed as needed, and scaled back as needed. And also, really developing that point of view about which types of work lend themselves toward that methodology versus a more traditional approach. I think that's one of the next big iterations for organisational structure, and I think strategic workforce planning can play an important role in that.
David Green: What do you think are the two -- obviously, you're part of the HR leadership team at MetLife as well; what are the two to three things that you feel that HR's really going to need to do to add more business value as we hopefully continue to come out of the pandemic?
Laura Shubert: It's a good question, and to be perfectly transparent, I came out of finance, so I didn't grow up in HR, so sometimes I have a little bit of a different perspective on things. I think first and foremost, both for a function and for an organisation, we have to figure out how to prioritise.
When you look at the post-pandemic mental and social wellbeing challenges that are impacting our workforce, all the reports on employee burnout being so high, that jeopardises our access to talent, and not least to service organisation, so that's pretty important. We have to help reduce fatigue by focusing folks on the work that really matters most. Competitive differentiation in a few key areas is a lot better than mediocrity across the board, and I do feel like sometimes we lean into that.
The second thing I would add is how much the workforce is changing. It's clambering for more development, for more career opportunity, for higher pay, but also an organisation that reflects your values. And when you think about the polarisation of opinions that's occurring across the globe right now, HR is going to have to figure out how to respond to those types of demands proactively, while navigating this divergence in thought in a way that doesn't disengage or alienate large pockets of their population.
David Green: That's a really good point, Laura, and I think we saw that to an extent, didn't we, a couple of years ago, with the murder of George Floyd and the social unrest that that threw up across the world. It obviously emanated from the US, but it was everywhere, and I think what we saw is that organisations were far more responsive than they'd been in the past, and I think that probably echoes what you've just talked about there.
Employees choose organisations to work with and put their careers around, and a lot of that is based on the purpose and value of the organisation as well, which was maybe a little bit different in the past. Yes, people still want pay, as you said, and they want development as well; but they want organisations that reflect their own individual purposes as well. So, there's a huge opportunity for us, as HR professionals and people analytics professionals frankly, to understand that and help our organisations navigate that path as well.
Laura Shubert: That's exactly right. I think it's a big challenge, I don't think it's going away any time soon, and I think HR's going to have to think and perform differently to work within this new normal.
David Green: We're understanding this a little bit more, and this is a key part of people analytics as well, and then we can help our organisations understand if that's going on and where it's going on, and how we can take steps to alleviate that, but also how we can understand how actually, not only is it bad for employees, burnout and suffering impacts on their mental wellbeing, but it's actually bad for business as well and it's bad for customers. I think that's where I think as HR and as people analytics, we can provide that data that's kind of been the missing link perhaps before, to really support our organisations be more healthy places, I guess, for our employees.
Laura Shubert: That's exactly right. I think, especially in this time of great resignation, people talk about the risk of turnover. But I think a bigger risk is a disengaged workforce that doesn't leave; that has way more business impact. So, you really have to figure out how to keep people wanting to be with your organisation, motivated by your mission and your vision, and the values that you put forth; otherwise, you're going to have folks that are just punching the clock and aren't motivated to give discretionary effort. That's a bad place to be.
David Green: Laura, I think that's a really powerful note to end our conversation today. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast and sharing the incredible work that you and the team are doing around strategic workforce planning, but also touching on some of the other areas there in employee listening. I think it's great that at MetLife, you put people analytics, workforce planning and employee listening together, I think that's really important.
Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, and find out more about your work at MetLife?
Laura Shubert: Yes, absolutely. So, I'm active on LinkedIn, you can reach out to me through LinkedIn, and I would be happy to have a further conversation, or answer any questions anyone may have. And thank you so much for having me, David, it's a privilege.
David Green: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I do hope you enjoyed it. My thanks again to Laura Shubert.