Episode 247: How to Influence Business Strategy Through Workforce Planning (with Ross Sparkman)
What if the most valuable business strategy starts with workforce planning?
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by one of the world’s most respected voices on strategic workforce planning, Ross Sparkman, Global Head of Workforce Planning at Nutrien and author of the recently released second edition of Strategic Workforce Planning.
With a career leading workforce strategy at companies like Meta, GE, Nike, and Walmart, Ross brings rare insight into how to turn workforce planning into a true lever of transformation, join their conversation as they explore:
Why traditional workforce planning is no longer fit for today’s pace of change
How to integrate AI into workforce planning without falling for the hype
What it really takes to make workforce planning stick inside large organisations
The critical partnership between people analytics and SWP for future-ready strategies
This episode is sponsored by TechWolf.
TechWolf helps enterprises get fast, accurate, and actionable skills data—without surveys. From identifying the skills your workforce has to mapping what they need, TechWolf’s AI integrates seamlessly with your existing systems to turn messy data into strategic advantage.
Learn more at techwolf.com
This episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast is brought to you by TechWolf.
[0:00:09] David Green: As the pace of business change intensifies, effective strategic workforce planning could be the difference between business success and business failure. Without stating the obvious, we are in an era where uncertainty is the norm, disruption is constant, and the ability to adapt quickly has become a core business capability. But how do you actually build a workforce strategy that enables that kind of agility? That's the focus of my conversation today with Ross Sparkman, Global Head of Workforce Planning at Nutrien. Ross is widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities in the world on strategic workforce planning. He is also the author of the recently released second edition of Strategic Workforce Planning. Having 15-plus years leading workforce planning at companies such as GE, Nike, Walmart and Meta, I'm particularly excited for this conversation, as Ross and I explore what it takes to make workforce planning stick, the role of people analytics in driving impact, and the opportunities and challenges posed by AI. So, if you want a practical and forward-looking view on how workforce planning can become the true driver of strategy and value, this is an episode you won't want to miss. With that, let's get started.
Ross, it's great to have you on the show. Before we dive in, let's start with a quick introduction. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your career journey and what led you to your role at Nutrien?
[0:01:44] Ross Sparkman: Yeah. First, great seeing you again, David. It's been too long. So, I really appreciate the invite and the opportunity to take part in this podcast. I've been following it for a while, it's great. Yeah, by way of introduction, Ross Sparkman. I've been in this strategic workforce planning, people analytics space for 20-plus years. And it's kind of an interesting journey. I started my professional career off actually in the US Navy, and I spent about ten years in the Navy. And I was at this sort of inflection point in my career in the military where I was kind of ready to get out and join the private sector and was working on my MBA. And during that time in the MBA programme, I was taking some of my HR kind of org-effectiveness classes and doing a lot of studying and reading on some of the stuff that Peter Capelli had written and David Ulrich and Jac Fitz-enz, which for some reason I think kind of resonated with me, and I think it was really because the work that I was doing in the Navy at the time was what we called manpower planning, which was kind of really operational workforce planning, and looking for a way to bridge the gap between my military experience and the private sector. And I was just fascinated at this concept of using planning and talent as a lever to drive organisational effectiveness and keep business results.
So, I started connecting all these dots and decided that I really wanted to make that transition. So, I was able to, once I finished the MBA, and my time in the Navy, get into a role in consulting at Deloitte. And it was just the perfect playground at Deloitte to learn more of the private sector side of how businesses think about workforce planning and people analytics. It was really in the nascent ages of when workforce planning, strategic workforce planning and people analytics was starting to take off. So, it was a pretty big service offering from Deloitte at the time. So, it was just a great opportunity to learn a lot of the modern frameworks and some of the work that Deloitte had done, and I was able to take that experience and actually get hired by one of the organisations that we were working with at the time on a big people analytics and operating model engagement. So, I went there and spent some time leading the people analytics function there, learned a lot, and then was really able to leverage that experience and work with James Gallman and all the great folks at GE, who were just at the time, I think, kind of on the forefront, Nick Garbis, so on the forefront of just strategic workforce planning, and really got to look and understand, under the hood, what it takes to really embed strategic workforce planning as a capability and kind of end-to-end operating model.
Then I had the opportunity to go to Facebook, now called Meta, which was going through sort of hyper-growth at the time. And obviously, amazing opportunity to be part of the excitement that was happening. And from there, kept learning, started to get into content creation and wrote my first book, Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for Future Growth. I took more of that experience and ended up going to LinkedIn, leading their workforce planning, then Nike, and then spent time at most recently at Walmart, really driving a lot of their workforce strategy around gen AI integration with the workforce. And then, I'm at this sort of point in my career where I wanted to get back to where I'm from, which is Calgary up in Canada, for those that don't know. So, I had an opportunity to take a role that I'm now in, in Calgary, at Nutrien. And what this role is really focused on and centred on is again, this intersection of evolving strategic workforce planning in the face of the massive technology disruption that's happening across the world right now with gen AI and AI, and thinking through how do we do modern workforce planning? How do we integrate our AI strategy with our workforce strategy, acknowledging all the disruption and change that's coming down? In other words, we've got to start making key decisions with our workforce today as this technology keeps evolving.
So, it's really exciting work. It dovetails off the work that I was doing at Walmart, and it's really the direction I think strategic workforce planning is headed.
[0:05:59] David Green: Great. Well, we're going to talk about lots of those topics that you've discussed, Ross, over the next hour; and obviously, we're going to talk about, you mentioned your book, Strategic Workforce Planning, the second edition has recently been published. We're going to be digging into that as well. But firstly, as someone that's been involved in the world of strategic workforce planning for, as you said, 20 years and worked in some really impressive organisations, names of people we'll know very well and different types of organisations as well, as you said: Meta, when it was Facebook, when it was really scaling; Walmart: one of the biggest organisations in the world; GE, as you say, one of the pioneers around strategic workforce planning; I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the field of strategic workforce planning has evolved and how you envision it developing in the future.
[0:06:46] Ross Sparkman: Yeah, it really has evolved, David. It's been quite the journey and it's been just a pleasure to watch the evolution of that journey and be part of it. I think there's a few things that really jump out at me that have changed in my time in this space. If I think back to even my time in the military and in my early days when I was working at Deloitte and how we were thinking about this, it really was much more episodic and just more periodic in terms of oftentimes, HR, not even HR, we would sometimes develop kind of a static plan, it was very high level, based on the budget, here's how many talent and resources we need, often doesn't even include contractors, and kind of just put on the shelf. So, it was very reactive.
I think what we're seeing now, and the shift that I've seen over the years, is it's really moved from being this kind of reactive plan into more of a proactive plan. And that's where I think we start to see this intersection of strategic workforce planning versus workforce planning, where we're thinking about what is going to happen in the landscape, whether it's industry trends, whether it's macroeconomic environment, whether it's our own business model that we need to think about in terms of our talent and our resources and the way that we optimise our workforce. So, it really went from reactive to more proactive.
I think the other big piece, and this is where I was really getting interested, and just mentioned in my early days, is that it's much more cross-functional and integrated with the business strategy than it used to be. So, I think again, in the past, it was more of a siloed exercise, maybe something that just sat within HR and didn't necessarily take into account the full scope of the business model. As we're thinking about strategic workforce planning now, I think it's something that's more top of mind for leaders. I don't know if it's been because of the last five years, everything that's happened with pandemic and some of the technological advances with AI, but it's much more top of mind in terms of leaders wanting to integrate workforce planning with their broader strategy, right, "I developed this product, I want to know now what the implication is in terms of my workforce. Are we ready to launch this product? Do we have the capabilities and the skills?" And this has always sat in elements and parts of HR. But as I've seen strategic workforce planning evolve, it's much more formalised in terms of, "Let's have a plan of action. Let's understand all the things that we need to consider as we launch this product and the world continues to change and industries evolve".
I think the other piece, and I think a lot of your listeners will appreciate this, as it's much more data-driven and analytical than it was in the past, I think before, workforce planning was largely a bottoms-up activity where leaders would kind of give their requests for headcount irrespective of any sort of wider scope of what that impact could mean to the business. Now, when we think about strategic workforce planning, we really do want to use the data and the analytics to understand what the drivers are of building that optimised workforce, but also a lot of the predictive things that we need to understand, right, "How many people are going to leave? What skills are going to be emerging in the future? What's the impact of manager effectiveness on attrition?" all these different variables that we need to consider when we go to develop our plan. So, it's much more data-driven, it's less arbitrary in terms of the way decisions are made, and thereby it becomes much more defensible. And I think it focuses more on what leaders want to hear, "I don't want some arbitrary plan that's not steeped in data. It doesn't make any sense. Tell me why you think the workforce should be this size, why we should be focusing on these skills, and show me the data to back up those thoughts".
I think another thing that's really, really important now, on sort of that same front, is that we sort of went and shifted from being more roles-based planning to the acknowledgement that we have to be much more fluid in terms of how we do workforce planning at the skills level. Before it was, again, how many headcount do I need, whether that's FTEs or contractors, irrespective of what impact the skills of those employees might have on our ability to execute the strategy. The focus now has shifted to say, it's not so much about the headcount, it's more about the skills, the talent that's needed to execute on the strategy. I can have all the headcount in the world, but if nobody has the capability or the skills that we need to execute or develop product X, we're going to find ourselves at a disadvantage. And understanding the skills then translates into all these other aspects of learning and development, talent management, etc. So, this concept of skills being part of the way we do workforce planning is much more important now, I think, in the broader context of workforce planning than it has been in the past.
A continuous and more agile planning is another big theme. I kind of mentioned this before. Before it was maybe a once-a-year activity, that was it. Now, it's an activity, or it should be an activity if we're doing it well, where we're checking in on it constantly. The world is just changing too fast, and you really have to be able to adjust and maintain an agile focus when you're doing workforce planning. And again, that just wasn't the case in the past. I think we're going to continue to see the proliferation of some of these concepts I just discussed, you know, much more of a skills-based focus. I think the importance of data is going to become more apparent than ever, and the reliance on the way that we use and leverage technology, whether it's AI or systems, in the planning process, and then also in the way that we think about our resourcing requirements, is going to become more and more important.
So, those are just, I think, some of the things that are going to continue to shape the future direction of strategic workforce planning.
[0:12:33] David Green: This episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast is sponsored by TechWolf. TechWolf takes care of likely the most annoying thing in HR: getting good data. Whether it's data on skills your employees have, data on tasks your workforce is performing, or data on how AI is impacting work in large enterprises. It can take you years, you can lose trust over it, it can even have your most ambitious executive lose faith. But now, in a matter of weeks, TechWolf's AI can get you and your employees data on the skills they have, the skills they need, and the tasks they perform. No long-winded and inaccurate employee surveys, continuously up-to-date, and especially integrated in the platforms you're already using, instead of adding a new one. Companies like PayPal, T-Mobile, HSBC, GSK, Ericsson, and Workday rely on TechWolf's skills data to deliver measurable impact, accelerating time to hire by 32%, increasing internal mobility by 42% and reducing talent management costs by an average of $1,000 per employee each year, alongside many other proven use cases. Stuck with bad skills, task or job data? Talk to TechWolf, visit techwolf.com.
So, I mean, that makes your job leading workforce planning and other areas more exciting, if maybe a little more exposed, but we all want to have senior-level interaction when we're working in these jobs, don't we? And ultimately, with workforce planning, if you've got the CEO and the board involved in that, then (a) you see the strategic importance of that; but (b) hopefully, that means that you get action on the plans that you're putting together.
[0:14:43] Ross Sparkman: I mean, and then that point is, I can't emphasise that enough. Like, if you start talking about what helps with making strategic workforce planning, workforce planning successful, it's that executive buy-in. We're recommending strategies, we're recommending operating models, we're recommending cultural shifts and ways of working. It's difficult to do that if you don't have -- and there's going to be resistance. There's a lot of tension in the workforce planning space. You've got finance that's managing to a budget; you've got leaders who want resources, resources, grow my team, grow my team; you've got HR that's working for the business leaders that feel the pressure from the leaders to get them more resources; and you're basically trying to say and tell everybody, "Listen, we've got to meet this fine-line balance of having the right skills in the right place at the right time for the right cost". That's a lot of tension across a lot of different leaders. If you don't have somebody at the top saying, "What is best for the enterprise?" it becomes very difficult, and you have everybody saying, "Oh, it's not working". It's not necessarily that it's not working, it's that it's not working for your use case because you're not thinking end to end about what's best for the enterprise.
When you have a CEO that's connecting those dots and C-suite that are connecting those dots, that would understand how you can impact shareholder value or the balance sheet, it's a different narrative. And I think they're starting to draw those conclusions.
[0:15:59] David Green: So, Ross, you mentioned the book, the second edition of Strategic Workforce Planning, which I definitely highly recommend to those of you working in workforce planning or interested in this topic who are listening. For listeners that know the first edition, or maybe those that are new to your work and maybe haven't seen the first version of the book, which I think was published in 2018, so it's quite an update you've done, isn't it? What's changed, and why was now the right time to revisit and evolve it?
[0:16:27] Ross Sparkman: Yeah. So, I think this has been an amazing journey. Like you said, that was, what, seven years ago now? There's been a lot that has changed in the world, but I've also had the benefit of the feedback from the first book, having the opportunity to go out and speak with leaders like yourselves and setting up time and doing deep dives with people, their practitioner boots on the ground, that are trying to use the book to build a strategic workforce planning function, or whatever their use case might be. So, the first thing I'd say is that the book strikes a good balance, I'd say, between theoretical kind of academic applications that we want to steep the methodologies in, but also a lot more tactical, real-world playbook, "If I want to build a strategic workforce planning function, here's what we want to consider from an operating model, from an org design capability". There was a lot of feedback around, "Okay, well I need to be able to crawl before I walk. How do I even do just basic workforce planning correct?"
So, I really wanted to make sure that the book provided both the theoretical, like, "Here's why we need to do strategic workforce planning, because talent is a lever that can drive business outcomes. We need to align our strategy with our business outcomes", but how do you do that? And I think that was the piece that a lot of folks in this space don't understand. So, I really wanted to spell it out really clearly with a lot of examples, frameworks, step-by-step, "Do this, do this, try this model, try this model". So, a lot of that you'll find throughout the chapters, very specific metrics to look at.
I think the other piece that I wanted to do was try to provide a little bit more real-world examples. So, every chapter has kind of 'a day in the life of'. And so, whatever the topic might be, I try to bring it forward and say, "Here's how it would look in practice. Everything we just discussed, all these frameworks, here's what success would look like". So, that's something I hope will be useful. In terms of new topics, there are some ones that are, I think, super-relevant, timely. The first is really this concept of strategic workforce planning in the age of gen AI and AI, which is just again, as we kind of talked about, a huge, huge, just change in the way we do workforce planning, and there's a lot of implications on how we do it. So, I wanted to really make it clear to everybody to understand how can we use it to adopt and implement gen AI, and what are some of the considerations that as we start to gain productivity from AI, that we need to think about in terms of workforce?
There's a lot more depth and breadth around how we do some of the skills-based workforce planning. Again, I just mentioned it, but it's going to be sort of the cornerstone, in my opinion, of what we need to be thinking about as again, we continue to work side-by-side with gen AI agents, so a lot more depth around skills-based workforce planning. There's a much deeper connection between the end and talent management process. So, thinking about how we do strategic workforce planning from early career through to succession, and helping practitioners think about, what's the role in strategic workforce planning? How do we connect this all together? How do we build those outputs from a good talent management strategy into a good strategic workforce plan that's actionable? A lot of work and discussion around, how do you actually lead a strategic workforce planning function, how do you build one? Basically, this is just a chapter on things where I failed and things where I've succeeded and kind of rolled it up and said, "Here's some things that have not worked well for me. Don't make the same mistakes that I have. And here's some things that have". So, a lot on that.
Then, I know it's started to not be quite as popular, but I really did want to include some considerations for how we do kind of hybrid and remote work and what that means in terms of our workforce strategy. And then, just general, really getting tactical and ensuring that everybody can sort of connect the dots. I probably, David, spent more time on the second edition than I did on the first edition. And it was just because I've learned so much more, I've gotten so much feedback. There's so much that has changed in the last seven to eight years that it's really exciting to write. And frankly, it's given me an idea for two or three other books that I'm in the process of outlining right now.
[0:20:49] David Green: Really good. And we're going to dig into some of those topics now, Ross. Again, you've talked a little bit about this in terms of having that senior-level sponsorship for the work. But other than that, what are some of the other lessons that you've learned throughout your career and maybe that you research for the book as well, about what actually makes workforce planning stick in an organisation?
[0:21:10] Ross Sparkman: Yeah. So, step number one is, like you just mentioned, you've got to have that executive buy-in. There really needs to be a full alignment and understanding on the value that strategic workforce planning can have, and it needs to start from the top. And I think that we're in a spot where we're getting a lot more of that, but that's number one. I think one thing that I've learned that's really important is if I'm a leader coming into a new organisation, you really do need to get a sense for the company culture, how things operate, the industry and the business, and ensure that when you're thinking about your workforce planning, that you're not taking a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach. So, the approach of strategic workforce planning at Facebook or Meta was incredibly different in a high-growth environment, where if you were to try to tell a leader, "You need to develop a five-year strategic workforce planning", you're just getting balked at. Like, "We're growing at 30% year-over-year right now". Mark Zuckerberg's theory is like, "Let's hire as many people as we can to build as much product, to make as much money, to hire more people, to build more products, to make more", and he's offering $100 million compensation packages right now.
So, you can't be totally naïve to what's going on in the culture versus like a GE where, yeah, we're a manufacturing company in some of our business segments, we need to think five years out. GE Aviation, there's a massive product life cycle when we're building engines. So, that's one thing, is make sure that you adapt to the company culture and think about, "How do we need to develop a strategy that resonates with leaders?" The cross-functional collaboration piece, I can't stress enough. If I think about where there needs to be a lockstep partnership, it's interesting. Usually, it sits in HR, but in my mind, you can make the argument that it could sit in finance, that it could be its own standalone function, it could sit in HR, but there needs to be a really, really strong cross-functional collaboration and understanding. And I'm kind of referring to that tension that you feel between finance, between HR, between your business leaders, you need to have a really strong input into talent acquisition, which I know is part of HR; your technology, HRIS and systems needs to be a big stakeholder. So, this really needs to be a business planning process, right?
On that note, that's another piece that's really important, is that it needs to be built into the fabric how the company operates, right? If you're doing your budget planning process, your short-term planning, workforce planning should be one of the key inputs or outputs of that process. It shouldn't be just a finance-driven activity. And again, I see workforce planning as being the conduit between HR and finance and leaders in that space. So, there needs to be that ability to integrate it into the business processes and cadence of a business.
It's important to build credibility when you're in this space. Again, there's a lot of folks that still just don't understand how it works. So, to the extent that you're able to just get some quick wins, right, "What's a tangible outcome that I can kind of get in the door and show how I can deliver value?" So, maybe it's identifying a certain the job profile that you were having a difficult time recruiting, and developing a strategy around how can you mitigate against the risk of that? What might that talent requirement look like? How can we leverage skills to mitigate against that gap? What's the buy, build, borrow strategy there? Anything that you can do to start small sometimes and demonstrate the value that you can bring to the table is going to be immensely important.
[0:25:02] David Green: I want to take a short break from this episode to introduce the Insight222 People Analytics Programme, designed for senior leaders to connect, grow, and lead in the evolving world of people analytics. The programme brings together top HR professionals with extensive experience from global companies, offering a unique platform to expand your influence, gain invaluable industry insight and tackle real-world business challenges. As a member, you'll gain access to over 40 in-person and virtual events a year, advisory sessions with seasoned practitioners, as well as insights, ideas and learning to stay up-to-date with best practices and new thinking. Every connection made brings new possibilities to elevate your impact and drive meaningful change. To learn more, head over to insight222.com/program and join our group of global leaders.
And you mentioned a big part of your book, the update, is you're really looking at the gen AI and its impacts on strategic workforce planning. So, how do you see that; how do you see gen AI intersecting with strategic workforce planning? What are the opportunities and maybe what are some of the key considerations?
[0:26:29] Ross Sparkman: Yeah, it is all-consuming for me right now because it is such a major part of the future of strategic workforce planning, and I'd say even to a lesser extent, or maybe the same for people on Linux, in my opinion. And here's why I say that. So, for strategic workforce planning, I just kind of mentioned it, the reason why I'm getting invited to all these meetings is, I think if we really just bring it back, I think that leaders, or more specifically a lot of boards across a lot of organisations right now are starting to understand that there are some pretty big opportunities with AI. And that comes in the form of two ways. Your go-to-market strategy, your service products that you develop, how you can generate revenue through AI, that's not necessarily what I'm talking about right now. That's one benefit, though, potential benefit of AI. But the other is efficiency and productivity, right? And that's, I think, something that a lot of organisations are struggling how to do that, whether it's this horizontal integration of getting the products and tools in the hands of individual employees to be more productive at work, or that vertical integration of, how do we actually build up agentic AI to build an army of AI agents that can replace full processes and business systems?
But what it means, though, from workforce planning is that there's no question that we need to be able to, as an organisation or a function, create some scenarios that allow leaders to plan and react to how this technology evolves. And so, one of the biggest challenges that I've found in scaling strategic workforce planning is, how do we build that capability, get that capability into the hands of our finance, HR, and leaders without building out an army? It's not practical to say, "I'm going to build a team of 50 embedded workforce planners", anymore, "that would work and partner with each leader", it's just not practical. What is practical though, is a world in which we build a Copilot that has the ability to do all of that, that is fully embedded with our data, that has all the knowledge of somebody like me times 1,000, with all those PhDs and that knowledge, to put it in the hands of an HR leader to say, "Hey, give me three scenarios for this job profile and a strategy for how we could attract them". It is just absolutely endless in terms of the possibility.
Right now, at Nutrien, we're actually working with Microsoft on some of these concepts, and we're doing some pilots. And I was, again, fortunate enough to get pulled into some of these conversations. I was kind of like, "Hey, I'm trying to build this new operating model at Nutrien. Scale is an issue. What's the possibility of a world where we can build an SWP Copilot?" "Oh, that's the one of the easiest use cases possible that we could build for you". So, we'll see where that goes. But this is one of the things I wrote about in the book, where I'd said I can just imagine a world where we're prompting agents to do a lot of the stuff that normally would have been like a six-week project or a two-month, time-intensive, three-people, consulting project to be able to get in the hands of our leaders. That's where I really see an example of how this technology can revolutionise the way that we work. So, check in with me in about six months. We'll see where that goes, if that becomes a real thing. But those are the two areas that I see AI really impacting the world of SWP. So, you can see why I think it's a pretty big part of the future of this function.
[0:30:17] David Green: Yeah, both in the workforce planning that you're doing and how you do workforce planning.
[0:30:20] Ross Sparkman: And how you do it, yeah, it's twofold.
[0:30:21] David Green: And still using your immense knowledge and experience to do the right prompts, but you'll be doing less of the work because of the technology.
[0:30:31] Ross Sparkman: And, David, that's exactly, again, when I'm talking to people about just the technology, as we think about skills and how we structure our workforce, it's going to remove all the non-value added work, the time-consuming munging data, that's what takes so much time, right? Do you want to pay somebody X number of dollars to do that; or do you want to pay somebody and give them eight hours in a day to thoughtfully think through and connect the dots on these big, big issues? And if you could have everybody doing that, just think about the step change that you can make in the way that you operate as an organisation. I think, when we think about how we sell this and try to reduce the fear, that's what we got to be able to do. Like, "Hey, it's going to give you time to do the stuff that's important. So, learn this technology and you won't have to do all the administrative stuff. It's going to free up more time". That's why I see the value and the benefit.
[0:31:26] Ross Sparkman: Great. Ross, let's shift a little bit to maybe where work gets done and how work gets done and the role of workforce planning in that. So, obviously, well, we're in 2025, so five years ago, everyone in a white-collar job was pretty much working remotely. And I know there's all sorts of stuff in the press about certain organisations bringing people back into the office four or five days a week and others staying remote, but it seems that we're all working in a hybrid way, certainly than we were prior to the pandemic. It's still obviously a significant part of organisational design for companies today, and I can't think of any reason it won't be in the future. How are you seeing leading companies in strategic workforce planning navigate this?
[0:32:11] Ross Sparkman: Yeah, it's a great question. And I'm kind of more aligned with you, David, in terms of how I think about this. I know there's been a big shift and a lot of CEOs and senior leaders are wanting to get everybody back in the office. I don't necessarily agree with that. But I think for the ones that do get it right, I think there's a balance, and it is kind of this more hybrid world. I think some of the things that the top companies are doing and some of the things I write about in the book that they can be doing to ensure that they're thinking about their location strategy and their working models more strategically is, first, and I talk a lot about this in the book too, this concept of workforce segmentation. This is a really good example of an opportunity to segment the workforce by role, in terms of thinking about when we're hiring and creating job architecture and job design, job descriptions, what type of jobs should actually be or could actually be remote versus the jobs that should be in the office. And so, it's a matter of segmenting and better understanding that. That's when we can start to use the data and people analytics. So, thinking about those different segments and what actually makes sense.
I think the biggest piece that organisations are missing with this, that they got right initially, is it's a huge, huge opportunity for a talent attraction lever. The reality is, and I think it's pretty clear, that the employees want the flexibility of working from home. I think there's mixed results in terms of if it impacted productivity or not. Maybe I think I'd like to see more data on that. But the reality is, from a talent-attraction perspective and a retention lever, it should be part of your suite of tools that you use. So, I think good organisations understand this. And in a world where we're still battling to get the best and most engaged employees, it has to be a consideration. I don't love the idea, from a talent-strategy perspective, of just completely shutting that lever down. So, that's something that good employers are definitely doing.
I think to that end, the ones that have embraced hybrid work or these strategies also understand that the reason why leaders sometimes don't like them is because they don't feel like there's enough collaboration or productivity happening. So, the organisations that are getting this right are the ones that are spending a lot of time on designing the right working model to ensure that there's that connectivity between collaboration and productivity, and you're not losing that in the remote world. So, it's the way you're designing the orgs, it's the way that you're building out your meeting rhythms and the technology that you're using, the way that you're training leaders, you know, how do we train our leaders, how do we train our employees to be effective in a remote world? And I think that's the part that was missing when the pandemic hit, and rightfully so, right? Everything happened so fast. Now we have this opportunity, and the organisations that are doing this right have this opportunity to thoughtfully design these working models, ensure that we have the right training and the right technology infrastructure to be able to do it more seamless, so it doesn't feel like we're losing that collaboration and that connective tissue.
I think that there's also a lot of organisations that are focusing a lot on the policy and the cultural integration, and that kind of goes back to this collaboration piece. But let's ensure that we have equality with how we make the decisions, whether it's how we're doing meetings, how we're doing talent management, incentivising employees, and how we're ensuring that there is a level playing field for all the workers, whether they're remote or not.
[0:36:04] David Green: We hear a lot about future-proofing the workforce. What does that really mean today in the here and now?
[0:36:11] Ross Sparkman: Yeah, that's a great question, and I've reflected on this a lot myself. When I think about future-proofing the workforce, I think it really means building a workforce today that can adapt and thrive and stay relevant amid the changes of today, tomorrow, and all the technologies that are happening, right? So, what does that mean in practice? I think it touches on a lot of the things that we've kind of been discussing, ensuring that we're not losing touch of the importance of skills, and the importance of those skills that will be required in the future where we're working next to agents. Learning, what does it mean to learn? And how do we make learning more continuous, because things are changing so rapidly? And I just don't know that we're evolving the way that we approach agility and learning as fast as the technology and the world is changing. So, that's something that's really important.
I think just this whole concept of adaptability and agility in the workforce is important. We need leaders, we need employees that are not scared, which I think that there's a good chunk of the workforce is, that are not disengaged, that feel empowered and that are excited about the agency they have in their own career. And that's built through a culture of adopting to change, a culture of embracing agility, a culture of rewarding employees that are adaptable and have growth mindsets that want to learn. I think we touched on this a little bit earlier in the skills piece, but internal mobility is going to be really important in the future. And so, gone are the days, I think we can all agree, where you sit in one role for 30 years, you have a big retirement party. That's just not the world that we're living in anymore. And so, this concept of internal mobility and career fluidity in a world where some roles are changing and maybe being made redundant, but a lot more new and exciting ones are happening, how do we ensure that when we're doing our workforce planning, that we're incentivising leaders to not hoard talent, but to work cross-functionally and collaboratively in terms of giving employees the opportunity to try different careers and learn different things, are all really important.
Obviously, I keep talking about scenario planning and the importance of ensuring that we think about all the different scenarios in the future, and that leaders are equipped with all these different scenarios, such that if track A happens in the future, whatever that might be, we feel like we've spent the time, from a workforce perspective, from a workforce planning perspective, to know, at least initially, what we have to do to get a plan in place to address it. So, that just that agility and that scenario planning and that and that sense of readiness are all things that I would consider important to sort of future-proof the workforce of the future.
[0:39:09] David Green: Many of our listeners sit at the intersection of people analytics and workforce planning. And interestingly, some of the research that we've done at Insight222, as we've seen the people analytics operating model evolve, we've seen certain things become more commonly part of a bigger function. It might be people analytics and strategy and planning. And roughly 50% of the companies we studied last year in 2024, which was 348 companies, I think, off the top of my head, 50% of them had workforce planning and people analytics together. I'd love to hear your view on that, because you worked in different organisations, and there's clearly no one-size-fits-all, because you need to apply it to the organisation. How should the functions work together; should they be together; and then, maybe what are the capabilities that are critical to building and leading a modern SWP function? So, about three questions in one there. Sorry, Ross.
[0:40:04] Ross Sparkman: No, they're all really good questions. And I have been fortunate enough to have worked in all different sorts of models. Again, going right back to one of the first things we discussed, I just can't imagine from a workforce planning perspective, I can't imagine a world where data and analytics are just not part of modern workforce planning. So, in my mind, it does work best when they're in the same function. Now, in terms of how we structure the function, maybe it's three in the box, because there's all different types of modes and ways of doing that. But I really like, in my mind, and I think it's most effective when the two sit together. And a couple of things that I think just are important in terms of that relationship.
It's really some of the things that I've seen that haven't happened is, in the past in some situations, there has been a bit of a siloed approach. And I think that's because there's not always a shared understanding of the goals and the questions that the business are trying to answer. And you could think of a world where people analytics and the data are what help you diagnose some of the workforce problems. And the planning component takes those diagnostics and turns them into an action plan, right? So, they're really a yin and yang, they're so inseparable in my mind. So, to be able to really ensure that when we're thinking about people analytics and planning, it's part of, in my mind, like an ecosystem or end-to-end part of the business. I know that there's going to be moments, shout out to my PSYOP and my PhDs in org effectiveness and I/O psychology, but there's just some sort of a research question we want to answer. But I just can't imagine a world where there's not some sort of a tie back to then, like, how do we turn this into an actual part of our plan? So, it's really important, I think, to consider that.
The data piece is another huge bridge, right? And sometimes it's been something where I haven't seen as much alignment as there should be. We need to ensure that we're all using the same types of definitions from the planning perspective to the people analytics perspective. We need to ensure that we all agree on the structure of the data and how we're using the data. That's been something that I've seen get tripped up a lot, is if there's two people analytics on a planning team in an org, and they're not agreeing on what even the definition of attrition means, the difference between developing an aggregate attrition forecast versus an individual probabilistic model, and the different sort of ways in which you would use forecasting and the different sort of more sophisticated types of modelling that you could do to diagnose some of the root causes in attrition, in my experience, not always, there always hasn't been as much alignment there as there could be. And so, to the extent that you're able to get that, I think it really accelerates and leads to much more synergistic benefits to having the two teams working together.
I think there's an opportunity for more cross-training and skills blending. I think, in my experience, I haven't seen it sometimes. I think there's more of a gap in the workforce planning space around having more analytical skills sometimes. And I think that's an opportunity for a lot of workforce planning practitioners to learn from their people analytics partners. I think sometimes, what I've seen in the people analytics space is maybe not as much of an understanding, not always, but of the strategic implications of the workforce and what that means in terms of business performance and impact. So, there could be opportunities to not just think about this in terms of like a research question that we're trying to answer, you know, like a PhD thesis question, but more of like, "Okay, it's great that we built this attrition model, but we don't have an attrition problem here". Let's tie the business and the need and the strategy more to the analytics that we're doing.
[0:44:34] David Green: Very good, Ross. We've already got to the last question, which is the question of the series, which almost could have been written for you because we've talked about the shift towards skills as well. How can HR lead the shift to skills-powered workforce planning?
[0:44:52] Ross Sparkman: Yeah. Well, I mean this is a big one. I think the first thing when I think about skills-based workforce planning and I think about HR's role in that, is that there is a huge amount of change that that has to happen for, I think, leaders and the business to fully adapt to skills-based workforce planning. So, HR really needs to lead the narrative and create the business case for why it's going to be so important, and what that means for leaders, and what they need to think about in terms of skills-based workforce planning.
I think another really key, important area that needs to happen is there really needs to be a strong understanding and a framework in place for developing not job taxonomies, but skills taxonomies. And I think sometimes, and this is again where we can start to leverage data and some of the benchmarking work that you discussed, but there really needs to be an actual skills taxonomy. I think that there needs to be an ongoing discussion. We talked about this a little bit earlier, around making the skills part of the discussion much more relevant to the work that HR and their leaders think about. So, rather than just thinking about performance management, like we historically have, really placing more of an emphasis around, are we incentivising employees that went above and beyond to learn new different skills? Are we really thinking about career mobility in terms of skills? How do we think about internal mobility through the context of really building on what I would almost call an on-demand, constantly updated skills inventory? And we need the systems and the infrastructure to be able to do that.
So, you can imagine a world then where it's not a question of how many roles we have, it's a question of what skills do we have. And to be able to do that requires HR going out, taking the time to understand the skills that we have today, taking time to understand the skills that are going to be needed tomorrow, working with leaders to understand where there are gaps, working across the entire HR function to say, "Okay, well here's where we need to focus our learning and development. It shouldn't necessarily be on typical coursework that we do and which we still need to include, but we really need to focus on where those gaps exist". And that's, I think, when we can start to get to a world there, and then again, starting to celebrate the quick wins, I think that's where we're going to really start to see much more of this embedded kind of workforce planning and skills-based workforce planning in the organisation.
Including skills as part of the workforce planning is just so important, and it's going to become such a high priority as we continue to shift into the future, and we're in a world where AI and some of the things we've discussed in terms of the future of work become much more of a reality.
[0:48:18] David Green: Yeah, really good Ross. And as we talked about, connecting that all to the business priorities and where the business strategy is. So, it's a great way of connecting strategy, planning and analytics together, isn't it? And giving value to employees as well, so they're actually investing their time in developing the skills that are going to benefit them as well as the organisation.
[0:48:39] Ross Sparkman: And just one final note on that, David. I think the challenge that I see, and this is another really good use case and something I'm excited about for AI, I think the challenge that I've seen in the past is it's really, really time-intensive, difficult activity to go and do a skills assessment. And I think that this is a world where I think that we can really dramatically accelerate the learning curve and scale our ability to do that with AI. I've played around with it a little bit, and I think there's some vendors that are coming out with some really unique and interesting value propositions and products. I think this is a really good one, that if you're a leader and you're trying to understand how do we do this at scale, really think about this as being an opportunity to leverage AI. Do some research on it. I've seen some really interesting things, and my mind is kind of buzzing around how we could use this technology.
We did some of this at Walmart. And when we were doing an AI impact assessment, which is kind of tangentially related, we were able to really quickly scale and develop kind of a profile of how AI could impact these roles and the skills required, but didn't take it at face value, spent a lot of time validating it. And I think what the validation showed me was that it was pretty close. So, that just, to me again, leads me to believe it's a great opportunity to leverage this technology.
[0:50:06] David Green: Yeah, and all that skills inference that you've got, we've got all that internal data that we can infer skills of employees on. And funnily enough, the sponsor of this series of the podcast is a company, TechWolf, one of those companies that helps you to do that. I know something, certainly during my time at IBM, that IBM did back in the 2010s around skills inference. And as you said, they found out it was pretty much as accurate as asking employees their skills and then asking managers to validate those skills, and a lot more time-effective.
[0:50:38] Ross Sparkman: Exactly. Or maybe even more accurate, let's be honest, if you factor in the bias.
[0:50:42] David Green: And it's out of date once you've completed it as well.
[0:50:45] Ross Sparkman: And that's why you've got to get to this world where you're doing something that's continuous, right? And you have this inventory that's constantly updated and reflects the reality of the workforce, etc.
[0:50:53] David Green: Ross, it's been wonderful talking to you again. And again, thanks for sharing insights from your immense experience in this space, plus your thoughts about how it might evolve, and obviously insights from the second edition of Strategic Workforce Planning. Before we go, can you share with listeners how they can find out more about the book and maybe follow you and all the great work you're doing?
[0:51:14] Ross Sparkman: Yeah, a couple of things. So, first, you can pretty much go anywhere that books are sold, Amazon, any sort of website that sells books to get the book, Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for Future Growth. It touches on everything that David and I have been talking about and more. So, definitely recommend getting it. And if you want to get deeper into some of these topics, get reading that. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so reach out to me there. And I think most recently, and really exciting, I've also recently launched my own think tank around all these topics that's really focused on development. It's called Talent Stratify. So, you can find it at talentstratify.com. And it's really focused on creating content, creating frameworks, creating thought pieces, and providing advisory services on everything that we've discussed here, with an eye towards AI integration in this world of workforce planning. But it really touches on everything that we have here. It's something that I'm going to build and grow, and really just use as a resource, hopefully, for people to come to get more tools and understanding on this space and for me to be able to share all my vast experience.
[0:52:32] David Green: Great. Well, we'll put links to all those things in the show notes, everyone. But the book, talentstratify.com and then obviously look for Ross Sparkman on LinkedIn as well. Ross, thank you very much for being on the show. Hopefully we'll bump into each other at a conference in the not too distant future. But until then, thank you very much.
[0:52:51] Ross Sparkman: Love it, David. And thanks again for having me. Looking forward to catching up soon.
[0:52:56] David Green: That's all for this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. A huge thank you to Ross Sparkman for joining me and for sharing such a thoughtful and forward-looking perspective on what it takes to make workforce planning a true driver of business strategy. And of course, thank you to you, our listeners, for tuning in each week. If today's discussion sparked ideas or challenged your thinking, we'd be grateful if you'd subscribe, rate the show, and share it with a colleague. It really helps us continue bringing thoughtful, practical conversations to forward-thinking HR and people analytics professionals like you. To stay connected with us at Insight222, follow us on LinkedIn, visit insight222.com, and sign up for our weekly newsletter at myHRfuture.com for the latest research tools and training shaping the future of HR. That's all for now. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.