Strategic Workforce Planning - weathering the economic storm with Nick Kennedy

What does the future of the global workforce look like? And how can strategic workforce planning shape it? We welcome back return guest Nick Kennedy, the chair of the Workforce Planning Institute, to the podcast.

Nick passionately talks about the importance he places on collaboration and how he has built a global network of like minded professionals who support each other to raise up this critical function.

We talk about:

• new workforce models such as that introduced by Code First Girls
• challenges to implementing these models and how to overcome them
• the need for a mindset shift and how the Strategic Workforce Planner might facilitate this in changing talent landscape
• exploring how the opportunities and risks of generative AI and chat GPT for workforce planning

Nick then provides us a sneak peak of the upcoming Strategic Workforce Planning Conference line ups in London and Melbourne in the coming months.

Nick Kennedy on LinkedIn

The Workforce Planning Institute - info@workforceplanninginstitute.com

Strategic Workforce Planning conference registration:
London England
Melbourne Australia

The Reimagined Workforce podcast is brought to you by Workforce Transformations Australia Pty. Ltd.
All opinions expressed are the speaker's and not the organisations they represent.
If you have a story about a workforce transformation to share and would like to be a guest on this podcast, please contact us at kathhume@workforcetransformations.com.au.
Connect with Kath Hume on LinkedIn

Transcript

Nick Kennedy: 0:00

We are seeing some shifting of the thinking. The problem is only a small portion of organizations are genuinely willing to change their policies and to change their thinking in order to embrace those ways of working. The solutions are there, the case studies are there. We're uncovering them every single day. The problem is that won't work for us. The problem is that would mean we'd have to change the way that we engage talent, and that would mean a big shift. If we don't shift, we don't grow and we don't succeed.

Voiceover: 0:32

This is the Reimagined Workforce Podcast from Workforce Transformations Australia, the podcast for people and culture professionals seeking to drive meaningful, impactful and financially sustainable workforce transformation through curiosity, creativity and data science. In this podcast, we hear from talented and innovative people making a positive difference for their people, their organizations and those their organizations serve. They share stories and learnings to help others on their path to transforming their workforce today and tomorrow. Now here's your host, kath Hume.

Kath Hume: 1:13

Nick Kennedy is the chair of the Workforce Planning Institute and, in a world first, is a returning guest to the Reimagined Workforce Podcast. Through his work, nick has a global view on the macro and micro trends that are impacting the world of strategic workforce planning and insight into how we best prepare for a world of accelerating change. Nick is an advocate for SWP and, in my conversations, is widely recognized and valued for his leadership in this space. Nick, you last joined the podcast in October 2022 and I feel like the world has changed dramatically over that last 13 months. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that today. So, to get us started, could you give us a brief overview of your position in the strategic workforce planning ecosystem?

Nick Kennedy: 1:54

Yeah, absolutely, and great to be back, Kath, and great to be part of a world first and to be invited back again. We had a great time the first time, so let's see where it goes. Hey, it's really good question in terms of where I sit. So I love bringing together all of the different parts of that ecosystem, so not only identifying who and what they are, but creating a platform for them to interact in one form or another.

Nick Kennedy: 2:21

If I think about the way that cannon does work, we've got the Institute itself. So we have members, and members can log in and access a content library which has all sorts of documentations that are aimed to aid and enable the strategic workforce planning process. We have the training offering. It's one of a number of really good training offerings around the world. We have our events where people can physically come and gather and interact and share learning and knowledge. But more broadly, as part of that membership base, we've got professional members who are looking potentially to be connected to other parts of that ecosystem.

Nick Kennedy: 3:02

So let's say, the way that you want to engage is not just content and not just learning, but you need access to technology or you need access to advisory, other support mechanisms, and we've got a view of a lot of the providers in that space. So we have members who are HR tech providers and think of anything from classic SWP through to talent intelligence, through to internal talent marketplace. We have different consulting organizational members in that space and when we get inquiries through the Institute, we're able to point them in the direction of some of those organizations or the broader network if we don't have members in that space. So my approach is to really ask the global community what they think, rather than be overly prescriptive in the way that things could or should be done. My approach is to engage the thought leaders in the space, people like Adam Gibson, alicia Roach, yourself, kath we do a lot of collaboration and to provide a consolidated view in terms of a great tool set, one possible methodology and a way to support that global ecosystem.

Kath Hume: 4:17

It is something that I do admire the way that you do listen to what the sentiment is and I like that too about Alicia Roach's approach and saying that there's no one best way and coming together and collaborating and hearing how other people do it. But that's why I really value about being part of this tribe, if you like, is just watching and monitoring and just exploring and learning. So it's such a great, vibrant community to be a part of. I love it.

Nick Kennedy: 4:47

I think you can, you don't make any friends by trying to be overly prescriptive and I don't think it works. And I think and there are a few out there and select few because by and large the communities are really warm and engaging community. There are a few out there who claim to have expertise beyond others and I just it's not really in the spirit of what is a relatively young discipline and I value collaboration above anything else. So I value the thoughts and opinions of different countries, continents, different cognitive thinking styles, and I think that if we're really to nail this thing, we've got to be collaborative. We can't, we can't try and put an approach forward that everyone should follow. I think we've got to have a degree of flex and acknowledge that there are a number of really good ways to do this and we could probably all learn and take bits and pieces of all of them.

Kath Hume: 5:42

And I think the approach changes depending on who's in that and this problem you're trying to solve. So you need that flexibility and I think that's where the capability comes in, that creativity to understand the scenario that you're in and work with what you've got On that last year, when you came on, you talked about your dream or your reimagined workforce was a globally recognized like standalone qualification for strategic workforce planning. Have you seen any movement on that? I know it's only been 13 months?

Nick Kennedy: 6:13

Yeah, we have, we have. What we're trying to do at the Institute is not develop a body of content that we think people should learn, but we're trying to develop a view of some fundamentals that we think professionals in the space should have as part of their toolkit in order to be recognized globally. So we are piloting at the moment the certified practicing strategic workforce planner program. We have 12 participants in that pilot. Some are quite advanced through that and so we're really really looking forward to having that ready to go. And the reason we're taking our time with the pilot and making sure that it is refined and takes feedback on board is that it's the first time it's been done, obviously anywhere in the world, and we want to make sure that it's got the input and the feedback of the participants, of all the stakeholders, of the founding members, so that when it does go more broadly, it is robust and it is reliable. So when I say we don't seek to develop the content, the approach of this certified practicing program is to say you can come through by one of two main pathways. So there's a qualified pathway in which we take a whole bunch of externally recognized courses and programs and say, all right. If you've come from UNSW Canberra's Masters of Workforce Planning, or if you've come from the CIPD's accredited program, or if you've come from programs like New York University or the Monterey Program, which is a Masters in Analytics for Defence Force, we will acknowledge that, yeah, there might be some bridging, because they're all different. We know what those bridging requirements are, but you're going to get a pretty smooth ride through that certification program. Or if you haven't had the chance to do any of those courses or anything else that you can present as being robust, you can go through a non-qualified program which relies upon a more intense review of an individual's backgrounds to assess their lived experience and their practical application over their career. So you can do it without going through any external formal training. But the reason we've done that is one we want people who have genuinely got that experience to be able to be recognised, and so we want to provide a pathway for them.

Nick Kennedy: 8:44

But with the qualified pathway, we want to use this as a platform to encourage global education institutions to do more. If you've got a program and I don't know whoever you are in the World, harvard Business School or Oxford University, you know tell us about it, we'll review it. We'll do some basic checks and balances but we'll acknowledge it as long as it's got a degree of assessment behind it and the rigor there. So that's what we simulate with the non-qualified pathways. We say you haven't had a formal assessment, we're going to do that, whereas if you've come through an education institution and, as an example, you've had to submit a thesis or a capstone project or sit an exam, that's a way of saying, well, there's rigor there, we're OK with it. We're not looking to a credit these just yet because, again, I think it's almost counterproductive. We want to be encouraging and probably just manage the gaps if there are only at the back end with some short course bridging opportunities that we run. So we're super excited about it.

Nick Kennedy: 9:46

You know the founding members are myself, adam Gibson and Alicia Roach. You know it's got some insight and some clout, some experience behind it. So we've been working away in the background on the program. We're going to announce it formally in London. We're going to take questions on it as a panel, as the last session of the day. So we've got our Ask Us Anything panel and we're really hoping to get questions around what we've seen in the pilot, what we anticipate, you know participants to be able to expect. You know all those sorts of things off the back end. So we are getting there. I would love to have said it's commercially available for people to book into right now, but you know, I think early in 2024, we'll see it. You know, go up on the Institute website and you know you can submit your details for the initial review, which is will be a super exciting milestone for us.

Kath Hume: 10:36

That is awesome. That's an incredible amount of movement. On that you're dreaming from last year. I'm very impressed. So does that mean your dream for the Reimagined Workforce has changed? What's your thoughts on that now?

Nick Kennedy: 10:48

Yeah, probably hasn't. Ok, so it's probably an evolution of that, kath. I mean, you know, I've now got two milestone based ambitions One is longer term and one is probably more medium term. But you know, for me, the first time I see you know you will be a CP-SWP workforce planner on a job ad. That'll be a fantastic moment for us and we're really looking forward to that. And then I think, when we see the first role advertised as a strategic workforce planner that reports directly into a CEO, I think for me that'll be that'll represent seismic movement for our sector itself.

Nick Kennedy: 11:25

You know, once we see the I don't know what are we going to call that. It's quite a big acronym now CSP, cswp. Pretty long Chico or Chiro was a big one with four letters, but yeah, we're going to meet five. But you know, you know what I'm saying. Something like that where there's that seat at the table. That's the hopeless romantic in me coming out. But we'll get there eventually, whether it's in my lifetime or my working lifetime, I don't know, I hope so. That's my re-imagined workforce anyway.

Kath Hume: 11:57

So if we think about then, to what's happening in workforce planning and just if we think about what's changed in the last 13 months. So I feel like last year, when I was talking to people who were all battling this tight talent market, pendulum had definitely swung and the power basis was wholly and solely or not wholly and solely, but quite firmly in the employees hands. I feel like, with economic conditions and post pandemic, we're moving in the opposite direction. Now. What are you seeing and what impact is that having on workforce planning?

Nick Kennedy: 12:31

Yeah, it's a great question. If we think about let's take like Michael Porter's model for economic forces exactly, we don't have any more supply of people. But if you think about people as one of those sort of commodities, it's essentially the threat of substitute products that really we're seeing as having needed to happen for a long time but potentially influencing that balance of power. And during COVID we saw a mini turnaround where there was a surplus of labor for a little while but then, as soon as it kind of settled, we went back to the way we were headed previously with Canada's short market. I don't think we're kind of really going to revert en masse. But we're now seeing some organizations start to think about where capability comes from in a little bit more detail. And you know I'm a huge advocate of the need to shift that thinking. You know workforce demand supplementation does not and cannot always need to happen with a classic one FTE working on our side, paid by us as an entity, permanent employee. We have to shift that model. So we are seeing that that start to happen. It doesn't mean that the person isn't still at the helm, it just means that things like the engagement models and things like the amount of drawdown or the utilization thinking around that is starting to shift.

Nick Kennedy: 13:50

So I've got a couple of models that probably represent great examples of this thinking. The first is Code First Girls, which I probably want to highlight. We're going to do a live case study of this in London. So we've got Gemma McNair from NatWest Group and Anna Brailsford, who's the chief executive officer of Code First Girls, who are going to sit and do a fireside chat First up day one to talk about this model and really what this model does at its core is it says well, if you're a female who's got to a particular point in her career and you're looking for a change, they've got a program that will reskill you as a developer. So it's about boosting gender representation of women in technology and reskilling workers at a point in time where they're no longer sure that they want to continue down the same path. So we're seeing lawyers and all sorts of professionals move into this space, not just people that perhaps have held your less traditional professional roles in the past. We're seeing all types of women of all ages move into this program and they're then placed with clients of Code First Girls. So NatWest Group have been able to significantly shift their gender balance and access new talent pools in doing so.

Nick Kennedy: 15:09

So if NatWest just thought, well, we're going to buy, I'm just going to buy, this model never would have come up. But if they thought, well, how do we bridge barriers to entry, how do we create a new talent portfolio that we previously didn't have access to, and that's kind of what we need to do right, and sort of a touching on the build as well. So that model not only gives them access to staff that didn't have access to, not only helps shift that gender balance and we know, since the dawn of time we've had problems with gender balances, with women in tech but it changes the life of that individual who might not have been happy being a lawyer or might have been in a more operational role, and now has an opportunity to go and write a cool code for a bank. Like. It's a huge step forward in terms of the thinking. And the other one is and we saw this last year at the Brisbane Conference was sort of the human AI model, and this is the one that Justin Straharsky from Human AI and Unearthed Solutions laid out for us, and that's how we get access to tech communities without necessarily having to go and hire an individual and engage in that sort of traditional search. So how do we get access to really hard to find machine learning, ai, all these sort of capabilities and skills of the future? We can borrow that temporarily and we might pay a small premium for it, but nothing compared to the time invested in trying to find that person to come and work with you permanently, the amount of money you'd have to pay for them across the whole year, all those sorts of things.

Nick Kennedy: 16:40

So we are seeing some shifting of the thinking. The problem is only a small portion of organisations are genuinely willing to change their policies and to change their thinking in order to embrace those ways of working. So the problem is not with the solutions. The solutions are there. The case studies are there. We're uncovering them every single day. The problem is oh, that won't work for us. The problem is that would mean we'd have to change the way that we engage talent and that would mean a big shift. Well, if we don't shift, we don't grow and we don't succeed. I think it's a matter of time before the slow pace of response catches up with us and all of a sudden we need to shift really quickly, because that access to talent becomes a much bigger and more volatile arms race than it has been previously.

Kath Hume: 17:36

I was talking to someone earlier in the week and we were talking about the challenge of mindset and getting people to see that the urgent stuff that's getting in the way today, if we keep tending to that and we don't look to the future, what's the future going to look like? And maybe bringing it up with people and saying, okay, if we don't, if we keep going on the path that we're on, what does that look like in five, 10 years time? Is that something we're willing to accept? And then maybe move the dial a little bit for people to say, okay, I need to.. And then how do we actually bring that to fruition? How do we carve out time to focus on the strategic when we've got all these fires burning? Look, it's a really tough challenge. And for people who are in that situation when you've got someone knocking on your door because you don't have a staff member and you can't provide for your clients, that's how do you support that mindset shift?

Nick Kennedy: 18:30

It's really difficult. I think the best thing I can do is provide that the voice of, I mean, I've got a voice and I've got a voice here. We've got our own podcast so I can lead conversations on that path. I get to talk occasionally at the odd conference around the world. I've got a platform to communicate.

Nick Kennedy: 18:48

My challenge is, by and large, I'm communicating to strategic workforce planners. I'm preaching to the converted a lot of the time. Where it really hits home is, as you know, I watch globally the strategic workforce planning roles that are released and when I see a fairly seen let's say it's a I don't know the director of strategic workforce planning, and the ad says, oh, you'll be based on site and you'll work 38 hours a week and you're working this location. I kind of think we're not quite there yet. Probably not strategic workforce planners advertising that role.

Nick Kennedy: 19:22

But the organization who clearly wants to engage in SWP needs to be open to the fact that that role does not need most. In 99 cases out of 100 does not need to sit on site, and if you just if you opened your minds up to someone that's based in another state forbid another country you'd have astronomically more talent, and probably good talent than you've got. So it's hard and I don't. I don't know what the answer is, yet I know that we're going to get three of our favorites back from last year Oxana, jess and Sally to talk about getting strategic workforce planning on the radar, on the corporate radar, how we really drive engagement, and I think one of the themes that we will explore in that conversation and I will make sure because I'm moderating it is is how we actually start to shift our own policies, biases, ways of thinking around, what we do and how we do things, and the fact that needs to change if we're honestly going to be able to supplement workforce demands in the future.

Kath Hume: 20:28

I think too. Sometimes the challenge is that we're talking to the people who may feel threatened by what we're planning or proposing, and so we need to capture their hearts and minds and get them to see that we still want them to be on the journey with us. It might be in a different form, but ultimately what they're there to achieve would still be achieved and just might be in a different way, but it's a slow burn.

Nick Kennedy: 20:51

I agree, I agree. The other thing we can do is and I'm a big fan of case studies because they bring these concepts to life for people, especially if those people aren't strategic workforce planners. The problem with case studies, as I sort of highlighted before, is that someone else that they're on listen, and so that won't work for us because we're heavily unionized. Well, that won't work for us because we've got a very strict data policy. Instead of just delivering that case study now, what I'll do is I'll say I'm going to articulate a case study. I don't want you to think about the example, I just want you to take one or two concepts from this case study that you think could be lifted and shifted for your own application. Then we're going to talk about what they are, and that changes that whole narrative.

Nick Kennedy: 21:32

All of a sudden, someone's not sitting there expecting you to deliver them a carbon copy of what they need to do, which that's the reality of it. They expect that when they hear the word case study, they're just listening for one or two triggers. And say Actually, they just thought about this particular model to open up talent. All right, we could take that and work with it, rather than they engaged in the gig economy to secure a war where the defense force? We can't do that, so don't worry about the whole thing. That's one thing I'm trying a lot when I'm facilitating, when I'm presenting, when I'm speaking is just get them to take one or two key concepts out that they think could work for them.

Kath Hume: 22:11

And what I really like. Some of the work that I do is with communities of practice, where we deliver the case studies or we share stories. We then get people to do exactly what you're doing. How can I apply this to my context? But then we come back and say what did you try? What worked?

Kath Hume: 22:26

And we learn from that and we continue the conversation the way I like. That is because then people build their own relationships and they go off on their own. You don't need to sustain that for them. They find like minded people and they can continually build their own capability.

Nick Kennedy: 22:41

Absolutely.

Kath Hume: 22:41

You mentioned Justin Staharski and his AI. I felt earlier in the year that 2023 was going to be known for chat GPT, or when AI got real, I think, for people. So we all know it's been around for a long time, but this was probably the first time that people could see it in operation words appearing on your page, and chat GPT obviously is only one version of AI, but I feel like the hype died down pretty quickly. What do you think? I think it's now just another tool in our toolkit. How do you think it's impacting strategic workforce planning?

Nick Kennedy: 23:13

Yeah. So two answers to the question. One is generative AI and that's kind of the transformation super highway for SWP, and one is just just chat GPT. So we are seeing on the transformation super highway, we are seeing generative AI and we have for a little while now make its way into SWP tools of all different shapes and sizes and it's particularly pertinent, I think, in the talent intelligence space. So we're seeing the ability to scrape job traffic and ads and infer things from that like skill trends, declining and increasing professions, all those sort of things. So it is built into all of those tools that exist out there in the market.

Nick Kennedy: 23:54

That's not often easy for the average, average? let's not call people average, the typical strategic workforce planner to see what is is something like chat GPT. So where it can be really readily used and applied are things like job architectures. So you could get chat GPT 3 or 4 to build your job architecture fairly easily and I know that some of the SWP providers are doing that upon implementation. So rather than rely on Ansco or Onet necessarily, they're building bespoke job architectures based on industry sector for clients on implementation. So that's really cool. What I've started to use it with even training participants. When we're doing something like enterprise capability mapping and we're training in that area and we're looking at building out competency statements for particular capabilities, that's where a whole lot of Really dry, difficult time is chewed up. Yeah, when you're thinking about trying to differentiate between an intermediate level and an advanced level of critical thinking, like let's, let's be honest, that's not fun. No, the fun bit is probably sitting there and taking a strategic objectives and and flagging what the strategically critical capabilities are, when you need to start to discern between levels of competency. Let's face it, no one really wants to sit there and do that. So you know, in training, the cynic in me will recommend that some participants do at least one themselves the hard way. And then let's do another one and we use chat, GPT and let's try it with four levels of competency, let's try it with five levels of competency, let's try it with eight and it's brilliant. Like it'll build you as many competency statements as you know your heart desires. You know whether that's a line to your work levels or whatever sort of approach you're using. And even if they're not perfect, that's 85% of what you can just go in and edit that and change that. So you know it gets.

Nick Kennedy: 25:48

It gets used really readily with with some of those things where I think it's dangerous, Kath, is when you use it for things like environmental scans. So I have attempted to do that, and probably more as a test case as opposed to naively thinking I was going to be able to use that as the environmental or labor market scan, because it does rely on that snapshot in time and it does take data that sort of has since potentially been removed or no longer available. So a while back I asked it to do a labor market scan for disability support worker for me and it produces this beautiful scan. I was blown away by the words on the page but I couldn't, because I'd done the work right, I couldn't reconcile the data, I couldn't figure out where that data would come from and I said, oh, okay, well, so can you, can you let me know your sources? And it articulated the sources. I said Can you provide me the links? It provided me the links and the links were broken. They were no longer there and so I sort of I responded, I kind of I took chat GPT to task over this.

Nick Kennedy: 26:52

I said these links are broken. And then it said you're right, you know this data is no longer you know available or valid. And I said Well, you know, can you tell me how you came up with that? And it just repeated that same line again and again and again. So it's not perfect for everything. If we can harness what it's good for, it's a huge time saver. Huge time saver as long as we make sure that certain things are better left for you know more real time tools and techniques.

Kath Hume: 27:23

I'm going to combine my next two questions. One was about the global economy and what the impact we're seeing on cost of living and interest rate rises, but can we combine that then into you see what's happening across the globe? Like in my world I really only see Australia and probably really New South Wales, so I'm really intrigued because last time you gave us some interesting stats about Africa and how that their challenges were completely different to ours, and so I'm really interested to hear what you're seeing now.

Nick Kennedy: 27:51

Yeah, those macroeconomic sort of population numbers haven't changed. I don't think we've become any more willing to leverage those, but there's still a huge opportunity there, and I know May, who sits on our global standards and content committee and is based in Kenya, is super keen to try and get governments to listen to the thinking, because I think, certainly, even if we just took nurses and builders, you know we'd be better off, you know, as an economy, and then African nations would be better off when those people ultimately returned with enhanced building and nursing skills Right. What I can comment on, though, Kath is, is where I see the global capability and the Institute and this is the same global standards and content committee is about to push the button on a maturity model, so the organizations will be able to, you know, fairly quickly, you know, really visual way map themselves and map their maturity level in strategic workforce planning, which is kind of cool. I'm not seeing necessarily huge pockets of capability from a regional perspective.

Nick Kennedy: 28:56

I'm seeing a lot of variability across the US in terms of SWP maturity. Some organizations let's take the Cleveland Clinic, for example brilliant, they invest in it. They've got the best of the best in AJ home in there, you know, they invest in tech and they amazing understanding how work gets done and leveraging that. Then you've got some other you know, really large global organizations who are right at the start of their SWP journey because the Blunt burning platform is starting to hit home. So, you know, I don't think the US is any better than the UK, is any better than continental Europe, is any better than Australia en masse. You know, and if you look at Australia ANZ, for example, bupa with James McKay and Jess Murphy are both light years ahead in terms of what they're doing.

Nick Kennedy: 29:45

Yeah, I know James is looking to measure himself against some of the other global leaders which we're certainly helping them with at the moment, which is kind of cool. So you know, there's no kind of one region. There's also not necessarily one industry sector. I think you know potentially you could argue that here banking has a, has a real interest in it. They don't all necessarily do it super well, but they're definitely interested. I think health, here in particular is super interested. You know, we've had New South Wales health speak last year. We've got a Department of Health Victoria speaking this year and from what I can gather, both of those bodies are not only passionate about it but really good at it. So I think that that's super, super important.

Nick Kennedy: 30:27

To see the fact that the economy is is in a bit of a challenging situation at the moment will be felt everywhere. I mean, if you think about the global economy as one ecosystem, right, it's essentially a fixed, things can move in and out of local economies, but globally, that's it right. So to that end, every action so Newton's third law every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So nothing happens without an impact being felt somewhere else. And the challenges with interest rates they've felt urgently in the hip pocket of the individual, which causes one of two things the desire to be paid more by your current employer, or a transition away to a role that's paying more and will help ease that household pressure. I think household pressure at the moment is at an all time high and not only does that manifest in organisations needing to consider the REM side of things, but more importantly, the well-being, engagement and well-being, I guess, both of those things. So no one wants to come to work and hate a job, only to go home and feel that pressure even more because they're not paid what they need to be. I think there's definitely that dynamic at play and that's not just us, that's everywhere. We see it in terms of conference sponsors. We see it in terms of delegates and speakers and travel restrictions.

Nick Kennedy: 31:47

Yeah, definitely seeing organisations hunker down en masse, being more selective about where they're spending and where they're not spending.

Nick Kennedy: 31:54

The workforce is still their largest cost, so that they probably would be better served to focus on how they optimise that or look at different models to get people paid or engage in a different way.

Nick Kennedy: 32:09

I think that the last thing I'll say on that is we will see a continued sort of move towards individuals like you and I that have set up their own small businesses over time, or not necessarily to that degree, or individuals who are looking to trade their skills as a commodity across multiple different platforms and different organisations. So that has to happen and that's going to allow people to earn in a way that means I can work when I want to work and I can deliver pieces of work and I can control that more, but also it allows organisations to control their spend a little more as well. So that model theoretically fits. Again, it's underpinned by organisations being willing to engage in a different manner. Engaging with someone that is a machine learning developer for an organisation that might sit in defence technology, for example, that's not easy when you're engaging with that person on a non-on-going basis. But unless we change that model, can't really can't work.

Kath Hume: 33:11

I wonder too, if people don't have that discretionary spend available, if it tightens down their thinking and so they're more likely to go for a secure job rather than these portfolio careers, and therefore we go backwards a little bit because people opt for security.

Nick Kennedy: 33:32

I t's such a valid point. The tighter things become, and I think also what weighs into that right is do we see shifts in population growth? So do we see an increase in prevalence or a decrease in prevalence of even if it's temporarily a single income households? Doesn't that now weigh into the situation on whether you go for a second or a third if you live in that sort of traditional environment? Is that, can we afford it? And can we afford not so much the little gem in our lives but to have one of us not work for a period of time and not earn or not earn what we were potentially? So I think that piece will absolutely continue to play into it.

Nick Kennedy: 34:13

And then maybe the solution is somewhere in between. So is there a model of engagement that gives a degree of assurance to an individual but they might need three, four or five degrees of assurances from three, four or five different providers? So signing a longer term agreement with someone for an organization that says, okay, well, we might need I'll go back to machine learning or AI development capability, but realistically we probably only need that 25% of the time, but we're going to need it ongoing. So, yeah, we can issue you with a contract and that contract might have typical terms in it, with four weeks notice, like a permanent employment contract, but just maybe structured all differently, and that person could invoice and could be paid through their own proprietary limited company and do all the things that they enjoy from a benefits perspective, because that's why they set up for themselves in the first place, probably. So I think. Yes, security and assurances is absolutely at the top of people's minds at the moment, but it doesn't necessarily mean we have to do what we've always done.

Nick Kennedy: 35:18

It doesn't mean we have to do it, we will by the way, we'll definitely. When dollars and financial currencies sort of do weird things, people cling to gold because that's what they know, so we'll do the same with permanent employment, because that's what we know. It doesn't have to be that way, though.

Kath Hume: 35:32

Yeah, just requires a bit of courage and creativity in this. To ride out the storm. My last question strategic workforce planning conferences coming up. Very exciting time of year. It was one of my highlights of 2022. Met some fantastic people who I'm still connected with, which I absolutely love. What have you got in store for us?

Nick Kennedy: 35:52

Yeah, so we've got a couple of really big events coming up. We've got SWP Conference London and then we've got SWP Conference Melbourne three weeks later. Yeah, the London event will boast some of the world's most interesting and intriguing speakers. Organizations I mentioned to you earlier that we have NatWest and Code First Girls, set up at the start of the day. Natwest are actually sponsoring SWP Conference, which is kind of unheard of for a traditional corporate, but it just shows how invested they are in the work that they're doing. It will have a number of really really cool tech providers along. A lot of the label market, data, talent, intelligence type providers Think DROP, think Horsefly, talent, neuron they'll all be there. Some of them will be speaking, some of them will be exhibiting. The awesome team at Equate will be involved Adam Gibson, Alicia Roach we're going to see these sorts of personalities speaking in London, which will be super, super cool.

Nick Kennedy: 36:54

Just a number of other really interesting and intriguing speakers. We've got a really strong government contingent in London this time around, which is fantastic. So Ministry of Defence, submarine Delivery Agency, Cabinet Office. We've got a panel just dedicated to SWP for the UK public sector, which I'm super, super excited about. Organizations like Amazon, SAP, Rolls Royce, Virgin Meteor to Microsoft it's a great list on paper, but I know all of these individuals. They're all fantastic speakers.

Nick Kennedy: 37:29

We've got some really, really interesting sessions from not-for-profits and big global not-for-profits. So United Nations World Food Program. We've got International Committee for the Red Cross. So when strategic workforce planning just literally means life and death, there's a proper burning platform there that creates a different sense of urgency. So when you think about listening to speakers from that space, it just contextualizes everything for you completely. And that's about a third of this right. So great speakers. We will do some education at that conference as well. So we've got not only how we got roundtable conversations, but we've got our awesome strategy activity, where you're placed in groups and you get a fictitious scenario with a whole bunch of really crooked and quirky strategic objectives and as a group from a common industry, you've got to work through and translate those to a language and a portfolio of objectives that could then be popped into the strategic workforce planning process.

Voiceover: 38:33

Love it Love it.

Nick Kennedy: 38:34

It's such a fun activity and we'll have some really good leaders of the groups there. And likewise, Melbourne is going to be a huge event as well. We announced yesterday that the Lord Mayor, Sally Cap, is going to come on down Colin Street and grace us with her presence to open up, which will be fantastic. So she'll do an opening address for us. We have a huge contingent of speakers from BHP, so they've got a couple of sessions, not only talking about some of the critical decisions they made through their process, but then how and why they built their own tech platform and the process that sits in and around that. Our trio of powerhouses in Jess Murphy, Sally Dwyer and Oxana Dwabra will be back to do that incredible panel, ANZ are coming back again. We've got Department of Health Victoria, who've just got an awesome session planned out and I've recorded a podcast with them. So that's in the production line at the moment. We've got education. We've also got hospitals represented in Eastern Health, got Arcadis, who are coming along, her huge global construction organization, project management organization, who'll be speaking. So again, a really awesome contingent there.

Nick Kennedy: 39:50

We've got education, who'll be exhibiting. So UNSW Canberra, Pearson workforce skills who they'll be in London. They'll also be coming out to Australia as well for that event. So great members and great sponsors of the Institute and an organization dedicated to enabling the workforce of the future, so what a great sponsor for us to have on board for that conference. So both of those events are filling.

Nick Kennedy: 40:15

London is well over three quarters full now and it may even sell out, which would be a huge thing for us. Melbourne's well over half full already. So we're seeing a real interest in what we're doing, and not only to speak and to sponsor but to come along, which is fantastic. As you and I talked about, you don't organize conferences because they're easy and they're stress free, but you organize them because you know that people appreciate them and when they come along and when they engage and when you feel that authenticity of the strategic workforce planning community and the gratitude and the collaborative nature, it's worth going just to be in the room and to hear the buzz, let alone the educational content that you get.

Kath Hume: 41:05

I would wholeheartedly agree with that. It was absolutely awesome last year. Well, that's very exciting. No wonder you've been a little bit busy organizing all of that. Just to finish off, I've just made some notes. I'm going to put links to your podcast, your LinkedIn and the conference details. Is there anything else I should be putting in the show notes, do you think?

Nick Kennedy: 41:27

If you've got a question or you want to know about lots of people inquiring about our 2024 training calendar. So I'm sorry. I do need to get those dates up, but info@workforceplanninginstitute. com and then we can work through individual queries from there. I will connect with anyone who wants to on LinkedIn. If you're in that space and you're interested, jump on. You can follow the Institute company page. All of our announcements go out through that, so that's probably the main ways to get in contact.

Kath Hume: 41:56

Thank you once again. Good luck over the next couple of weeks. I think you will deserve a break for Christmas. By this time you get there, but you've got a lot to do before that.

Nick Kennedy: 42:05

Big couple of months before we can call stumps for the year.

Kath Hume: 42:08

Thanks very much and I look forward to you seeing how it all plays out.

Nick Kennedy: 42:11

Thanks Kath, thanks for having me back on, so really appreciate it. Had a lot of fun I've loved it.

Kath Hume: 42:15

Thanks heaps.

Voiceover: 42:18

Thanks for listening to the Reimagined Workforce podcast. We hope you've found some valuable ideas that you can apply to transform your own workforce today and tomorrow. Additional information and links can be found in the show notes for this episode at workforce transformationscomau slash podcast. Please share this podcast with your community and leave us a rating to let us know what we can do better for you.