Managing the Workforce of Tomorrow

Martijn Seijsener, Global Head Employee Experience, Credit Suisse

As companies emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, they are realizing that talent management has become even more urgent. We are facing new times where organizations are grappling with how to make hybrid working models function, determine the new skills needed, now and in the future, and are trying to get their heads around how the workforce of the future will look like. While companies are trying to find an answer to these questions, the workforce emerging from the pandemic is a different one than the one with which organizations entered the pandemic. The post-pandemic workforce cares more about how their life fits into their work, and expects a more personalized, flexible employment relationship. The post-pandemic workforce has clear ideas and demands: DE&I, purpose, and employee experience are strategic priority staples that they expect from their employers and paying lip-service could potentially have severe consequences, including losing talent. It is now more than ever crucial to attract and retain the right talent. Investment in the workforce, through development, hiring, and empowerment / inclusion, is vital for business to execute its strategy and be able to transform to meet the needs of the future.

The pandemic has also increased the pressure on organizations to respond to four-long term talent trends that have been building for at least a decade:

1. on-demand skills are scarce, made worse by digitization and automation;
2. the workforce is multi-generational;
3. the workforce is becoming more and more fluid as talented individuals no longer want to work for a single organization; and
4. employees expect more personalized career opportunities.

To adapt to these trends, organizations need to rethink the future of work and start fundamentally changing how they attract, allocate, develop and retain talent. Throughout this change, there needs to be a solidified link between the company’s strategic priorities and the talent it needs, now and in the future. In other words, companies need to know what to do in the short and long-term. To pivot successfully, a different kind of talent approach is needed, on different levels of abstraction:

1. the governance of talent;
2. the operationalization of the model in different kind of career paths; and
3. the learning ecosystem that allows for upskilling and reskilling in the flow of work.

Adaptable by design

In response to the disruption and trends outlined above, organizations need to redesign their Talent Management operating model for adaptability. As mentioned, most employees expect organizations to offer more personalized career opportunities. Unfortunately, many of the current Talent Management models do not offer this personalization and flexibility.

The reason is that they have predominantly been designed by talent experts, with best intentions, but often without a human-centric approach to talent. A human-centric approach to talent requires thinking directly from the perspective of the talent and providing solutions crafted to match their needs. The approach focuses on the end-consumers and not the process. This means providing a connected and personalized experience, that is relevant to the target audience. An end-to-end approach should be adopted which focuses on designing a complete talent journey and not just on touchpoints (coaching, talent reviews, secondments).

"Career paths of the future will be all about setting new, challenging missions for growth and value creation every year or two, instead of defining a linear ladder towards seniority"

Overhauling the career strategy

As mentioned above, the skills that organizations need now and in the future are in a constant flux as is the workforce that offers them. This is challenging organizations across fronts and forcing them to also start reimagining the career they offer. As the workforce is becoming more fluid, the desire for a long career (through promotions and raises) at the same employer is rapidly declining. The traditional career ladders are not fit-for-purpose anymore. To address this, organizations have started to design career paths that have a shorter outlook, 2-5 years max, and offer much more flexibility in the directions an employee can develop. In other words, career paths of the future will be all about setting new, challenging missions for growth and value creation every year or two, instead of defining a linear ladder towards seniority. These missions are referred to by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman as “tours of duty” in his book, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the networked Age, whereby the employer and employee agree on a specific mission over a 2–5-year period and describe how the employee will grow whilst building value for or making an important change in how the company does business. Next to provide the sought flexibility, the career framework could be designed like a lily pad extending in all directions, providing employees with a series of interconnected opportunities. In such a career framework, employees can take leaps that make sense for them, given their goals and interests, without being limited by prescribed career ladders.

Overhauling the learning strategy

Like the talent management model and the career paths, the learning strategy also requires an overhaul. Nearly 50 percent of organizations plan to prioritize the learning strategy to keep up with the changing environment and preferences of modern learners. Many organizations are moving away from content development towards content curation, which is more targeted and provides just-in-time information that is more accurate and pertinent. This means providing organized and contextualized information that is relevant to the target audience and moving towards hyper personalized learning experiences, stressing the unique needs of an individual employee while focusing on when, where and how the work happens. Learning and development departments need to shift the focus from producing learning content to enabling organic learning in the flow of work and take learning to where work happens by concentrating on providing experiences that augment an employee’s work. Next, they need to start speaking the language of the business, upskill on business partnering, design thinking, technology, and most importantly, human-centered skills.

As the fundamental assumptions about work have changed, so should the foundation upon which Talent Management is based: the operating model that delivers the right talent, the framework in which people develop and the ecosystem that delivers the learning to develop. In the new world of work, Talent Management is expected to identify and brokerage skills, provide individualized career journeys with relevant skill development opportunities.