Getting ready for the Great Vocational Shift

While many industries are shedding jobs, others are gaining. This year, for example, the courts took on more clerks to process bankruptcy filings¹ and housing contract disputes. Construction workers laid down nail guns to pick up tar spreaders. The auto sector has suffered, but recovery funding is stimulating education, health care and the public service.

While politicians and macro-economists track the path of stimulus dollars as they roll through the economy creating work, your organization can uncover its own micro-climate of skills in the new economy. Taking stock of the resources you have at your disposal and establishing a skills development strategy can help you thrive in times of upheaval.

HR organizations are using analytics take the pulse of their workforce and make the right moves to meet the demands of changing times. Analytics can help you uncover potential growth areas within your ranks and retrain individuals whose jobs are becoming obsolete. If you are in the position of having to reduce your workforce, analytics can shed light on which skilled resources to retain.

Shifting skills

While the list of evolving and endangered skills will vary from one industry to the next, some essential skills will increasingly be needed in the new economy, including the ability to:

• Use technology comfortably. An über skill is the ability to learn and use new technology quickly, since the new essential skills rely on technology for support. Choosing a set of integrated, easy-to-use tools will help employees hone this skill and encourage widespread adoption.
  
  
• Collaborate and share knowledge. Because drawing on a wide range of knowledge reduces uncertainty, distributes costs and improves innovation,² employees will increasingly complete projects through dynamic, multi-disciplinary teams that span departments and even hook in external organizations. People skilled in virtual teamwork and collaboration technology will be ahead of the game.
  
  
• Work smarter to move faster. While technology supports process improvements, a valued skill is the willingness and ability to seek better ways of working and to ensure technology helps instead of hinders. Even the smallest optimization can incrementally speed progress towards goals.
  
  
• Use data for decision-making. As more and more data becomes accessible in an analysis-ready format, being able to gain insight from that data will become an increasingly sought-after skill. This skill includes the ability to find the right metrics to follow, to understand the meaning of different value thresholds, and to know what questions to ask of data in order to reach a decision. Organizations wanting to advance in an uncertain economic climate will be looking for individuals with combinations of these essential skills. Because technology supports them, a strategic partnership between HR and IT will boost the development of these skills in house.
  

Taking the pulse of the workforce

Essential skills are valued in any type of organization. But what of the particular skills that are important to your organization, within your industry?

More often than not, organizations have only a vague understanding of their skills inventory. Many organizations lack the insight that would let them develop needed skills, find and hold on to high performers, and assign valued resources to fit with overall strategy.

An analytic point of reference helps HR professionals analyze workforce data and make the best possible decisions and recommendations to meet strategy. What knowledge and skills do we have in-house? Where are the gaps? How should we fill them? Should we hire new or retrain and realign?

HR departments that can answer these questions through capacity analysis, scenario planning and forecasting are more likely to be able to support the execution of business strategy. Human resources analytics helps:

• Find and keep talent. Once you have evaluated workforce performance and sorted out the high performers, the next step is a good retention plan to keep valuable employees highly engaged. Since future growth depends on employee motivation and continuity, they must be compensated appropriately. For new talent, many organizations look to international sourcing. Statistics hint that this strategy has helped the United States sustain rapid growth in the IT software sector, where human capital is the key input.³
  
  
• Retrain, redeploy and reduce. Tough times mean tough decisions. But smart organizations can minimize layoffs and the loss of intellectual capital if they retrain resources to close performance gaps and fuel growth areas. Better knowledge of skills gaps and the changing skill profile or your organization supports these activities. The trend towards HR self-service lets employees take development and advancement into their own hands to ease pressure on HR.
  
  
• Establish a knowledge base. Downsizing and early retirement can mean the loss of institutional memory. When faced with workforce reductions, many organizations turn to a knowledge base to help preserve knowledge deemed critical. Once again, a strategic partnership between HR and IT can ensure this is available and accessible.
  
  
• Have a plan. Formal career paths and succession planning can ensure newer employees get up to speed quickly and that departures don’t mean productivity loss. A knowledge base can provide continuity in intellectual capital and mentoring programs can help transfer knowledge pre-retirement, once critical skills are identified.

Get a seat at the table

A recent survey of 400 HR professionals by IBM Global Business Services found that “organizations where HR is a “proactive leader in driving corporate strategy” are almost two times more likely to have a workforce analytics capability.”⁴

The ability to analyze the workforce to inform and optimize decisions can help HR professionals develop business cases and assess tradeoffs as their colleagues in other functional areas do. Knowing your workforce—what you have, where you’re going—can lend HR a greater role in corporate decision-making and strategy.

Because people represent both the largest cost and the greatest asset to any organization, strategic direction from HR can only benefit overall corporate performance.

• IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Performance: Packaged HR analytics
• Watch a product demo
• Research Report: Getting Smart about your Workforce
  

¹Stephen Losey. "Courts need more staff to manage spike in bankruptcy filings." Federal Times. March 19, 2009.

²OECD Information Society. A New Economy? The Changing Role of Innovation and Information Technology in Growth.

³ibid.

⁴Getting smart about your workforce: Why analytics matter. IBM Global Business Services, March 2009.