Marketing Workforce Planning |
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Tess
Walton -
It won't matter how skilled you are at Workforce Planning
if you don't get the executive support to start the
journey - and one of the key challenges can be summed
up in my favourite marketing principle 101:
People aren’t in the market
for solutions to problems they don’t see, acknowledge
and understand - but
most practioners put 90% of
their energy into
selling the Workforce Planning solution and only
10% into selling the problem!
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Planning, like any new process or program, needs
to be marketed. Don't assume your audience knows
all of the causes for concern that you know. Don't
flood your audience with graphs and reports that
don’t highlight problems or needs. Use every
opportunity with your audience to create demand
for Workforce Planning - everything presented
to the business needs to have a purpose, and prompt
an action. Marketing ensures that potential customers
are never left with any doubt as to how you can
use and benefit from the product or service. As
Workforce Planners we need to make sure that our
messaging is right, that we are explicit in the
problems we see by presenting them clearly to
the business. It is only when we do this that
we can present our Workforce Planning approach
as the solution.
But
the discipline of Marketing also provides some
useful techniques that help workforce planning
directly.
One
of the key features of Aruspex’s Workforce
Planning framework is workforce segmentation.
Organisations too frequently look at their workforce
as a homogenous group, even while their marketing
department is dividing the customer base according
to various traits: demographic, socio-economic,
special interests, etc. To ensure the company's
success, marketing design services and products
which recognise and serve the different needs
of these customer and prospects groups, developing
marketing strategies including different product
features, packaging design, channels and advertising
- all targeted at attracting and retaining particular
segments of the market.
Workforce
Planners can benefit from this approach by reviewing
their organisation’s workforce. Do not try
to workforce plan for the whole workforce as if
they are all alike. Of course it is impossible
to deal with them all as individuals too; the
balance is segmenting the workforce. Who are the
different types of employees the organisation
has? Is it best to divide your workforce by age,
by career motivation, by skill type? What best
reflects the breakdown of your employee "market"?
Segmenting this way immediately gives you insight
into what employment "product" will
attract and retain these segments most effectively.
Packaging your organisation’s employment
proposition to suit the different types within
the organisation, so that you are attracting and
retaining the people you need.
Marketing
Workforce Planning and Workforce Segmentation
are two of the skills we cover in our 2 day Strategic
Workforce Planning Workshops, coming up in
Brisbane this month - see you there.
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This
edition we look at a book of great interest to workforce planners
and parents alike! "Got Game: How the Gamer Generation
is Reshaping Business Forever" presents the results of
a large scale survey and hundreds of interviews which analysed
the attributes and attitudes of a large new part of our workforce
- the gamer generation.
Not
just another analysis of Generations X and Y, Got Game provides
insight into how the act of extensive game playing itself
has altered the skills, attitudes and interaction styles of
the players. These attributes include multitasking, bold but
measured risk taking and strong leadership skills. This book
could be a useful addition to your Workforce Planning knowledge.
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To
help you decide, the review below is from Publishers
Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, a division
of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved). Contact
me to let me know what you thought of it!
Those
who are looking for a contrarian view of video games
will find it in these pages. While many parents fret
about their children’s minds turning to goo as
they squander hour after hour absorbed in electronic
diversion, the authors argue that gamers glean valuable
knowledge from their pastime and that they’re poised
to use that knowledge to transform the workplace. Beck
and Mitchell base their claims on an exclusive survey
of approximately 2000 business professionals. That survey,
say the authors, provides the first data showing a direct,
statistically verifiable link between digital games
and professional behavior in the workplace. The authors
express their analysis in clean, crisp prose devoid
of jargon, making it accessible for non-gamers, especially
non-gamers who are managers. "Gamers believe that
winning matters," Beck and Wade contend, and gamers
also place "a high value on competence—wanting
to be an expert in the first place"—all of
which makes the video game generation, estimated by
the authors to be some 90 million strong, an influential
force in the work place.
The
book touches on a handful of other ways in which gamers
differ from non-gamers and provides suggestions on how
employers can take advantage of their unique values
and skills. Some readers may find themselves grinding
their teeth at many of the authors’ upbeat conclusions
about the benefits video game players will bring to
the business world, but most will find the pair’s
findings fascinating and provocative.
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Spotlight Trend |
| Immigration
continues to be a major policy focus in reducing the skills
shortage - so much that DIMIA have introduced a skills
matching database for employers to find suitable prospective
migrants.
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Thought
for the Month |
| "The
children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt
for authority; they allow disrespect for the elderly and love
chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants..."
Socrates |
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Prime
males missing out on fall in unemployment
Australia has had the biggest fall in unemployment
since 2001 of any wealthy country other than New
Zealand - but the gains have largely bypassed males
of prime working age, the OECD has found - the Age
The
War for Talent, Part II The intensity
of competition for the best employees is starting
to resemble that of the last decade - Workforce
Performance Solutions
Henry
says falling male participation rate puzzling
The nation's top economic bureaucrat admitted he
was puzzled by the continuing fall in the number
of Australian men in the workforce - CCH
Old.
Smart. Productive. The graying of the
workforce is better news than you think. - Business
Week
IT
skills shortage Three-quarters of IT
contractors expect their salaries to increase this
year, signalling that demand is at its highest since
the dot-com boom. - Infoconomy
Using
branding to attract talent To win the
best recruits, a company must know how they perceive
its brand - McKinsey Quarterly
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In our next issue... |
Introducing
CAPTure - Aruspex is proud to introduce the world's
first true strategic planning software. Next edition
we will give you a preview!
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