Interesting interview which is very Strategic Workforce Planning.
It is McKinsey interviewing Head of EMEA at Volvo Cars, Björn Anwall, all quotes below are Björn's. The article can be found on McKinsey's website.
"What are the core competencies that we will need in five to ten years? And how do we start ‘planting the seeds’ for those competencies today?"
Their conversation is a clear example of how core the business sees Strategic Workforce Planning, yet there is no mention of the term. In my experience it will be even more effective when the implementation of a cross functional SWP solution helps drive the need from the "business". This is where the goal and strategy is, or should be, set.
"We need leaders who can work much more cross-functionally—who can get different domains and competency areas to work effectively together toward the same goal."
And I certainly agree with Björn that doing the work,
"...our number-one approach to capability building: learning by doing."
especially when done in a well thought out and deliberate way, is key to building capabilities. And that is how I design the introduction of SWP in organisations.
"You build capabilities while building the future. You don’t do it in a classroom on the side. You do it by orchestrating the company’s transformation journey in a conscious and deliberate way so that you get the right people together, and they build their capabilities by doing the work."
Then he continues talking Strategic Workforce Planning, at least they way I do it whereby some capabilities / activities / roles / segments are key to control inside the organisation and shouldn't be outsourced. This is one of the activities I introduce in my projects; how do you decide who is the right type of 'resource' to deliver the different activities in your organisation.
"The core of capability building is something we should control ourselves; we can’t live by outsourced resources. Our people are our destiny. If we don’t control their competency development ourselves, we are going to have problems over the long term."
And how interesting it is to see that it may become more important to organisations, taking Volvo as an example, to take back control of people's development. It should be noted that one of the research findings from Volvo in the late 1990s showed that Volvo probably had too much control and wasn't listening enough to employees. I would be amazed if this hasn't improved massively. Saying that "Our people are our destiny" indicates they surely are listening and adapting competency development programmes based on the feedback?
And below are a few videos from the McKinsey interview with Björn Anwall:
Learning through ‘constructive friction’
Taking a firmer grip on capability building
How to attract the talent of tomorrow News Consolidation