We are really excited to be a sponsor for the Center of Energy Workforce Development for October 7 through 9 in Indianapolis.  Vemo has really been focusing on how we can be the ideal supplier of workforce planning and analytics to the Energy industry, which faces almost all of the prevalent issues that drive the need for workforce planning: high levels of retirement and retirement eligibility, risk of brain-drain, declining talent supply, long time to skill maturity for craft labor positions, and a business model that is impacted by the external and regulatory landscape.

We look forward to talking to attending organizations about how we can help, and also hear ideas about how we can focus our products and services to best service the Energy sector.

See you at CEWD!

Vemo is at booth 540, and I’m also doing a presentation on Wednesday, September 30 at 3:15pm with Marsha Johnson, SVP HR and Chief Diversity Officer of the Southern Company and Ed Newman of the Newman Group: “Finding a Vendor, The Doing Workforce Planning.”

I’m looking forward to this format, devised by Bill Kutik, because I think that’s what organizations want to see:  what were the criteria for picking a vendor and how do you filter through all the perceived needs to the actual requirements?  Then what does implementation look like in the first 6 months to 1 year.

See you at HR Tech!

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement lately.  Not mine, but how organizations could gain better insight into what level of retirement will actually happen in their companies.  You hear so many stories about fifty percent eligible to retire in next few years, but it never works that way exactly, and it is not just the current economy.  It seems that most people are surprised by how many fewer retire than expected or how many more than expected retire.

Maybe there’s some underlying pattern that we do not see and if that pattern were understood we would study the problem differently.  What if there is a set of behavioral categories that each has its own retirement rules and that could be used to better understand the retirement risks organizations are facing?

Here is a draft idea of 4 underlying groups.

Early retirees. This is always a small part of the workforce… people with a compelling reason to leave the workforce early even if their benefits are not fully accrued.  This is a small part of the workforce that has it’s own trend.

Calendar counters. This is the retirement stereotype, but it definitely does exist.  This is the group that even in a bad economy could be easily convinced by a voluntary attrition program.  In a pension or defined contribution environment, these people are going to move out once they receive their points, or within a couple of years.  They will not modulate their underlying behavior that much unless facing real duress.

Realists. This group would be most impacted by macro issues such as the overall economy and state of the market, life expectancy, children in college, and the like.  And not just major events like the Great Recession.  But also more moderate shifts in the economy and marketplace.  This group defies typical retirement point models based on age and tenure, because those point systems were put in place when different realities were in place for life expectancy and lifestyle in general.

Wedded to work. There are some people who do not like to leave the workforce.  It’s part of their identity.  They stay beyond the early retirees, the calendar counters and the realists.  And they have no sudden spike, but gradually attrite as they can no longer work.

The ROI of workforce planning… I will admit it – I used to dread that question.  Either the discussion was so qualitative that it wouldn’t do for an ROI pitch.  Or if you try to quantify improvements, they were so out-size that they would appear ridiculous – millions of dollars of cost improvements and strategic opportunities just for being disciplined about workforce planning.

Then I realized it is the wrong question.  Workforce planning is a diagnostic process that helps uncover the cost savings and opportunities to better align the workforce with organizational strategy.  A diagnostic could yield a clean bill of corporate health.  Or it could yield a few areas of improvement.  Or many.  The point is that you really shouldn’t measure the return on investment of doing a diagnostic process – either your organization thinks it’s a good idea to analyze, plan and forecast, or it does not.

If you are being asked to provide the ROI for workforce planning you should try to transform the question to focus on the premise that workforce intelligence – both looking forwards and backwards – is of inherent value.  Then the ROI discussion is just about whether you have the resources, tools and programs necessary for good workforce planning. Do individual hiring managers make good workforce decisions for the overall organization?  Do we know what type of talent we will hire and develop before we do it – or are we always chasing talent demand?  Do we know which internal talent supply scenario for turnover, retirement and mobility is “most likely” – so we can cut through the type and address something specific?  What would the benefit be of centralizing that effort and applying a consistent discipline to workforce and talent planning processes?  What would the benefit be of having data available pre-decision-making vs. after decisions are already made?