Care About Workforce Planning

The business strategy identifies the types of skills needed now and in the future. The shortfall between the supply and demand of skills is the skills gap. The build vs. buy decision comes into play here, and learning’s challenge is to develop and implement a strategy to ensure the requisite skills and competencies are in place in time. A simple action planning process may be the best way to close this learning gap. The balance of the gap is addressed through staffing, and when necessary, acquisitions.

The learning team at Qualcomm, a mobile technology and services provider, favors — when appropriate — building the right skills internally rather than buying them. The team’s internal consulting model partners with HR and the business to constantly assess skills needs and develops learning plans for each division to ensure there is an internal talent pipeline to fulfill the company’s overall strategic plans. “Learning is part of the WFP team,” said Nancy Crosby, Qualcomm’s senior director for learning and development.

Minimizing culture gaps: Too often, the focus on skills and competencies and their respective gaps leaves another important dimension of workforce effectiveness neglected. Learning professionals can play a key part in ensuring a cultural fit in management and leadership roles. An organization’s culture continuously evolves, sometimes smoothly and sometimes with jolts stemming from acquisitions or other system shocks such as regulatory or competitive challenges. Qualcomm takes a proactive approach on this front. It regularly conducts formal interviews with executives and key senior managers who have joined the company in the past year and asks them about cultural assimilation issues. The results are fed back to the staffing team to ensure candidate assessments minimize potential cultural clashes that could derail careers and impact business results.