In the Lab: Workforce Planning and Analytics, Deconstructing Work, and Automation

At our June 3 meeting we were focused on the theme "In the Lab: Workforce Planning and Analytics, Deconstructing Work, and Automation." We were joined by special guest Jimmy Zhang, Senior Director, People Strategy & Analytics at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and a member of i4cp's People Analytics Board. He presented to the group on the role of people analytics in workforce planning at Vertex, and in particular detailed their success in developing and recently rolling out a new Career Hub initiative for talent mobility at the organization. Tom Stone, Sr. Research Analyst at i4cp, then led a discussion of intersection of automation/AI/etc. with workforce planning, including at what touchpoints in the WP process automation/etc. now needs to be a focus point. 

Here are some highlights from the meeting:

• Zhang began by noting recent survey results from Insights222, which asked people analytics leaders which areas people analytics provides the most value. Strategic workforce planning ranked third, behind only overall business strategy and then employee experience / well-being.
• Internal research at Vertex found that internal transfers provide four main values to the organization:
• Increased employee retention
• Effectively "resetting the clock" on average employee tenure (e.g., if the average is four years, then after an internal move the employee is likely to restart that four years)
• Improved performance after transfer
• Reduced cost of external hires (even though a new hire is usually needed to backfill the position vacated)
• The recently launched internal CareerHub at Vertex leverages AI and machine learning applied to people analytics data to provide a mix of internally developed and vendor-provided employee solutions including development guidelines, job matching (custom), mentoring (vendor solution), gig marketplace (vendor solution), career paths (custom), competency models and assessments (custom), and learning playlists in Vertex U. by competency area (vendor solution).
• Zhang noted that the CareerHub solution relies on Workday as their core HRIS, Cornerstone as their LMS, and then ServiceNow as the single point of entry for all career resources including gigs, rotations, development guidelines, and all other career-related articles and tools available to Vertexians.
• Zhang described some highlights of the job-matching algorithms involved in the solution:
• The job-matching algorithm is trained to match each employee to internal job opportunities, aligned to their skills identified in Workday and skills inferred based on their employee profile.
• Updating the employee's profile in Workday is the best way to improve their personalized matches.
• There is a thumbs-up / thumbs-down feedback mechanism built into CareerHub to help them evaluate and iterate on the algorithm.
• The skills algorithm used in this platform will have other future uses as well, including determine internal candidate slates, charting career paths, resume screening, and external talent intelligence sensing. Artificial intelligence will be used in much of this work, as well as for determining reskilling pathways and to enable automated or augmented career-coaching.
• Deconstruct jobs into tasks, evaluating where automation, AI, etc. can substitute, augment, or otherwise enhance humans to complete tasks more efficiently.
• Conduct a supply/demand or gap analysis, including both human talent sources and automation/AI/etc. possibilities.
• Create an action/investment plan that will leverage and expand your talent ecosystem to build (including upskilling/reskilling), buy, rent, poach, or borrow both human talent and automation/AI capabilities.