RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

The title of the newly published article by Dr John Sullivan immediately grabbed my attention and got me firmly back in the saddle of my favourite hobbyhorse which I touched on in my last blog. He contends that CEOs are “laser focussed” on revenue growth and to add strategic value HR must become champions of this cause too.  Read full post

I attended a Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) workshop this week hosted by ArcelorMittal, for the Ochre House HR Network. As per a previous blog, ArcelorMittal have made great progress in SWP and although this topic is widely discussed, in my experience, no one has ever shown “how” to do it. Before we go into the details, here are some key facts:
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Over the past couple of months I have been speaking with a number of organisations who are grappling with Strategic Workforce Planning. What became apparent to me is that almost every organisation I have been in contact with is  transforming in some shape or form, but when it comes to the long term picture there seems to be a disconnect between the workforce plan and the overall business strategy.
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As most of you know Ochre House hosted its annual HR Leaders conference last month, with a focus on re-defining business value through a talent centric approach. And the speakers certainly got me thinking.

It appears that the West is slowly losing its economic power as potential moves to new powerhouses in the BRIC countries and Goldman Sachs’ ‘Next 11’ and one of the effects of this is increasing pressure on HR to deliver new, more effective talent strategies. But according to one of the speakers at the conference, the industry will only succeed if it can learn to master an organisations changing complexity and speak the ‘language of business.’ 

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Planning, forecasting, workforce analysis, headcount prediction, manpower planning and plenty more. Even the plethora of expressions illustrates the uncertainty around whether people needs can be forecast and how accurate this can be – never mind whether that can be used to make recruitment more effective.
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Quarter 4 tends to be the time of year when organisations begin their business review process, reflecting on the past year and brainstorming their strategies for the future. For those relatively rare players that have them in place, they’ll also be reviewing their 3-5 year plans and building the roadmap to achieve them. However far ahead a company is trying to reach they’ll need to be considering goals and objectives, and possibly more importantly, the talent that will be required to achieve them.
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You may remember in June 2007 Gordon Brown announced that his was to be a “government of all the talents”. A bold statement indeed, and one that left me feeling a little aggrieved that under Blair we must have only had “some of the talents” or even worse, perhaps “none of the talents”?! Brown was certainly excited to be in charge, and obviously felt that his team selection was superior to that of his successor – he had removed half of Blair’s team and moved most of the others to new roles, but critically, was still drawing on the same rather tired talent pool.
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In today’s world, business transformation has come to mean more than just the alignment of business strategy and vision with its People, Processes and Technology.  It means a focus on People more than ever before – to the point that HR has suddenly been thrust into the central, strategic position that it has coveted for what seems like decades!  Read full post

This is a question we discuss when talking with HR and recruitment leaders. Most organisations have an idea, but to get a specific figure usually requires painful analysis of agency invoices, frequently squirreled away in obscure places.

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Recently during fashion week in London, a group introduced a fabric that can be sprayed onto skin and other surfaces to make clothes.

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