Business Issue

A premier worldwide financial services provider was experiencing tremendous growth. The business had seen a 180% employee population increase within a 3-year period and a future strategy increased the need for understanding scenarios for workforce planning.

The shift from a more globalized talent management approach towards a more localized management of resources complicated strategy execution. HR leadership needed to effectively forecast global workforce requirements while standing up local capacity to scenario plan as business needs and environmental trends shifted. The company’s talent management strategy and execution needed to be aligned with its business strategy. The company needed to develop a global workforce strategy that could be executed locally by HR teams in each market.

Approach

In order to address the increasing demand for global and local alignment, our client needed to expand its workforce. Our team partnered with corporate HR, local HR business partners, and leaders of business units to conduct three workforce planning pilots.

The first pilot was aimed at the rapid expansion of capability and resources for a strategic business line. The second pilot was focused on cadenced growth of core services centered in one major country. The third pilot assessed the impact of immigration trends for visa-holding employees in the United States. Through these pilots, we identified differentiating and core capabilities required from the businesses in order to achieve their strategy. We also assessed environmental forces that would impact their future capabilities and the workforce required.

Finally, we designed a workforce planning model to inventory the current state, test alternative growth scenarios, and estimate workforce gaps for each business unit. From there, we developed a modular Workforce Planning Guidebook to provide knowledge transfer of the key steps for effective workforce planning across multiple businesses within the company.

Business Impact

Our collaboration identified quantifiable opportunities for the decrease in contingent workforce spending by 45% while remaining neutral in cost and increasing workforce capacity. We also identified capability transitions and operating model modifications to shift more repeatable work into Globally Corporate functions, which would reduce the need for an expanded workforce in various segments of the business. Finally, we surfaced risk areas such as student visa programs and competition of tech talent that should be considered for rethinking recruiting strategy and employee value proposition.