Talent Centric
Being creative about recognition,
rewards and creating talent pools Investing in long-term workforce
planning as the key to sustainability
Peter Padua Michael Brennan
Europe & EMEA Talent Acquisition
Leader, Verifone Head of Resourcing, BAE Systems,
Programmes & Support
Globalisation around the payments technology
space is one of the biggest challenges we are
currently facing at Verifone. We’re no longer
purely operating in the same geographies as
our traditional competitors, but are having to
monitor and compete with new and disruptive
technology ‘start-ups’ in a wide variety
of markets.
To counter this, we aim to attract and retain
the best talent, and have effective succession
plans in place. This involves creating
sophisticated recognition and rewards
programmes, developing career pathways
and carrying out regular compensation
benchmarking to ensure we retain our
competitive edge.
We remain committed to retaining and
developing our best talent despite the complex
political and economic challenges across the global
economy. Verifone is also exploring deepening
our cross-border talent pools around a range
of technical and broader job families, to ensure
we have the right talent to meet and exceed our
clients’ needs. Looking to the future is essential for a company
such as BAE Systems, which delivers design,
manufacture and through-life support services to
military and security customers around the globe. In
our long-term, major-programme environment, it’s
vital to understand the business’ future workforce
requirements, so we can develop strategies to
protect and sustain critical skills.
We see strategic workforce planning as the key
to long-term sustainability and dedicate time to it.
This process is in line with industry best practice and
heavily linked to business strategy, taking a scenario-
based approach.
It allows our businesses to evaluate the potential
impact that market, technology and product
shifts may have on future skills and workforce
requirements, and to analyse the level of internal
and external threat. From this, strategic actions
and investments can be taken to develop a
talent pipeline.
Our evidence-based approach incorporates
developing educational, industry and
government partnerships; succession planning;
recruitment; learning and development; skills
development; knowledge management; and
organisational development.
For example in our air sector, we recognised
external market shifts around the demand and
supply of aircraft maintenance technicians,
particularly in the Middle-East. This led to
expanding our technician training facilities in the
region. In the UK, our submarines business has put
in place an integrated plan for the development
and retention of business-critical nuclear
engineering skills.
We operate in a competitive environment for
skills, and strategic workforce planning is not “nice
to have”, but essential.
“We need to look at talent pools
outside our traditional
countries and be creative about
how we attract people”
Issue 1 - 2017
21