CATALYST Issue 1 | Page 21

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