Future Proof
Martin Thomas
Head of Total
Workforce
Management,
Philips
Martin creates the total
workforce strategy for
Philips globally,
acquiring permanent,
contingent and
on-demand talent.
philips.co.uk
4
We’re developing
briefing sessions,
targeting the top
20 cost-centre
owners. Communication
policies, guidelines, webinars
and so on help the heads of
finance, the HR business
partners and the talent
acquisition teams. We have
a communications plan as
part of the whole change-
management programme.
The role of our managers must
move from being a manager
of people to a manager of
work, delivered by a varied
workforce. There are many
types of worker and work: full-
and part-time, permanent
and on short-term contracts,
consultants, contractors,
tasked-based delivery work,
cloud-based, remote, off-site
and international.
5
We’re building
a
demand-
management tool.
This models the
make-up of our workforce,
so we can present managers
with scenarios for how
they could implement
workforce strategy.
A simple scenario would
be that you are currently
made up of 20% contingent
workers: if you went up
to 30% or down to 10%,
what difference would
that make? You are largely
based in Eindhoven in the
Netherlands; what if you
were to move half your
workforce to Bangalore,
India? What if you were to
increase your headcount in
terms of graduate recruits?
Mirroring change in attraction
approaches
These changes have an impact on everything that we do
and our processes and systems must support them. For
example, attraction and acquisition approaches should
be consistent: people in our talent pool might work for
us as permanent employees and later on a flexible basis.
With flexible working, we have to make onboarding
processes as efficient as possible, particularly if people
are coming in for a short time. What happens if a worker
returns to us after a short period elsewhere, do they
have to repeat everything?
There is also the impact on benefits. Workforce
changes will have ramifications on our whole rewards
philosophy; for example, people don’t want to work in
10 different places for two years at a time and have a
pension in each place. We must allow people room to
move, perhaps building in more about self-learning and
self-directed learning, because that’s what many of the
younger generation are looking for.
Ultimately, if we don’t do all of this, we will not be
able to access the skills and capabilities to get our work
done. And if we don’t start thinking about it now, in
an evermore competitive market for talent, we’ll be
left behind.
Issue 2 - 2017
15