[Music] Hello everyone, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Um, thank you very much for joining this exciting conversation. It is my early evening, so I'm just back in the UK. I'm Mike HS, I'm Pearson's president of work for skills division, which is a new division we created in the middle of last year to really focus uh the company on the priorities for Learning and upskilling and development in the workforce market, and we're really focused on helping individuals prepare for the changing needs of the global Workforce and helping companies to do the same thing. We're exploring innovative ways to use data research and AI to determine the future of work while providing learning opportunities and administering credentials, including through uh most recent acquisition, through collaboration across all of the organizations within this division, but also across Pearson and our partners outside of the company. We can help individuals uh progress from start to finish through their education and career journey and help businesses identify their work Force needs while supporting all of them through to

realizing the value and mapping the path uh through their careers that's right for them. We're very excited about the future and long-term impact of the acquisition that we made last year, fathom in particular the technology and capabilities they have for building and retaining uh High performing Workforce. So today's conversation we'll share more about how fathom and the Cleveland Clinic have been working together to use this technology uh for strategic workforce planning to address the healthcare industry's current challenges, and the insights shared today can be applied to any business model really and any industry. So we hope you leave today's discussion with ideas about the strategies that you can use to implement to keep your Workforce ahead of the curve and thriving in this incredibly competitive and hot Talent market. So thanks very much for joining us, and I'll now hand you over to today's moderator, lety gaser, fathom's research and insights lead in the United States. Thanks very much. Thank you so much, Mike, and thank you everyone for joining.

In the past few months, we have received a large number of questions around how leading organizations are practicing strategic workforce planning. So, we decided to put together today's webinar to meet with one of the most influential voices in the workforce planning community, AJ Herman. AJ is the executive director of Strategic Workforce Planning at the Cleveland Clinic. In his role, AJ is responsible for designing and implementing a global workforce planning strategy. Prior to joining the clinic, he served as head of people analytics at Nestle USA and as a consultant with BCG, where he focused on workforce and organizational strategy for multiple global companies. Additionally, AJ served for 10 years in the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a presidential daily briefer during the Arab Spring, for which he earned the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation. Wow, very impressive, AJ. Thank you for joining us today. So, to kick off the conversation, I find it very interesting that you were hired by Cleveland Clinic to start the Strategic Workforce Planning practice from scratch and also the team from zero. I think that

I have two questions to get started. The first time is: why did Cleveland Clinic decide to start a workforce planning practice, and second, why now? Sure, Cleveland Clinic is a very data-driven organization, as a lot of healthcare organizations are, especially providers, and I think they saw the writing on the wall even before the pandemic that the talent market was going to be a generational challenge for healthcare. The supply and demand numbers do not add up, they do not equal out, especially if you look into the future. I have the benefit of some very visionary leaders who wanted to go big and wanted to do things the right way. Cleveland Clinic, being who we are, we like to be the best at what we do. They also had the vision to say, Let's tap someone who has done this for a different industry and who has looked at this a different way and might bring an outside perspective. So they purposefully went outside of healthcare, hired me from the consumer products industry to come in and pitch a program from scratch as you

mentioned that would do things the best way we possibly could because they realized the scale of the challenge that was confronting us. So I think they also smartly realized that the scale of the solution would have to be bigger than other organizations have done in the past, where it's been perhaps a side project or it's been bolted on to existing programs, and that that had mixed results. And they wanted to see what would happen if we just designed the best one in healthcare and made it happen. So that's what we did. That's fantastic, AJ. And I think it's very unique because Healthcare is, I think, one of the most rapidly changing Industries, and I think that the covid pandemic acted as this big magnifying glass, placing a spotlight on very particular Workforce challenges. I'd love to hear from your perspective what are the biggest challenges that the talent Market is facing as a whole. One thing that we say to our internal customers throughout the clinic is that the pandemic exacerbated the talent

Market Challenge and made it impossible to ignore but it did not create it. This is a if you look back on the just two metrics of how many people are looking for jobs and how many jobs are available. Those two numbers have been getting closer and closer for about 20 years to the point where they crossed each other during the pandemic, meaning that there are more jobs than there are people looking for jobs. It's the first time in most of our metrics that has ever happened, but it's been going on for a while. So our thought is if the pandemic did not create this, the cessation of the pandemic will therefore not solve this. This is more about generations and demographics who are entering and leaving the workforce in ways that we didn't expect. Maybe we should have expected it, but across Industries we didn't see it coming that there are fewer people entering the workforce, Young Folks than we expected. They're going in different directions, staying in school longer, not joining the traditional Workforce, and we have a

retirement boom coming as Baby Boomers will all be eligible for retirement by 2030. That's what we're dealing with, and that's the reason why the clinic decided that we needed to go big. Because this is not something that will self-correct, we don't think exactly. And I think that's why when we talk about workforce planning, we should also talk about technology to think about potential solutions. Let's talk a bit about workforce planning and technology adoption across different industries. The other day, we were talking about how over the past 20 years, healthcare has been the last in terms of productivity gains. How does this relate to tech adoption? And it would be great if you could also share a bit from your perspective being part of Nestle in the past. Sure, yes. Healthcare has not realized some of the technology efficiencies that other industries have over the past 20 years. There's probably some very good reasons for that, namely that we are a culture focused on obsessed with quality.

patient care and it's still a model that the best patient care comes from talented, empathetic, and experienced caregivers. Human caregivers. So there, I think there's been a reluctance to bring technology into the clinical space in ways that the patient can see or perceive. And that, I want to, I wouldn't say that's held health care back, but it has probably resulted in a little bit of hesitancy over time for good reasons, as I said, to bring technology into the equation. However, if you look at those trends that I mentioned in terms of cross Industries, which industry is hurting the worst from the supply Talent Supply, uh, challenge, it is Healthcare, Far and Away. There is, I think the last BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics report said that you need four, four to five health care job postings for every one applicant. That is Crisis level Talent Market data. So, uh, we don't have the choice anymore to ignore how technology can build capacity for us. We have to look at that integrated. It doesn't mean

that we don't pull the traditional levers of strategic workforce planning. We still have to get smarter of how we recruit, how we build a pipeline of talent. There are challenges that healthcare experiences with training new folks. There are not enough schools' capacity to create enough nurses, enough Proctors to teach those nurses, for example. So what we do is we look first at what are the traditional we can pull in terms of recruiting proactive sourcing, skill-based hiring. What are the things we can do to bring non-traditional diverse folks into our workforce who have the potential to do great things. We just haven't looked at them before. That's the first lever. The second is how do we keep more of our people. Retention is something that everyone needs to be a key, a key objective of every leader should be retention of quality folks these days. How do we upskill, how do we cross train to build more capacity from within. But I'll tell you even if an organization does those two things perfectly and invests tremendous

resources in those things. They probably still will not be able to keep up with demand for humans for new talent, especially in healthcare. We are also the industry that is growing the fastest. Demand for caregivers and healthcare providers is only going up across the United States and across the world. So we then have to look at how we repurpose tasks. We need to take roles and redesign them, take them down to the studs, and challenge long-held notions, long-held notions about should this person be doing this task, could it be done by another person, could it be done by another role, and what is the role crucially that technology can bring to that role. Technology is a capacity. We are looking at the clinic at how um both automation and human augmentation can be a game changer for our caregivers. And that is there's a lot of misunderstanding in most industries about what automation is. It's like, oh, there's going to be artificial intelligence everywhere, and there'll be robots in my workspace, and so we do a

lot of Education that you use automation every day. You use human augmentation every day. When it's done well, it just makes your life easier, makes it simpler. So we're trying to bring that into the administrative spaces of the clinic. But then I also think we need to take a hard look at how that goes into the clinical as well. Moving on from Healthcare, it's a little bit not easier but more intuitive if you run a warehouse, a supply chain automation is more ingrained in those processes because it's more like moving items or data from point A to point B. That is easier to Inuit it. But if you have an organization like a consulting firm or health care or something where it's all about the secret sauce of human beings and their brains, there still is a role for human augmentation and automation. You just have to be really well informed about where it can fit in exactly. I love the War. I think that's a key to really understand how tasks can be performed or enhanced by technology and also having that future.

mind that leadership to embrace the possibilities of technology. I remember in a previous conversation, we were discussing the relevance of this future-minded leadership. Could you please expand on why we should plan for the future? It sounds obvious, but I think it's very relevant in the workforce planning context. And also, how a strategic workforce planning help. I think if I have a prediction, it's that several years from now, strategic workforce planning groups will be co-branded as the future of work groups. I don't see much distinction between those two disciplines. Future of work is a little academic. It's nice articles that we read, but you have to take discernible plans against the future of work, and that's where I think strategic workforce planning really fits in. Out of necessity, it has evolved from thinking about staffing levels and how we maybe do some proactive hiring and maybe upskill some people. Those mayes are all gone. Out of necessity now, it's we have to survive because we don't have enough folks to grow or we don't have

enough folks to continue operating, so we have to think about the future. I've spent a lot of time in my career trying to forecast the future for customers, and if there's one takeaway I have, it's that there is no data on the future. There is no future data; there is only present and past data. So what we can do is we can forecast, we can show you what trajectory we are on in terms of where roles are going, where data is going, but there is a missing piece, decision-making, and picking your spot, creating a strategy. Strategy is decision-making to me; it's prioritization. So obviously we work with Fathom to have an idea of what emerging technology is coming, how it could affect our roles, what opportunities we have, but then leadership needs to pick. They need to pick a spot of what organization do we want to be, what do we want to be the best at, in what areas do we want to. I heard a phrase recently that was, uh, purposefully outcompete. Where do we

pick our spots where we say we're gonna out-compete in that area. If I identify a skill or a technology or a task I want to be the best at it, and then I create a strategy around it, that is the decision-making that leaders need to have in this realm. If you are reacting to your current problems, your current workforce issues, in my mind, you're swinging at a pitch that's already in the catches and you because these things take time. You've probably heard that wait till this gets automated as if it just happens, as if it's a passive act, or a wand comes down and automates something. No, it's a very proactive, very deliberate, very resource-intensive process. So we look two to three years in our strategic workforce planning with fathom. We go beyond that five years for technology because it takes that much time to identify, integrate, select, and do change management for new technology. So leaders, it's very difficult for leaders to look beyond today's problems, but if they don't, then they'll always have today's.

problems, they'll be in crisis mode forever, and that's our value proposition that we have at the clinic, which is help us think about tomorrow, help us plan for tomorrow, so that your tomorrow becomes less chaotic. Yeah, makes total sense. And talking about FAOM, what are some of the insights that have surprised you the most, if you can share probably a few examples? Sure. As a non-tech, my background is not automation or human augmentation, so to see some of the connections that were unintuitive to me across my Workforce Cleveland Clinic is 70-75,000 employees all over. So to see the impact of a simple technology that is emerging and will be ready very soon, seeing the breadth and depth of the impact in terms of Unleashed capacity potential cost savings, but to us, we're not cost savings is not what drives us, it's about capacity, human capacity, right now. We want to free up people to care for more patients, to see the connections as well. What I mean by that is Tech identifying Technologies now.

that I a human brain would not have been able to tell me that there are 25,000 people in my organization that do a particular task, and that that particular task can go from being two hours of their week to 10 minutes of their week. It doesn't take a lot of math to realize that's some incredible opportunity. So it's those insights that allow decision making. If we say, Wow, that's it's a robotic process automation or it's a machine reading technology, it puts our organization in the position of, We pursue our new technology, we find the vendors, we pick our spots. I think so often, particularly in the Human Resources function, we respond to vendors who come to us and say, Hey, we have something new that you need, and a lot of times it's great, but it's passive. What the insights to fathom provide allows the organization to say, No, we know our strategy. This unlocks a lot of capacity for us. Let's go find who does this the best. It puts you in the

driver's seat. Yeah, and that's incredibly powerful. So I see that we already have a few questions on the chat, but before reading the questions, I really need to acknowledge your very unique background in the intelligence industry. So I wanted to ask you, why workforce planning should not be limited to people who work in HR? Why workforce planning is for everyone? I love this question because to me it makes total sense, but I do get a lot of questioning looks when I say that to folks. Yes, strategic workforce planning usually sits in HR, sometimes it's in strategy offices, sometimes in other realms, but it shouldn't be limited to HR professionals. My, obviously, my background is intelligence and analytics. The, I've built a team, a large team at Cleveland Clinic, and out of folks I've hired, one HR careerist. They come from Finance, Enterprise analytics, continuous Improvement, supply chain. They come from as well. This is crucial because we're not doing Human Resources plan, we're doing enterprise-wide strategy and our unit of measurement. So it's people analytics, yes, but the types

of things that we're getting into go well beyond um just the human resources component. So, I always encourage organizations and leaders who are tasked with starting a program like this to go beyond HR. It's okay for HR to lead it, that's intuitive, but get yourself some Finance people, continuous Improvement is a great resource if you have it within your organization, to bring people in strategic planning, and some people with a business focus as well, who are focused on company outputs and Company deliverables, because that's crucial. When I hired my team, we did skills-based hiring because strategic workforce planning is relatively new, especially to healthcare. So, I picked three skills that I wanted everyone to have in various degrees. We hired based on that, and it's worked out tremendously well that we didn't go find folks who could speak HR, that's true. Yeah, I have met AJ's team, and they are all awesome, yeah, well done building that team AJ. Um, so we have a question in the chat, it is has faam brought capability in having robust insight into the supply.

of healthcare workers for the Cleveland market and Beyond Supply. So Supply, I wouldn't say that's the forte of fathom. We do use other vendors to think about what the talent market supply is, where they are, where they work, where they went to school. There are various places to find that Supply. I think where fathom plays in the space of your question is they help you find Supply that you already have internally within your Workforce. That's been an aisle to cross-reference the skills of your current job jobs to create the new jobs that you'll need to support technology build. But if you're looking external Market, no, that's probably a different data set. It's probably not a good news story, a place like Cleveland Clinic. If there's a healthcare worker in our areas, chances are they already work for us. So, we need to look beyond that. So, it's the next step after you look at the external Market, exactly. And talking about the internal supply, I think that's how that's sometimes for.

many of our clients, one of the big surprises, that they are trying to search for people in the outside market, and they already have them in-house. They just need to re-do some reskilling. Another question that we have is, how do I start my workforce planning from scratch? How do I do a fin to start from zero? It's been fun recently because I do get a lot of folks reaching out because we're so proactive and vocal, saying, how do I start this from scratch? And sometimes it's HR business partners who just have just dropped on their plate. Sometimes it's people analytics teams that were tasked with this, and sometimes it's folks who are just building it from scratch. I usually say, it's tough without knowing the organization that you're working with, but you cannot be the answer to everything. You cannot, you are not bringing fixes. Here's what I'll start with. People will be looking for fixes. What they're going to get is change. Fixing and changing are two different things. Fixes if you repair a

tire that's a fix, but changing is challenging assumptions, and it's things that will have to be carried forward. So, instead of fixing your tire, you're going to walk to work from now on, right? That's a fix versus a change, and I think a lot of leaders look to HR to fix things, but a fix only exists for that moment, and then you need to fix it again and again as things change. So, I'd say first get in the mindset that you are looking to change the way that you interact with your workforce and plan for your workforce, not fix things. It'll also allow you to look more farther out. The second thing that I'll say is don't rely only on your internal data. There are a lot of robust people analytics teams like we have here at the clinic and I had at Nestle, but if you only use your data, whether be clean or messy, whatever it be, you're still only telling yourself things you already learned, that you already know, and perhaps even, perhaps worse, you could be um

reinforcing assumptions about your workforce or about your processes that you can't break out of. So, as part of this program, I invested in external data, external analytics, fathom being one but not the only to challenge us to get new benchmarks, but to also shake us up a little bit that we don't have to think of things the same way. So my guidance would be: think about change, not fixing; think about external data, and then also get a broad swath of people from across your organization who know it well to get their input about what people planning should be, not just human resources. Absolutely, I really like this concept of challenging ideas with data because I have found that many times, that's the only way to really challenge ideas, and most of the time, is the most efficient, right? Um, question in the chat, as you were starting up your program, did you split your efforts in on developing overall strategy and knocking out low-hanging fruits, or focus on developing a strategy and getting buy-in before acting on anything? Good question.

little bit of both. We pitched the program after a few months of being here. This is the potential that we can have, this is what we can do, this is what we need to do. It started building it fast and then we just started planning. We started our first plan, planning. We call it an engagement, a planning engagement with our nursing Institute. Gosh, within two months of our first hire, just to start it out, just to figure it out because we could, you know, make an amazing program in Playbook at our desks that wouldn't survive the light of day with as much complexity as we have in an organization like this. So, I think we had some advantages there that I'm hoping folks on the call also have and that we don't have to convince people that this is important anymore. We don't have to convince our leaders that they need to think more long term about their workforces. The pandemic has given us that advantage in a sense. The flip side is it's also very

difficult to do anything about it right now because of the workforce. U Market leadership buy-in is uh crucial. In that, they need to know that you will be bringing them fundamental change, that you will be redesigning roles, that you will be asking them to um throw out some precedent, sometimes with good reason, and you'll be picking your spots. We'll also be giving them recommendations to stop doing things. When we do a planning engagement, we also want to include in that deliverable, here are the things that we should be focusing on to get the most out of our workforce and to prepare it for the future, and here are the things that, based on what we found, are not working right: retention programs, hiring programs, technology, so please stop doing them, um, because you're not getting what you need, and you need those resources to invest in this. Having that leadership buy-in is crucial, but we didn't wait. I wouldn't call it low-hanging fruit, but they, there were the things where we, we wanted to dig in.

immediately and just bring smart people into the room, and we went to where we had good relationships already organizationally, so we could say, All right, we're the new strategic workforce planning team. We are figuring this out as we go. We are growing, but we are here to help, so let's get started. Love it, this combination of being humble and hungry at the same time, fantastic. Um, question from Chad, how did you engage cross-functionally with clinical leaders, HR leaders, finance, and so on to GG by as you formed this team? Interesting. It's not easy. Uh, it's not easy. It takes a lot of work. Of the three skills that I picked to hire the team, the first skill I selected was Consulting skills, and I break that down into influence, storytelling, and like stakeholder buying, executive presence, and things like that. You need that. It's a crucial part. It's an underinvested part of strategic workforce planning. Do you know the data? Do you know the organization? Great, you can do strategic workforce planning, but it's a lot more.

than that, and it's so heavily involved in the consulting aspect of it. Even though we're internal, we do have similar, that's why we call them engagements. So, I would say telling the story of every presentation we have, we start with wire, and it's always the same things: the talent market, the pace of change, and the importance of our workforce and our strategy. But we also have very consciously decided the things that our stakeholders need to be involved in, things that they don't need to be involved in. We're transparent about that. Our planning engagement is five phases. Our stakeholders are only involved in two to three of them, and we tell them that. We say, Hey, we're gonna spend some time, we go back, we do our forecast, we're going to run some numbers, we're going to reach out to some external partners, we're going to have some insights, and we'll bring them back to you. But there's that old, I love this old saying, I think it's an African

proverb of if you want to go fast, go with few; if you want to go far, go with many people. We do a blend of that, but we're just transparent about it. We say we need to go fast during this phase, so we're going to go alone, but then we will circle back with you. But we're just very prioritized. We do not try to fix again. We don't fix every problem or every challenge of a workforce. We identify with our stakeholders across HR, Finance, the clinical side, the operational side, supply chain. We focus on picking the three to five actions that will have the biggest impact. We are not holistically looking at every single issue that there is with a workforce. And I'll also say, um, there are times when you start a strategic workforce plan. Um, I haven't had this issue much at Cleveland Clinic, but where a group is just not ready for strategic workforce planning. They've recently had a huge organizational change. They're going through a lot of stuff. They were just recently acquired or something like

that you need to plan based on stability. It's the same principle of automating based on stability. We use that here. If a team is going through so much flux, strategic workforce planning should hang back for a minute and let them settle, and then do the planning. Don't get caught up in discussions of culture or things like that where it's they're just not that team. Perhaps it's not ready to think about three years down the road. They need to clarify today. Thank you for that AJ. So what if I already have a workforce planning team and I am just realizing that they don't have the skills they should have? How would you suggest to upskill that team and support them in getting ready to do proper workforce planning? Yeah, that's a good question. Upskilling a strategic workforce plan is a mindset shift. First, look at the recommendations and the impact that you've had so far. Are you interrogated a little bit? Are you bringing recommendations that the leaders already had thought of? Are you repackaging things that the

organization has already done or are you giving recommendations and actions that are just way too big they're polanish they'll never happen you need to strike that balance I I like to encourage my team to always be bringing Data Insights and actions that our leaders had not thought because I I think in some early strategic workforce planning teams they rely on the leaders to tell them the future of their function they say hey chief marketing officer what's the future of marketing um um and that that's good for stakeholder management but a lot of times the chief marketing officer doesn't know and they'll tell you that for good reasons they are focused on today they're focusing on the the quarterly numbers and they also might consider that someone else's job to think about it's I I don't think about the the you know future uh of my role I'm the leader I I lead this function that's why you need external data that's why you need external insights but I would look at what you've

done previously and say, are we really challenging assumptions? Are we really revisiting things that we've said no to in the past? Because I'll tell you, a lot of what we're doing right now is collecting what have our leaders declined to do in the past that was a good idea at the wrong time. Because with this Talent market after the pandemic, the great resignation, all these things, some of those old ideas might be really good ideas now. So I would interrogate that and then say, okay, if we haven't been hitting the mark, if we haven't been making big enough change, challenging assumptions, redesigning roles from scratch, how could we do that? Are there skills that we need to do that project man continuous Improvement skills Sigma 6 more data do you need some data science where you can find Connections in your people analytics information that that are hidden or not inuitive? I would look at if you're hitting the mark, yes or no, and then if no, what skills should you bring in to be

able to do it yeah 100% agree. And we have a fantastic question in the chat around how has the leadership team responded to using more data and less anecdotal information. Yeah, it's a good question. Cleveland Clinic might be a little bit of an outlier that all of our executive leaders or most of them are Physicians and experienced nurses, so they are scientists in a sense. So they love the data. If anything, they want more data than I could ever. So that they are used to that. But other organizations are not. They focus on people. And this exists everywhere. People think about people. That's how we learn. That's why we read stories that teach us things. Stories about people. We don't, you know, read data in our, uh, time, at least maybe some of you people would fathom do, but I do. But you. It's the anecdotal instinct is deeply ingrained, especially within Human Resources, because we are so focused on people. My leadership team is well positioned to be data-focused. Not all are. This is part of that Consulting.

experience where you say yes, we did have that issue with AJ, and that is he left, and we need to hire a new person like him. But let's zoom out a little bit. You have 10,000 people in that role that AJ is filling. What I would suggest is a one punch, and I've done this before, whereas you present the data, then you present an illustrative story, anecdote that personalizes it, but it still appeals to the directional nature of the data. And if someone raises an exception because someone always will and say, hey, but I heard about somebody who did this and that, say, those are the Consulting skills, the issues that everybody deals with every day. Like that may be true, we'll look into that. But if we're looking at the organization as a whole, which we all should, leader, this is what the TR are telling us, absolutely. And we have one comment on the chat saying that yes, storytelling is super important. And I think that storytelling with data is a superpower.

to be fair, what would you recommend to those people that want to get better at storytelling, with or without data? That's the I've. There are many classes that I've been to and been a part of for storytelling with data. Some tricks that I like to use: I don't necessarily lead with data. Think about within your story what the right time is for the data. It might not be first. This is a little bit of that inductive versus deductive reasoning, and folks, depending on your organization, some organizations like show me the chart and stop talking, and some organizations are like they want to be warmed up to it a little bit. But I would suggest when you're thinking about storytelling, sometimes end with the data where you've proved the point. You've told the story first, and then you reinforce it with the data as your evidence. I not so much at the clinic, but in other places, I've started with an anecdote, started with a story to personalize it, and then the data is

the combo punch but when you're talking about the future this isn't easy it's not easy to get people thinking about the future because for various reasons they're all very deeply ingrained reasons people think that the future is going to happen to them and that we're along for the ride we need to be ready for the future if you hear these phrases like your Spider Sense should go up a little bit we shouldn't be ready for the future we should create the future we should determine what we want our future to be and invent it our CEO Dr mahalovich says this all the time invent our future um do we folks will rely on you to tell them what the future is and then get ready for it and I encourage you to tell the story more in terms of this is where we want to head as an organization this is how the future Trends allow us to do it this is how we can take advantage of the trends that are in the near future to become the

organization. We want to be. Don't be in the passenger seat of future planning. It's you don't want to be there, and you'll always be sort of wrong. If you try to predict the future, you'll always be a little bit wrong. And that accept it, and but focus on how you want the future to turn out most of the time. And this sounds very like Tech startups, but they do a good job with this. It's the people who the organizations who see the future coming but aren't beholden to it that that are the true leaders fantastic talking about inventing the future last question from the audience how are you planning for those roles jobs that will be transformed because of Technology. Yeah, this is crucial everyone who does strategic workforce planning should be thinking about this what I would like to think of is the skill cycle after you go through all those planning phases then what's the remaining skills that you have to build but then one of the skills that you don't need anymore or you might need fewer of we are not in a position.

in healthcare or at the clinic, where we want to reduce our workforce at all. Quite the opposite. So, and fathom is a very powerful tool to do this. Figure out the skills that are the remainder as you do this equation. What future skills do they lend themselves to? This was I think a learning that we had in a previous organization where I was doing this. Where we were able to identify that warehouse workers could be pretty good at automation. They could figure it out because they think of things in a way that's systematic, it's structured, and they deal with automation all the time and in their warehouses. They see it and they're used to it. They're not concerned by it. So we made that connection to say, great, if we automate warehouses, we're not getting rid of our warehouse workers. Our warehouse workers are going to run or they're going to build automation. Other places we've found that that's you need to, as all things proactively find those opportunities and take action on them now because that's the last thing you want us to learn to.

lose talented and committed people because a skill that they have they've invested their career in is not as needed as it was. Thank you so much AJ. I think that was, uh, very insightful for all of us. And with that, we have reached the end of today's conversation. I think that my key takeaway is that strategic workforce planning is more important than ever, and that the really good news is that now we have the tools that can help us see impact that we wouldn't have seen ahead of time otherwise. For instance, the tasks that can be enhanced or be made more productive using technology, something where faom can shed a lot of light. And now we can also see, for instance, which capabilities are becoming increasingly important over time. And when we take this type of data to inform the workforce plan, it is easier to rescale to help people fulfill their full potential. Thank you so much AJ for this very insightful conversation, uh, and if any of you that are watching this webinar want to learn more on workforce planning, how to determine which skills

or Technologies are important for your Workforce. Please see the information we have dropped on the chat. You can contact us by email. You can follow faom on LinkedIn. You can follow AJ on LinkedIn. And thank you everyone for coming to this session. We look forward to catching up with you all very soon. Thank you L. Thanks all. Thank you AJ.

How Cleveland Clinic’s Strategic Workforce Planning Keeps Them Ahead of the Curve

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