Experts discuss challenges and planning for future business success

Planning for the future at a company can be difficult as potential future headwinds need to be weighed up. It makes it especially difficult when we don’t know what these issues could be.

HR Leader, in partnership with HiBob, hosted “How HR can lead during economic uncertainty”. The webcast heard from Damien Andreasean, regional senior vice-president at HiBob, and Meredith Crowe, interim senior vice-president for global people and culture at Telix Pharmaceuticals.

Here, we recap some of the questions answered on the webcast that spoke to issues affecting Australian businesses and how HR and other decision-makers can properly prepare for them.

HR Leader: “What issues and challenges have you seen come up this year?”

Damien Andreasen: “We’re similar to most businesses, and uncertainty is the word at the moment. It’s difficult to know what’s happening with the economy. There are good indicators, there are bad indicators, there are lots of media around at the moment that’s quite negative, and I think that’s causing a little bit of anxiety and a lot of people to re-evaluate their business model, their teams, their plans.”

He continued: “We’re a tech company and the global tech market; we all know what’s been happening over the past couple of months, but it’s definitely a softening of the market, and we’re finding the need to adapt as I think most businesses are right now, is understanding how do we thrive in the current marketing conditions, what are the needs of our customer bases, and how do we serve them best?”

“There’s a continuing demand for systems and more sophisticated tools that can help them to prepare and the ability to be able to be agile, to plan, to know the numbers, to forecast all the elements that you need to do with your people to determine labour costs, how you’re going to reach your goals, they’ve become really, really top of mind.”

HR Leader: “How would you sum up where workforce planning is at this stage of 2023, and how can such planning help reinforce businesses during times of crisis?”

Meredith Crowe: “Agility is key. That scenario planning, agility and data are really important. One of the worst things that can happen, and it does happen, is when you do a whole bunch of scenario plans and then none of them is actually where you end up landing because something completely different has happened than you were even able to get ahead of.”

“Having those inputs to know what you think you could be aiming for in the various situations is really important. But I think around with that agility piece, I think the broad-brush kind of winds that you can get on the table with workforce planning is making sure you’ve still got those key practices that really hold water and have held water over many years,” explained Ms Crowe.

“There are always some really, really key pivot roles within the company that are sort of critical to success. And I think really understanding what those are is a really important part of that workforce planning … I think hiring and promoting based on future skills as much as we can, and those skills are shifting as more and more of our work is automated and more is diversified or outsourced.”

Ms Crowe added: “Investing in people who have that knowledge and have that longevity to succeed with you and to the future as a business. And then really understanding what makes people stay, where you’ve got good people who are staying and who maintain their energy and enthusiasm over a long period of time. What is it about the company that is lining up with their needs and their experience to mean that both parties are having a good time as part of that relationship?”

This webcast, in partnership with HiBob, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation on 28 February can be found here.