Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP)
Workforce planning not responding to strategic talent gaps
Situation
- Nuclear power station still under construction with four nuclear reactors planned to start operation successively over a period of four years
- New nuclear build projects are ‘mega-projects’ in the same category with large dams or space exploration according to cost and complexity, which require more rigorous financial assessments due to their high uncertainty and risk
- The cost of building new nuclear power plants is on average nearly 20% higher than expected due to delays
- Most companies considering construction of new nuclear power plants focus on the initial construction costs (i.e. cost/installed kw, expected to be a several Billion USD), however total labor costs may be a much larger value.
- Existing construction and commissioning workforce plan required calibration for the project pace, enhanced granularity at the job level with extended horizon to five years
Challenge
- New nuclear build comes with a significant list of challenges during the construction and peaking at the commissioning phase
- Workforce is one of the big-ticket items in operational readiness for the commissioning of the nuclear plant and it can lead to delays that will result in deferral of cash flows and potential additional capital expenditure, which would significantly pressure financial metrics
- Existing workforce planning was not responding to strategic talent gaps resulting in a potential delay causing talent shortages and/or workforce misalignment (over hiring)
- Organization required broader consensus on the approach and methodology to ensure buy-in across the organizational levels, as well as enterprise level SWP technology to ensure a single source of truth
Action
- The CEO sponsored and initiated establishment of the High Impact Team (HIT) mandated with development of the 5-year SWP and overarching SWP approach that will be institutionalized and integrated within business planning, HR management and corporate performance management processes
- Agile Dynamics provided subject matter expertise and led team mobilization, setup of the project office and establishment of corresponding policies, procedures & governance creating a feedback loop to Business Strategy. This was complimented by series of training workshops to align the executive team and develop operational capabilities among internal staff
- Kickoff was followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the Business Strategy and Target Operating Model (TOM) and value chain. After defining business scenarios and critical jobs we ensured alignment of the business demand drivers with corporate performance indicators, financial metrics (NPV) and project schedule. All this was put in the context of the external market evaluation to account for global nuclear industry workforce trends
- Workforce supply has been evaluated by using cutting edge workforce modeling based on ‘Markov Chains’ analysis, Workforce Dynamics Analysis and competency-based career progression. Workforce demand has been defined by using workforce ratios, internal and external benchmarking, accounting for the ‘Future of Work’ – tech impact and core workforce sizing by developing an algorithm to estimate required construction and commissioning man-days based on the process/workload analysis
- Finally, Gap/Risk Analysis was used to identify, size and scope talent gaps we had to workout with workforce modeling to evaluate feasibility, strategy & logistics while accounting for workforce quantity, quality and location to produce a 5-year workforce plan
Result
- Fully trained operational in-house SWP team running a SWP on MicroStrategy BI platform
- Development and approval of SWP policies, procedures & governance
- 5-year SWP accounting for workforce quantity, and location at the job level
- Enabled HR to plan more effectively to close talent gaps avoiding workforce related commissioning delays with estimated savings in ~USD 100m+ range