How to Segment Your Workforce, Identify Critical Roles and More.....

Just as a marketer segments or stratifies their clients, products and services according to their value, the same principles should apply to segmenting the workforce. Not everyone, or more specifically the roles that they occupy, is equal! Not all employees in those various roles possess knowledge and skills of equal strategic importance. They differ in their potential to add value and in what they expect from work. Employment Value Propositions (EVPs), or the “deal”, will therefore vary according to the importance of the role in question.

Moreover, employees now come in all shapes and sizes! Many organizations use a variety of employment modes to allocate work, including the simultaneous use of internalized (e.g., permanents), and externalized employment (e.g., contractors, labor hire) modes. Having a workforce that is accessible, skilled, motivated and efficiently deployed will increasingly be a key differentiator of business performance and financial success. In today’s volatile environment, organisations therefore want to be able to “have their cake and eat it”. They are aiming for a workforce configuration that maximizes flexibility (and minimizes risk), maximizes commitment and performance of their people, whilst at the same time, developing and retaining valuable skills

Given this complexity, a “one size fits all” approach to people management is a recipe for mediocrity. Such a lack of insight is likely to result in muddled, inconsistent and poor people decisions. The choice of a suitable workforce or role segmentation model is fundamental to addressing the complexities and people management challenges of the 21st century workplace. For example, it should underpin the development of human capital strategy and people management decisions including:
outsourcing, buying people ready-made or developing people from within (i.e., investments in training and development);
determining critical roles;
differentiated approaches to attraction, engagement and retention (including EVPs) for various roles; and
the reporting of human capital data (e.g., cost of turnover, engagement).

Typically, most organisations segment their workforce on a job level or organisational level basis but this approach is limited and potentially flawed! There is a need to think about roles in new ways relative to the business. It is contended that the workforce (or more specifically various roles in the organisation), should best be segmented on a skills basis – both skills uniqueness and skills value.

HR Directors, HR Managers, Workforce Planners, OD Professionals

• the limitations of traditional approaches to segmenting the workforce
• a skills’ based approach to segmenting the workforce including two dimensions of skills
• value and uniqueness
• identifying four role classifications (including critical roles) and their EVPs

• White paper entitled: Beyond Workforce Planning – Why Your Organization Now Needs a Human Capital Strategic Plan - The Missing Link in Workforce /Talent Management
• WRDI Institute Web Site: www.wrdi-institute.com Click here
• Beames, C. L. (2012). Transforming organizational human capital: Emerging stronger from the GFC and beyond (3rd edition). BookPOD: Melbourne.

		Colin Beames WRDI Institute View Profile