Bob Kustka, President of Fusion Factor
Bob Kustka is President of Fusion Factor, a workplace productivity consulting firm and Co-founder of Career Bound, a company that provides career coaching for recent college graduates. He is also the author of The Hire Ground – An Insider’s Guide to Finding a Career.
Previously, Bob was a Human Resource professional at The Gillette Company for over 25 years. During his career at Gillette, Bob has held numerous senior leadership Human Resource roles across many of Gillette’s subsidiaries including the Grooming, Oral B, Braun and Personal Care divisions. He has supported Commercial Operations, Manufacturing, Engineering, Research and Development and Information Technology. Bob has held assignments both in the U.S. and in Europe.
Bob has a B.S in Management from Boston College and an M.S in Training and Development from Lesley University. He has previously been adjunct faculty at Boston University, Babson College and Lesley University. Bob is a coach in the Babson College Leadership Development and Coaching Program and an instructor for the Society of Human Resource Management SPHR certification program.
I had the chance to sit down with Bob Kustka and pick his brain about Workforce Planning and ask what HR professionals should be planning for.
I asked, “Why is workforce planning so important for organizations today?”
Bob shared, “In any business you are in, whether you are designing products or services, you have to plan for buying materials way ahead of time OR you have to figure out what the market is going to need so you can remain profitable. Workforce Planning means you have to decide where you are going”
He explained that HR pros need to focus on these four areas:
1. Knowledge of your Business– HR pros have been gathering an understanding of the businesses they are in, in recent years- expansion geographically? Any acquisitions? People needs of company and/or merging companies- first priority- understand business and the strategy of the business
2. Composition of Your Workforce– Need to know numbers- what is your workforce made up? Primarily sales? Software engineers? Etc? Then drill down – understanding things like your workforce getting older, etc. Are they less educated with emerging technology? Do they want diversity to attract newer talent? Do you need to bolster your diversity? Figure it out and put into a written plan. Bob shared an example, “I supported engineering- 600 person group of engineers and scientists- did demographic analysis- there were takeover attempts and hiring freezes over 5 years- when I did analysis- found that there was not a pyramid- they had a diamond shape org-majority of talent was in the middle- aging- senior exp- no feeder pool at the bottom- it dramatically changed our approach-implemented new program to build our talent pipeline”
3. Data Analytics– made some progress but not enough- “Big Data”- the more you know about what’s going on in your workforce, the better you can measure it and build upon it and change it as necessary- we have always looked at turnover, time to fill, cost per hire, etc- revenue per employee- still important BUT also need to drill down, utilize technology and figure out who is most successful? where did they come from? right out of school? certain schools? where are the failures? am I assessing my recruiters? who are the best? what are their demographics? do they utilize technology? we can do this today in real time with technology. What about performance? How can I do that? use the HR platforms I have in place, HRIS and ATS Systems and LMS Systems and cross-correlating that data- look at the managers I hired over last 5 years- looked training I put them through and their evaluations-what do the analytics tell me? Tells me where I did a good job and where I can improve- in next 5 years, HR pros need to get versed in Data Analytics or have a DA person on their staff
4. Cohesive Strategy– The word “Stratagem” comes from the Greek language “plan for battle”-build your plan- what are the types of the people you are going to need? How will I model them? Use competency models- helpful with attracting talent, assessing talent and developing talent- diff per discipline is helpful and effective- have hired 64 people over a 7 year period at a company of 5,000- we hired a new wave of talent that helped lead us into a new technology that we would not have been able to with this plan- for many years, I was an avid scuba diver- enjoyed it- but one of my instructors said to me once- plan your dive and dive your plan-what we have in HR is a lack of planning many times- we end up, more often than not, reacting. What are the threats to my business? Some may be simple to identify- are we experiencing great turnover? are companies stealing my people? is our comp not at the right level? is technology changing and eliminating the need of our product.
I then asked Bob what he would say to HR pros who are trying to get buy in from the top. He shared, “Go in and make the business case- talk in #s- show them the associated costs of something like turnover-put it in real terms!”
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