Future-fit business needs a future-ready workforce

There’s a new workforce in town. Your employees demand flexibility, cutting-edge technology, and to be engaged at all levels. Though these needs have been highlighted in the wake of the pandemic, the need to transform the workforce in line with demographic changes, shifting expectations and widening skills gaps, has been in the wings for a long time.

The global pandemic simply accelerated the demand for change, as most companies were forced to shift, essentially overnight, to a remote work culture.

And as the new became the every-day, leaders realized that true, future-fit transformation was needed for the workforce to thrive. This isn’t just about providing a laptop and screen, workforce transformation is expected to increasingly be about data, insights, matching skills to tasks rather than people to jobs, going beyond the high performers to fill talent gaps, diversifying talent and enabling technology to create a more empowering and engaging working environment. It’s forward thinking and inclusive, not status quo and same-old, same-old.

So in essence, the pandemic showed that digital and functional HR transformation isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. It is time to rip up the old playbook, and rethink, reset.

Robert Bolton, Global HR Center of Excellence leader at KPMG explains:

“Reinventing the workforce in order to deliver more flexibility, is one of the greatest priorities – and challenges – for global enterprises.”

“Those who start building their workforce of the future can achieve competitive advantage over those merely following what others are doing. There is first mover advantage if workforce transformation is aligned to the digital transformation of the enterprise.”

But as leaders know, any change poses challenges. For example, how do you engage staff in, and after, your digital transformation? How do you value and retain people in periods of flux?

“There is disruption in the workforce, whether it is having to redeploy employees or making sure that you are rewarding and retaining key employees,” says Phil Mitchell, Powered Enterprise HR lead partner at KPMG in the UK.

“While it’s great to be more cost effective, it is also important to get it right, especially with a badly disrupted workforce. The question also is, how do you effectively engage with talent when they’re working virtually every day?”

This is why the time is right to transform the HR function – to facilitate, support, and drive the change. The function should modernize, digitize, and drive employee experience, in order to embrace a ‘total workforce approach’ where each and every person is valued and developed. By transforming with a focus on the future, a move that HR leaders know they need to take to avoid becoming irrelevant, they can be the true visionary architects of employee success, and therefore the backbone of the business.

As Robert Bolton outlines in KPMG’s The future of HR: Lessons from the Pathfinders 2021 report: “HR should take ownership to understand, and plan for, the whole workforce: permanent, contingent, gig, part-time, both for today and for the workforce of the future.”

This transformation requires a comprehensive process where technology is key.

By integrating HR services in the cloud, your business can achieve:

• A transformation of the employee experience that supports a positive customer experience
• Immediate access to leading practices, processes and HR service delivery models
• Technology-enabled efficiencies and insight
• A guided process with an array of HR assets and accelerators

But the reality is you cannot achieve effective HR transformation through basic technology implementation alone.

KPMG Powered Enterprise | HR (Powered HR) is designed to support your organization and change the way people work. The KPMG Target Operating Model (TOM) within the solution provides six key pillars to underpin your success: process, people, service delivery model, technology, performance insights and data, and governance. Focusing on each of these vital pillars is key to securing a strategic transformation to the cloud and creating a functional HR experience that fully enables its workforce.

KPMG professionals’ know-how can help you improve the employee experience and better manage talent through market leading human capital management and onboarding, and help drive efficiencies across the HR process.

KPMG teams understand the human factors involved in business transformation. They can help inspire your people to embrace change, as you align your workforce transformation with industry disruption. And can bring preconfigured cloud solutions (available on leading HR platforms), embedded with years of leading practice and enhanced with automation.

If you can bring these threads together, the post-pandemic world looks bright for HR and your workforce – and can future-proof your business and bring true, tangible value.

Spectris provides customers with expert insight through its advanced instruments and test equipment, combined with software and services, delivering value to many of the world’s most demanding industrial applications. With the help of Powered HR, it was able to deliver real-time insights on people, costs and organization, enabling better informed decisions across its 12 operating companies.

KPMG in the UK achieved this by establishing consistent core HR and performance processes globally. Complexity was stripped out and old disparate technology was replaced with a future-state operating model and technology implementation – KPMG Powered Enterprise | HR enabled by Workday cloud ERP.

Spectris employees worldwide now use the new platform and feel part of a connected organization.

The first wave of this ambitious transformation saw the launch of over 79 global processes, covering HCM, absence, compensation and performance, with 34 integrations and 76 technical reports connecting Workday to the wider enterprise. A second wave will encompass recruitment, reward, talent, time, benefits and payroll. Further standardization can dramatically improve HR efficiency and allow Spectris to capitalize on operational improvements across the businesses.

Read more about KPMG Powered Enterprise to find out how your business can transform today and other client digital transformation success stories.

Learn about some of the benefits you can experience through digital adoption and transformation.