The CEO and senior leadership team are the driving force around the people agenda across organisations. However, there is increasing Board-level focus on skills, technology and productivity given the linkages between those areas and the overall strategy. In times like these, Chairs and non-executive directors need to be asking the right questions.
Criticaleye’s recent Chair and NED Retreat, held in Partnership with
Accenture, provided fertile ground for this conversation on the role of the Board in ensuring the people strategy is harnessed to the broader business strategy.
Lucinda Charles-Jones is a NED at British banking company Virgin Money and entertainment business The Rank Group – both London-listed – and is also a non-executive Board member of Business in the Community – a not-for-profit responsible business network. She told attendees: “Across all the three Boards that I sit on there is significant attention on the people agenda. At the most basic level, it is a fundamental part of our duties as Board directors. In making sure that the organisation is delivering long-term, sustainable success, we have to establish the purpose, the strategy and the values, but specifically, we also have to ensure that culture is aligned and that the business has the necessary resources and leadership. So, it's hard coded into our job spec as non-execs.”
There has also been a tendency in the past for the people agenda to be sidelined in some Boardroom discussions and only brought in at the end of meetings, almost as an appendix.
Athalie Williams, who is currently CHRO at BT and was previously CPO at global mining giant BHP, has, however, witnessed a shift away from this in recent times. “I've been in the CHRO role around a top table for more than ten years now, and the questions I'm getting from Boards are changing,” she said.
“Five or ten years ago, I would regularly present on engagement, HR matters and people solutions, but it was almost always done separately to the business and operational or strategy updates. I'm really seeing those two areas come together now.”
There was general agreement amongst leaders present at the Retreat that a commercially integrated approach to people and performance will stand a business in far better stead, and that this mindset should be reinforced by the Board. As
Jonathan Keane, Strategy & Consulting Lead, UKIA & Global Luminary Network Lead at Accenture put it: “Human ingenuity is pivotal to the success of any business. We shouldn’t therefore be scheduling ‘people’ items to be last on any meeting agenda.”
Workforce of the Future
Businesses are today standing at a crossroads in relation to digital transformation and what the implications of ever greater automation will be on the workforce. BT, for example, will reduce its headcount by up to 50,000 by 2030. “We're making some quite challenging decisions around jobs and the size and shape of the organisation, but it's about far more than just reducing the size of our existing workforce and assuming we're going to be future fit,” said Athalie.
“It's also thinking about, ‘What are the investments we need to make in people? Who do we need to bring in? Where are we going to get those skills from? And how do we re-skill?”
The pertinence of these questions around digital skills and training are underlined by recent research referenced by Jonathan: “Based on Accenture research, 62 percent of today’s workforce will need reskilling to take full advantage of what’s to come from AI and Gen AI.”
In order to execute this fundamental transformation, it’ll be vital to have a clear vision for people, talent and culture. “Boards play a critical role in providing that clarity and in reducing overall complexity,” Jonathan said.
Bridging that gap between the workforce of the present day and the future is undoubtedly a tall ask.
Jamie Wilson, Managing Director, Group Services at Criticaleye, said: “Having a Board that prioritises the people agenda can be a real game changer for leadership teams looking at workforce transformation, particularly as novel technologies continue to reshape business models.”
If Boards can get this right, it will provide a strong foundation for improved business performance, as attested to by
Lucinda: “I've always believed throughout my career that great Boards and great management teams take the people agenda and, incidentally also the customer agenda, really seriously and that is the way that you deliver financial success and shareholder returns.”
Jacob Ambrose Willson, Senior Editor, Criticaleye
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