Latest / Edan Haddock - Total Talent / Workforce Labs: Every Organisation Has a Boardroom. Very Few Have a Rehearsal Room.

Transcript

Workforce Labs: Every Organisation Has a Boardroom. Very Few Have a Rehearsal Room. · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're listening on the way to work, out walking the dog, sitting on a plane, or maybe you've got me playing through your headphones while you're trying to smash through your inbox.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, really honestly, thanks for spending a little time with me this week.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time listening, welcome.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little different.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are no guests, there are no sponsors, nobody's paid to be here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just me, one practitioner, still on the tools, still recruiting, still working with leaders.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And still making mistakes, still learning every single day.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then jumping behind the microphone every week to share those thoughts with you all.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's always been the point of this podcast.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not to pretend I've got the answers, but hopefully to ask a few questions that make us think a little differently.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode started exactly like that.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: With a question.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it started with a meaning.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before anyone gets defensive, this isn't about one meeting.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a bad meeting.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was a really productive meeting.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Good people, good dis good discussion, smart ideas, lots and lots of action items, you know the sort, right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: We we have those every week, we have those every day.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone leaves feeling like progress has been made.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember walking back to my desks afterwards thinking, we spend an awful lot of time talking about work, reviewing work, managing work, reporting on work, planning work, governance around work.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yet where do we actually invent work?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we experiment?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we challenge the assumptions we've all quietly accepted over the last twenty years?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we ask the really ridiculous questions?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that sound completely crazy at first.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Until, of course, six months later, everyone wishes they thought of them first, right?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that question stayed with me, and over the following weeks it kept popping back into my head.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I was in another meeting, every time we reimagined AI tooling, or every time I read another LinkedIn post predicting the future of talent, I kept coming back to exactly the same thought.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe organizations don't need another committee.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they need somewhere to rehearse.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you'll know I love my music.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've always loved music.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And not because it's perfect.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, quite the opposite.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: The best bands rarely get it right the first time.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Songs evolve, lyrics change, guitar riffs get rewritten, entire albums get thrown in the bin and started again.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: What the audience eventually hears is the finished product.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But nobody sees the rehearsal room.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody sees the experimentation.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody sees the arguments.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody sees the terrible ideas that eventually lead to the brilliant ones.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Innovation doesn't happen on stage.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It happens long before the lights come on.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when it hit me.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every organization has a boardroom.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Very few have a rehearsal room.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually stopped and wrote that down because I thought there's something in that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've become incredibly good at governance.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And don't get me wrong, governance matters.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Risk matters, compliance matters, accountability matters.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: None of those things are going away.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But governance exists to protect today.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who's designing tomorrow?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your own organization.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: How many meetings happen every week?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hundreds, thousands, executive meetings, leadership meetings, steering committees, project boards, transformation meetings, operational updates, risk forums, budget reviews, status meetings, meetings about meetings.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But now answer me this.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: How many of those meetings exist purely to explore the future?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not to approve it, not to budget for it, not to review it, but to explore it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: To ask what if?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because what if might just be the most underrated question in business?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: What if AI changes this role?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: What if we recruited completely differently?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: What if leadership looked different?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: What if jobs disappeared?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: What if entirely new ones emerged?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: What if we stopped organizing work the way we've always organized it?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're fascinating conversations.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But where do they happen?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not squeezed into the last five minutes out of an agenda.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not after everyone says, sorry, we're running out of time.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Innovation deserves better than that.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It deserves its own space.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to talk about today.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: A concept I'm calling the Workforce Lab.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before any of you jump on LinkedIn later today and tell me that somebody somewhere already uses that name, well, great, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't about owning a name.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's about introducing a way of thinking.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I genuinely believe that organizations are missing something.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not more technology, not another platform, not another framework.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: A capability.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: A capability to experiment, to prototype, to challenge, to test, to learn.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages an organization can have.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you why.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The world isn't changing every year anymore.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's changing every week.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the conversations we're having today that we weren't having two years ago.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Generative AI, agentic AI, digital employees, prompt engineering, AI literacy, skills-based organizations, human and AI collaboration.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: These weren't mainstream conversations.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're everywhere.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll ask you something, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: If the world of work is changing every single week, why do organizations still only rethink work once a year through planning cycles?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: We treat workforce planning like it's a budgeting exercise.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: We gather data, make assumptions, produce a document, present it, approve it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then we put it on the shelf until next year.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the world keeps moving.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, imagine a band rehearsing only once a year.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine recording one album, then refusing to write a song for twelve months.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's ridiculous.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yet that's often how we approach workforce strategy.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: We freeze our thinking.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then we wonder why we're always reacting instead of leading.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: For me, in our talent world and in the talent space, that's where a workforce lab comes in.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not another committee.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's the opposite of a committee.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Committees exist to make decisions.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Labs exist to ask questions.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Committees reduce uncertainty, whereas labs embrace it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: For example, committees will say, Here's the proposal.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: But labs will ask, what haven't we thought about yet?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge difference.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And really, I feel like our profession has become obsessed with certainty.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: We love practice, frameworks, templates, playbooks, benchmarks.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, they're useful until they stop us exploring.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's something I've learned over the years.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest breakthroughs rarely begin as best practice.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: They begin as somebody asking a question everybody else thought was a little strange.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those could be things like, what if I removed CVs?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: What if candidates interviewed us?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: What if AI handled administration?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Was crazy once?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: What if we measured potential differently?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: What if jobs weren't fixed and were more fluid?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of those ideas sounded unusual once, but now some of them are becoming reality.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not because somebody knew the answer, but because somebody created the space to ask the question.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think every organization needs a rehearsal room.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not somewhere to perform, but somewhere to practice.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: To test, to learn, to get things wrong.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because getting things wrong in a rehearsal room is better than getting them wrong in front of twenty thousand people.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly how I think organizations should approach the future of work.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if I've convinced you that organizations need a rehearsal room, what actually what what actually happens inside of it?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I said, this isn't another committee.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't another governance forum.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't another transformation office.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it definitely isn't another meeting where everybody spends 20 minutes deciding who's taking the minutes.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: A workforce lab has one purpose.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: To explore the workforce questions your organization hasn't answered yet.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not next year's questions, tomorrow's questions.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an important difference.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I don't think the workforce lab should own projects.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think it should own curiosity.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because projects eventually end, and curiosity shouldn't.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine somebody walks into the room and says, I've got an idea.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: The response shouldn't be, okay, go and write a business case, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's take it to the steering committee.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: It should be, let's test it.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, that's the culture I'd want.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Small experiments, low risk, fast learning.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: If it works, brilliant, scale it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't, fantastic, we've learned something.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Move on.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's not failure.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's progress.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the biggest mistakes organizations make is believing that innovation has to be expensive.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Innovation is often incredibly small.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's changing one interview question.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's trialing AI with one recruiter.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's redesigning one part of the onboarding experience.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's testing a different way of giving feedback.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Little experiments.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's how great ideas grow.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not because somebody had a million-dollar budget, but because someone was given permission to try.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I were building a workforce lab tomorrow, I'd probably start with three topics.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not 30, three.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: The first would be AI.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And before anyone rolls their eyes, because of course AI is everywhere, stay with me, please.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I actually think we've been asking the wrong question.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Most organizations ask, can AI make us faster and fair enough?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's a much bigger question.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: What work should humans stop doing?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're completely different conversations.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: If AI can schedule interviews, great.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: If AI can summarize notes, fantastic.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: If AI can draft job advertisements, even better.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't make recruiters less valuable.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: It makes human conversations more valuable.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course, suddenly recruiters spend less time on administration and more time advising, building relationships, coaching leaders, understanding capability, doing the work only humans can do.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the conversation I'd want inside a workforce lab.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not what tool should we buy?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what should good, great, in fact, human work look like in an AI-enabled organization?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's interesting.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: The second topic I'd explore, candidate experience.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because candidate experience is new, we've been talking about it for years, but because I think we've accidentally designed recruitment around organizational convenience, not candidate experience.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it a lot of these platforms and a lot of these processes.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We ask candidates to create accounts, upload resumes, re-enter everything manually, complete assessments, wait weeks for feedback, navigate complicated career sites.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: We'd never tolerate that experience if we were buying something online.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we expect candidates to tolerate it?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if your workforce lab looked at every step of recruitment through one question.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: If we were designing this from scratch today, would we build it this way?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I reckon the answer would be no to a lot of it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe applications become conversations.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I do remove repetitive administration.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe candidates get instant updates.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe interview feedback becomes a standard because of optional.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Please, I hope it is, everyone out there.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe recruitment starts feeling less like a process and more like a relationship.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the type of thinking I want happening.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I know exactly what recruitment will become, but because somebody has started imagining it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the third topic, future skills.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not skills frameworks, not skills taxonomies.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not into all that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Future capability.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are the capabilities our organization is going to need three years from now that we don't have today?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not job titles, capabilities.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're different.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Technology changes, job titles change, capabilities endure, curiosity, adaptability, critical thinking, communication, learning, judgment.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Those things become more valuable, not less, especially as AI continues to evolve.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think talent has a huge opportunity.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for years we've measured ourselves by hiring, our time to hire, our cost per hire, our agency spend, offer acceptance.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And again, don't get me wrong, important metrics.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe they're no longer the headline.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe talent becomes known for something much bigger.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Helping organizations build capability before they desperately need it.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's exciting.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because it changes the conversation completely.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's something else I've been thinking about.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Who actually belongs inside a workforce lab?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer might surprise you.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I actually don't think ongoing that it has permanent members.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's, you know, like a chairperson, a deputy chair, or standing agenda items.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think people change depending on the question.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're talking AI, invite technology, legal, talent, operations, people experience.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're talking future capability, bring in learning, business leaders, finance, analytics.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: The problem determines the room, not the organizational chart.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because workforce challenges don't belong to departments.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: They actually belong to organizations.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's another shift I think we're going to see over the next few years.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Less ownership and more collaboration.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Less this belongs to HR, more this belongs to all of us.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And personally, I think that's a much healthier place to be.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before I wrap up, I want to come back to where we started the rehearsal room.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I keep thinking about that, you know, nobody expects a band to walk onto the stage without rehearsing.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody expects them to create an incredible album without experimenting.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody expects perfection on the first attempt.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the songs we end up loving, they've usually started as rough ideas.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: A scribble on a notebook.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: A guitar if somebody almost ignored.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: A melody that sounded terrible the first time.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But then someone kept working on it.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Organization should work exactly the same way.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Create somewhere ideas can breathe.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere people can ask difficult questions.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere experiments are encouraged.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere learning matters more than looking clever.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth, the the future of work isn't going to be designed in quarterly governance meetings.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be designed by organizations prepared to experiment while everyone else is waiting for that certainty.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really what today's episode has been about.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not creating another HR initiative, creating a capability.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: A capability to keep asking what if.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Before somebody else asks, why didn't we?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm experimenting with Workforce Lab at Movember, and we're experimenting in a small way with workforce planning.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're making our start.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's our forum, that's our curiosity platform, that's our challenge platform, that's our collaboration space.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll leave you with one final thought.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you walked into your organization tomorrow and asked, Where do we rehearse the future of work?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Would anyone know where to send you?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, maybe that's your opportunity.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't need permission.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you just need to start the conversation.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because every great movement starts with an idea.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every great song starts with a single note.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the future of work, of course, starts with one room.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: A room where curiosity is valued, where assumptions are challenged, where experimentation is celebrated, and where people are encouraged to imagine what's possible long before everybody else catches up.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: If today's episode made you think differently, I'd love it if you shared it with someone else in talent, HR, or leadership.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get the conversation going.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, there are no guests, no sponsors, just one practitioner trying to help move our profession forward.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay curious.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Keep challenging convention.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And remember from today's episode every organization has a boardroom.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: The best ones will also have a rehearsal room.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for listening.