Kali Figueroa 0:00
Hello, and thank you for joining today’s webinar. We’re excited to have the Josh Bersin Company back today to share their latest insights on the consumer-packaged goods industry from their global workforce intelligence project, powered by Eightfold AI. If you have any questions during today’s webinar, please put them in the chat widget located at the bottom of your console. And if you experience any technical difficulties, you can also place those in the chat and our team will help troubleshoot. With that I’ll pass it over to our speakers, Janet Mertens, over to you.

Janet Mertens 0:33
Thank you, Kali. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning, wherever you are in the world. Delighted to be here with you today. Thank you for joining us. I’m Janet Mertens. I’m thrilled to be joined today by my friend and colleague Stella, we’re going to have you know, a great session, talking through some of the key findings from our recent research. But let me just introduce myself really quickly and pass it over to Stella to do the same. And we’ll jump right in. I am Janet Mertens. I am the Senior Vice President of Research here at the Josh Bersin company, I lead our research agenda and direct our research team on all thing’s talent and an HR, and I’ve been in the HR space for 20 plus years, we’ll leave it at that 20 plus years studying talented people practices and HR models. And I’m just delighted to join you all today and unpack the findings from our latest research on the consumer products and packaged goods industry. Stella, why don’t you introduce yourself?

Stella Ioannidou 1:49
Global Greetings everyone. My name is Stella Ioannidou, the weird surname that’s all Greek to you, you guessed it, I’m dialing in from Greece. I’m the director of research at the salesperson company leading the global workforce intelligence project for the consumer-packaged goods industry. And I often joke with Janet that I have the best job in the world because I get paid to satisfy my professional curiosity and help some organizations along the way. Really excited to share the findings here with you. But first, let’s do a quick review of the agenda. Janet?

Janet Mertens 2:23
Thanks, Stella. All right. Okay, so listen, for the first 10-15 minutes, I’m going to just spend a little bit of time talking about what’s going on in the market, kind of talk through some of the trends that we are seeing and what we’re studying and observing in the market. Just give that high level context to, to all of you and then Stella is really going to take us into the CPG industry and show you what we’ve uncovered, through our analysis of April data around what’s happening in CPG talent, what the challenges are and what companies are doing well. And so, we’re going to spend the bulk of our time there. And we will have time for questions and answers questions at the end of the session. So, if you do have questions, please go ahead and put them in the Q&A on your, on your platform, and we will get to those near the end. Okay. So, what’s happening in the market? I mean, listen, it’s been a 15–16-year economic cycle that we have just seen tremendous growth throughout, and we are starting to see a slowdown and some uncertain uncertainty on the horizon. You know, this has been a just an incredible last few years, you know, the pressures of the pandemic of the move to remote or hybrid work, the market, the sort of the market slowdowns, and the inflation rates. Climbing has really created this perfect storm, as we as we talk about it at person to put pressure on organizations going forward. And what we are starting to look at is what’s going on in the labor market, what is what are the results of that? What are the implications of the business context on the labor market, and we are continuing to track just that an incredible shortage of labor? And this really is, you know, it has been going on for some time, right. We’ve talked about labor shortages for the last few years, but we really are, are watching as this is now affecting every industry and it’s affecting every type of role. And what you see on this chart, and this is a US chart, but it really is a kind of a lens for the global the global perspective. You can see on the left and I know it’s a bit of an eye chart, but the data that we’re watching shows that there are shortages of labor or people or talent in nearly every industry and across all types of roles. So, we are not talking about any particular role in particular, you know, and specifically, certainly tech talent has been a challenge for many years. But we’re also seeing clinical talent shortages, massive shortages, post pandemic, we’re seeing salespeople and retail shortages on the frontlines. Truck driver shortages. I mean, these are really global, global challenges. And there are a number of reasons for this. I mean, we are looking at, you know, a dropping birth rate across the globe, we are seeing massive numbers of baby boomers retiring, we’re seeing, you know, across generations, employees are leaving the workforce. So, organizations are really facing this labor and skills shortage at a time when growth is critical, a couple of other trends that we are observing in the market. And I love this slide, because it really shows an evolution of social evolution of what employees and workers have experienced as it comes, you know, as it as it pertains to what their career looks like. And as you kind of track across this chart, what you’re seeing here is the evolution of how the hell we define our career. So back, you know, in the 1950s 1960s, the company was the career right, we went in, we were employed by the same company, usually for our entire tenure, right? These were lifetime careers in an organization with movement through that organization, usually up the ladder. And, and that was the focus for every, you know, for most employees to stay, to stay in a single company. Things changed in the 80s and 90s, as the internet was introduced, and companies started to go online, the career became an individual piece, right? It became about an individual choosing what company or where to go. And really, you know, in some ways, this is where job change really became a trend. And then it became about the work you were doing. So where were you working? What kind of projects are you working on? What do employee you know, what were employees thinking about in terms of the purpose driven work they were doing. And that’s how careers have been defined up until almost a couple of years ago. What we’re now seeing in the market is that employees and workers and organizations too, are recognizing that your skills are truly the red thread of your career, right? So, skills are now the currency by which careers are measured. And so, for employees now and for employers, the skills that employees or workers are building or gaining or developing inside your organization matter, not just to your organization, but to the employees themselves. And that’s an important shift. Another key trend that we’re looking at, and it ties to this idea of skills is what’s happening in the industry, right? What’s happening in industries, how is technology reinventing truly reinventing industries. And, you know, we’ve seen a lot of change over time, from the, from this sort of the Internet era, where companies took their services online, right. And then in the start of the Internet era, early 2000s, early 2000s, late 90s, late 80s, early 90s, I’m getting my numbers all can all mixed up here. We saw that companies were really looking to adopt digital solutions, get their services online, and then that became a real push for digital transformation. So through, you know, through the early, probably 2000s I would say that digital transformation really took off companies knew that they needed to go mobile first there was a shift to the cloud. If you think about the major ERP, you know, HR ERP systems, everything was moving towards that digital domain. COVID-19 hit, of course, a global pandemic, and, and disruption was sort of everywhere. For industries, the products that industries made, the ways that we delivered those products as industries, the ways that consumers embraced our products are changed dramatically over the course of the pandemic. But now what we’re looking at is on the hopefully other side of that is the, what we call digital or industry reinvention. And this is really where industries are starting to take stock of what has changed and what is now shifting for the industry. So, the lines are now blurring between industries, but for retail, or pharma, or, you know, manufacturing were very, very specific industries and very, something, you know, sort of well border, what we’re now starting to see, and this is part of, you know, the reason that we are doing this research is that industries are changing dramatically. And a lot of this is due in part to the, the technologies that have exploded over the past few years. So here’s a few examples. And Estelle is going to take you through the CPG. industry in particular, so I won’t, I won’t spoil for that one. But, but in in retail, you know, retail has really shifted and there’s a great chart here, I want to show you, from you know, store brick and mortar stores, to everything being online to thinking about pharmacy, and you know, if you think about retail, the superstore concept has really taken off. Retail is getting into financial services, if we think about e commerce, if you look at telco is now getting into healthcare, TELUS has recently purchased, you know, mental health platforms, auto, the auto industry has gone through massive change going from med pure manufacturing, right through to electric vehicles, and battery design and software engineering, as a great kind of phrase that I think about auto, the auto industry, that that really brings us to life. And it’s that, you know, cars, were once cars with a computer. Now, cars are truly computers on wheels. So every industry is reinventing itself. And that has caused organizations to really have to think differently about talent. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, that, you know, for some time,

Janet Mertens 12:04
companies in an industry could be fairly certain that they were pulling from particular pools of talent, the talent stayed in the industry, you know, you may compete against others in your industry, but you knew that you were looking in certain places. Now, employees are moving industries, they are shifting, they are on the move, and what companies are having to deal with now are competitors for talent from entirely new industries. So what does it all mean for HR, we are looking at HR differently? Now, going forward. This chart, I love this chart, because it really shows how HR functions now need to be interconnected. So to support and, and cultivate talent, and bring talent into the organization and keep and unlock that talent. HR is realizing that the Gone are the days of siloed functions that are you know that narrow shell talk to each other. And if you look at some of the examples here, when we think about this, and we’re going to talk more about how we how we how we operationalize this, but if you think about some of this, you know, when we think about TA and hiring now, there are simply not enough people to fill the jobs that companies need filled. So now companies are starting to think about gig and contract workers. Well, gig and contract workers might have once been owned by procurement, or by the business lines themselves. And when you think about gig and contract workers, well, that ties back to employee experience. So now, when you think about employee experience, it’s no longer just about your full-time employees, you’re really thinking about what is that experience look like for your entire total workforce? And then of course, when you’re thinking about employee experience, you’re thinking about workforce planning, right? How do you create experiences for every segment of your workforce, and continue to be agile and allow for growth or shrinkage is when you need to scale up or scale down? And then of course, diversity and inclusion comes into play here, as you build a flexible workforce. How are you ensuring that you are creating an inclusive environment with diversity across your workforce and in your leadership? And then of course, that ties back to pay and rewards? What are what are the components of your reward strategy that allow you to go to market differently and find the talent you need from these nontraditional or new talent pools. So everything in HR is connected now. And what companies are starting to realize is that the technology layer now needs to enable that that systemic approach to HR and you know, this chart and I won’t spend a ton of time on it, but the HR tech stack is getting more and more complicated. And we talk to organizations all the time about how they are knitting together, their HR tech stack, whether it’s ta technology, whether it’s, you know, core HR systems, whether it’s employee experience platforms. And, you know, at the end of the day at JBC, what we are thinking about is truly, what are the touch points in your HR tech stack, that employees, managers, leaders are connected with the candidates, job seekers, right, every piece of your HR tech stack is now an employee facing technology that those employees and managers are interacting with. And then tying this all together, and you see this green line here, and I’m going to, I’m going to break this down for you. We call it the talent intelligence layer. How can companies take all of this massive data from all of these systems and make sense of it? How do you track your internal and external data, about skills about compensation about talent? And how do you make sense of that. So this shift to talent, intelligence has been a really important trend for leading companies. And this is really the heart of what we’re talking about today. We, you know, we’re working very closely with a fold who has just billions of data points around jobs and skills and, and workers. Companies who are getting this right, are really thinking about the data available to them. And so the talent intelligence database has now taken on a very important role in the HR tech stack. And this is really where you get meaning from all of these different data points and different insights. Right, so we’re talking about internal data about your own workforce, whether it’s the skills you have or the skills you need, we’re talking about the roles and the job descriptions that you have in house. But it’s also external data, what’s happening in the market? What are the skills that are most important in the market, with your competitors, with competitors outside of your industry? What are the credentials? Or the disciplines that matter? Most going forward? What kind of pay and in compensation and rewards trends are occurring in the industry that you’re in and outside of your industry? And where is talent moving to? Right? What are what are the ins and outs of talent both inside your organization and in the market in, in general? Which brings us to the global workforce intelligence project? Why are we studying this? Well, for all of the reasons I just talked about what we are about a year ago, we at the Josh Bersin company and Eightfold, you know, really had this idea that as we watched these themes and trends unfold, and as we see that, you know, industries are converging, we really wanted to understand what’s going on in on an industry level. And as we started to do the work of studying detail in detail, industries, like healthcare, and banking, and now consumer products, we noticed that each industry is truly experiencing the forces at play in different ways, and really grappling with very unique challenges. Now, I want to give Stella the mic here to take us through what we found in, in consumer product, packaged goods. But let me just share a little bit more about how we are coming to all of this, you know, coming to all of this, these key insights, when we took a look at Eightfold’s, global talent, intelligence, I mean, they, you know, this is a massive set of data from external sources that really give us a sense of what’s happening with skills, what skills are on the rise, what skills are on declining, where are skills, linked, what skills are adjacent to each other, we knew that there was, you know, a massive set of insights that we could draw from this. So we brought that dataset together with our own data from the Josh Bersin company, where we’ve been studying the people practices that actually matter and drive impact in organizations. So we look at talent acquisition, we look at employee experience, learning and development, or design and all of those functional areas in HR that are now merging. We brought that to bear as well, along with our own expertise and our own conversations with hundreds of CH arrows and HR leaders, and you know, reviews through our wide network. And so, this database approach allowed us to really pull out some inquiries retable insights and incredible metrics for industries to help HR leaders like yourselves make sense of what’s going on. Now, this is an example from banking. But it’s just a great example of the kinds of insights that we are that we are going to be unlocking with you today and unpacking. And this is around, you know, what are the clusters of jobs that matter most? Where are companies in CPG truly struggling? Or where are they successful? What are the companies that are just thriving? What are they doing differently around skills and skills, rescaling? How are they looking at career pathways and growth inside the organization and mobility and that, you know what that brings us to CPG. So without further ado, let me turn it over to Stella for you to take us through Stella all the incredible findings that we have, that we have uncovered in the in the consumer-packaged goods industry and how this industry is really transforming. And what’s working well.

Stella Ioannidou 21:08
Thanks so much, Janet. And thanks for the great intro. As Janet explained, we’re seeing the story of transformation to reinvention across all industries and for CPG. For the consumer-packaged goods space, in particular, the Gurus of manufacturing, the Gurus of supply chain, the type of organizations that know very well how to build things, how to have their factories all set up how to do other maintenance production, we’re now seeing additional areas going into their daily operations. We’re seeing Internet of Things and robotics and Process automation, disrupting the way that these organizations used to operate. We’re seeing increased need and we will dig a little bit later on of satisfying consumer demands with our shifting with our more and more consumers are interested in sustainable products and transparency through their products and having a personalized relationship with their product manufacturer. So what used to be an industry all about manufacturing things now is transforming into a hybrid that’s a little bit of a retailer and a little bit of a service provider to their consumers and the CPG industry is, at least in our in our eyes is let’s say given the business impossible task to at the same time, address the implications of the pandemic and their daily operations. Remember, the majority of CPG organizations, especially during the lockdowns, have seen their supply chain heavily disrupted. And consumers, meanwhile, have been trading down have been more selective, they prefer more digital options, and they’re not buying as much as they used to. And they’re very selective in what they buy. They consider sustainability a core part of their buying decision. And meanwhile, CPGs are, let’s say in a complicated relationship with retailers or retailers used to be CPG companies’ distribution, let’s say networks, but now that retailers are going more and more into white labeling, they’re actually becoming competitors. they’re placing their products next in line to the CPG products and the dynamic of this market relationship is it shifting. So on top of these challenges, CPG companies are actually expected to consistently manufacture the best quality products at the right price fit for the consumer needs and distributed through the most effective tap channel at the right time, while considering all the changes in technological solutions and options that are now available to them and try while trying to let’s say create a new relationship with our consumers. You see, the old let’s say way of doing business and consumer packaged goods as an industry it was mostly leaner. So CPG companies used to manufacture things wholesalers used to distribute them, or you know, be the middleman between them and the distributor. And then the retailers were the main channel through which the products reach their consumer. This was a linear value chain, right? The CPG companies used to just create, move and sell goods, no direct link to consumers and at the same time, no insight on consumer preference unless someone from those who had a direct relationship with a consumer actually Even the data most, in most cases, that those would be the retailers. However, the new operating model, the new value chain of consumer-packaged goods is no longer linear, it’s actually circular. We’re seeing more and more the need for CPG companies to create a circular responsive system that no longer relies on retailers to hold that relationship with our consumers, but actually is directly linked through the distributors or through the manufacturing site, in itself. So you understand how this is a major business transformation story, not just in the way that products are moved and sold, but in the types of new capabilities that are required to be a to remain in the business. And if one were to, let’s say, summarize the highlights of the biggest of the business. Part of the story is that CPG companies are now pressured to rethink how they do business. All the while, other players like retailers and CPG startups are gaining market share. And we’ll see how this affects CPG companies in a little bit and making R&D and innovation to ensure that they’re creating the right product at the right time distributed at the right price through the right channel. Even more significant. But things do not just stop at that late layer, let’s say the business layer, this entire new shift of the business story actually affects the talent story, we’re seeing that those organizations who actually have the right skills to tackle this have a competitive advantage in the market. And we’re seeing more and more how, let’s say the so-called war on talent is very prevalent in the consumer-packaged goods industry as well. And we will be introducing a set of skills that we will call Consumer delight skills that are the differentiators for CPG companies who are great at this. And we will revisit how the Pacesetter CPG organizations, those organizations who figured out ways around this actually have a very unique talent footprint. So if we were to summarize the four findings of our let’s say study on consumer-packaged goods, it would be that the majority of CPG companies that we studied, and we actually run the numbers on this actually lack the talent required to design these right products to their consumers. And the companies who are great at these are this are the ones who implement systemic HR solutions that enable them to bring in and grow the talent that is able to generate the consumer delight to maintain this direct relationship with their consumers and ensure that it’s a fruitful one. And pacesetter companies have a very, very unique talent mix, they have very unique roles and play very unique skills in play, we’ll see in a bit exactly how that looks like so that you can start to reflect how that compares to your organization. And of course, we’ll ever reach a point of maturity in the market where we can no longer rely on our gut. To make such decisions, we actually need the numbers, we need the talent intelligence practice, we need the ways and the methodology to generate effective decision making. That is data driven and heavily informed by what’s going on not only from within the organization, but also from the labor market at large. So remember, our first finding, we said the majority of CPG companies are actually not ready to deliver the right products for their consumers. We examined the existing skills in all talent quadrants for the CPG. Industry. And we were able to uncover that in all, let’s say five major pillars of business transformation for CPG organizations, which is are they able to sustain a digital supply chain? Are they able to offer transparent and sustainable products to their consumers? Can they go directly to their consumers? Do they take advantage of the technological landscape that’s now evolving like Internet of Things on robotics? And do they rely on AI to predict not only which machine is going to break down but what is the next best product for consumers? So with the help of the Eightfold AI data set, we actually saw that the majority of companies still rely on skills that are either stable or declining. And you will see that on the digital supply chain part. There it let’s say they’re further advanced and this is the outcome of the pandemic because the first thing that they had to solve CPG companies had to solve during the pandemic was how to keep their digital their supply chain, let’s say value uninterrupted or how to minimize the interruption. So a lot of steps were made towards that direction. But the other areas remain larger, largely unexplored, not due to lack of interest, but due to lack of skills and talent. Meanwhile, remember when we said that there are other players in the market that are gaining competitive advantage, because they have a very different talent footprint, for example, CPG startups are types of organizations who are of course, smaller, leaner. But what actually sets them apart is that they invest significantly more time in research and innovation to ensure that they are creating a, let’s say, a very core consumer offering that will attract the preference of consumers. Yes, they invest about six times more in terms of budgeting and marketing, advertising. And,

Stella Ioannidou 31:11
sorry, CPG, companies invest six times more in marketing and advertising than R&D. So they focus a lot on you know, what, how we package the product, but not how much of that that product is still relevant, or how frequently we change our product line. Whereas smaller margin CPG, startups actually dedicate three times more talent on R&D, and therefore they are able to more swiftly disrupt the traditional market. And this is where we take a step back, following our global workforce intelligence project methodology, and we say, Okay, why is this? So we’ve seen the data, we’ve seen the analysis, what can we tell about the actual people practices, the actual people solutions that are currently out play on CPG, and how this relates to the problem and how it doesn’t really solve it. So the first part of our analysis was around recruitment, we did see that CPG companies are actually very aware of this challenge that they’re faced with that they need to gain or grow new skills, and the majority, many of them are actually trying to gain these skills through recruitment. We’ve seen a significant increase both in job postings and advertised wage for roles related to technology, to data analytics, and to marketing. However it seems that it’s not really top of mind, there is interest, but the majority of active CPG, job postings still revolve around keeping the old business model working. They’re looking for more people in Merchandising, and warehousing, and food and Safety and Good Manufacturing Practices offer that of the skills related to our wheat, are we sure that we’re creating and we’re researching enough for the right product that there are consumers want and of course, manufacturing will never go away? This part of the witness will always remain pivotal. But we would expect to see an emphasis on these roles, at least cut the first the top 10 Let’s say

Stella Ioannidou 33:28
let’s say ranks on the job posting activity. And then we wonder okay, why is that? So why are we seeing this type of interest but still reserved? Is it perhaps there is lower maturity in people practices or HR maturity of maturity in HR practices across the industry? And this is where we dig into the Josh Bersin Company body of knowledge. And we are actually able to run the numbers for the industry and compare for each of the four quadrants over for our framework, what is the how mature this industry is compared to all our other industries. And you will see that the green bar that reflects CPG is actually higher in all cases compared to the rest of the industry. So it’s not a matter of low maturity is no matter that we cannot or we’re not advanced or we don’t know how to do it. And this is where we you actually need a deeper dive on the numbers to be able to understand and uncover what’s going on. And what is it really that sets Pace Setter CPG organizations apart from the rest of the market, because if everyone’s maturity is, let’s say above the market, why are some organizations still achieving better results at creating and maintaining a deeper relationship with their consumer compared to others? And then is where you need talent intelligence, you need to dive deeply into what roles are, are at play, what skills are at play, which roles are declining and are not going to be around and let’s say five or 10 years, so it’s no use trying to develop them, or which skills are emerging. And we need to ensure that we’re either upskilling or we are hiring for this, and what type of solutions and what type of career pathways for example, can we build to ensure that we’re transitioning people from declining roles to rising roles? So this is actually the type of analysis that goes behind every global workforce intelligence project, and this is what I promised you in the beginning, this is the first part of what sets pay center CPG companies apart from their competition, so they have two distinct three distinct characteristics, the ones about roles or the other one’s about skills, and the third one’s about systemic people practices. So on roles, we have seen that pacesetter CPG companies have significantly more people, and are our research related roles, and more people in technology and transformation, but especially in research roles, the let’s say the Pace Setter, CPG company has 30 times more people in R&D, especially dedicated, ensuring that we’re researching the right product. We know what we need, what the consumer needs, and we’re actually looking to see what’s the next best offering from us. So 30 31.1 is the exact multiplier, it’s the biggest multiplier, we’ve seen throughout our GWI industry studies. And we’ve had three so far. So on top of that CPG pay center organization have significantly more people in production roles, of course, but they’re different types of roles. They because the majority of these organizations have largely automated their production lines, so they have different type of production roles. And significantly two times less two times less people in business-to-business administration roles. Why because they focus a lot on business to consumer, therefore, a big portion of their b2b has shifted towards that new type of let’s say business value chain. So this is in terms of skills, key core takeaway here significantly more people and technology transformation, and an emphasis on R&D. In terms of skills, significantly higher prevalence of skills related to technology transformation, and consumer delight, more than two times more people with skills related to predictive analytics, machine learning, data, data science, you’re seeing our you’re seeing Python machine learning IT Service Management, but it’s not just a tech thing. Significantly more skills related to how do we analyze the organization? How do we transform the way that we work? How do we improve the way our processes are run? How do we manage change across the organization? And last but not least, significantly more consumer delight skills, which are skills related to having a direct relationship with your consumer, ensuring that your consumers satisfied with your product planning events, ensuring that the consumers are actually served the proper way and that development product development is done in a way that aligns with both what you can manufacture and what consumers actually are willing to buy. And last but not least, we’re seeing that pay sitter CPG organizations are adopting a striking balance, they strike a fine balance between product and culture. We’re seeing that they prioritize a lot, a leadership model that relies more on coaching rather than you know, vertically bossing people around. When they talk about growth, they mean growth and talent development, not necessarily on a promotion only seek scheme. They work a lot to generate a culture driven organization, the majority of pacesetters CPG organizations are purpose driven. And this is what connects them because they’re focused organizations and they’re geographically all around the globe. So the only way you that you can actually ensure that they are connected is through a strong culture that’s prioritizing the impact that they want to bring, and they focus a lot on employee experience. Not that output is not important, but experience is the driving force that keeps the culture so far A brand as it is, of course, and we always have said that disclaimer, there is no one pay set or organization to rule all systemic HR practices and has figured everything out. But through our GWI through our work on the CPG. Industry, we were able to uncover some of the, let’s say pacesetter strategies of these organizations, for example, Tyson has an amazing story, how about through around retention, they are exploring job sharing and flexible scheduling, even for frontline workers, which is something that you don’t hear a lot with, when you think about flexibility in terms of scheduling, you think of headquarters, you think of, you know, white collar jobs, you don’t expect to find that, on that level, even on the frontline workers. And one of my favorite things that Tyson as a as an organization does in terms of retention is how they help and they support the growth of their employees, and they finance their entire tuition fees. So anybody who can start from any job around the organization can have a full university scholarship and arrived, when they get their degree to wherever their new specialization leads them, it is actually a matter of time. And you know, it’s like, only stick around, continue your degree. And when you’re done, you’re actually going to be transferred to exactly what you started, which is a fascinating end to end deeply, let’s say thought through way to retain people by showcasing those benefits go beyond pay and how you treat the entire employee experience. And the flexibility actually pays dividends. L’Oréal is another organization that has some very prevalent, let’s say, a Pace Setter practices they are they own continuously ensure that they are training their recruiters to be at their best selves as the conduits of the brand and what the company stands for. So they’re not just training them on how to use systems and how to ensure that they’re managing the lifecycle. They’re monitoring the KPIs, but they, they see them as, let’s say, continuously the ambassadors of the company to the market. And at the same time, they’re ensuring they have like, let’s say they have a thrift 60 view of learning where they don’t only train and upskill. Their employees are their colleagues in machine learning and in data driven, or let’s say next generation skills, but are also ensuring that they’re training people who are not necessarily employed by L’Oréal, they’re training young talent to ensure that they have the skills that the new world of work will need, and that they’re ready for the future of, of work. So I hope you enjoyed the findings. Janet, I believe we can go on explaining a bit of our overarching and final remarks, and then we’ll go ahead and open up to Q&A. Sure, thank

Janet Mertens 43:29
you, Stella. No, that was that was fantastic. And you know, what I love about this story, and this report is really truly, you know, this industry reinvention as you talked about, and this shift from, you know, product to consumer is driving this talent reinvention, right. And that HR in consumer-packaged goods really needs to think through systemically, what is what are the ways to tackle using the data that’s available? What are the ways to tackle the skills challenge and really create these consumer delight capabilities inside the organization? I love that. I’ll just spend a couple of minutes kind of wrapping around what you shared with us today. And then we’ll take a look at some of the questions that have come through either in the chat or elsewhere. Because I know there’s a couple that I want to pose to you as well. So just a couple of moments on again, going back to the for our model Stella and you talked a lot about it in in the context of CPG. And I want to take a step back and also just share how we’re thinking about these kinds of interrelated interconnected pieces of HR. And so we’ve done a fair bit of work now at Bersin to really look at the practices inside each of these. So we know that the connections exist we know the implication questions when you pull on one lever or push on another. But for a lot of companies to there really is a need to focus attention on one or more of these areas to your point, you know, there’s no one company that has hit the mark on all of these, you know, or is there is no perfect here. So I wanted to draw attention to the fact that each of these areas really does have particular practices, emerging people practices that have that drive impact, and that for most of our pay centers, or level for our North Star companies, the practices that matter most the practices that are having the biggest impact are in fact, as we’re observing interconnected systemic practices. So if you think about recruiting, it’s really the connections back to the business, as you talked about at L’Oréal, the recruiters are being invested in, if we think about re skilling, they’re very much about growth and development, and tying back to, you know, job design, and then that connects back to redesign. So these practices that matter the most across these functions really do reinforce the notion of systemic HR. You know, you talk a little bit about it in the pace centers, and it’s such an important theme that we are continuing to track. And it really is the need at the top of the organization to have that same systemic collaborative view. And we are really looking at, you know, when we think about the CPG story, really thinking about this is not just a choro conversation. Now, certainly the CHRO and the HR team is accountable for the people practices themselves. But when we think about the relationship between the CHRO and operations, right, and let’s see, oh, and providing that leadership for transformation, for process simplification, the connections back with the CFO and the investments that are required to upskill and rescale, the organization and to find that talent inside the organization and outside, this is truly a C suite collaboration to drive this transformation. And then maybe what I’ll do is I’ll leave us on this chart and sell it, I want you to chime in here too. But you know, one of the things that we really include in, and we think about as, as we work through this industry research is how do you bring this all to life? Right? How do you operationalize talent, intelligence, it’s a big, big step for organizations? And so there’s a fantastic set of steps that we that you’ve laid out in the report still, and maybe you can take us through a couple of these steps. Now to really help the audience understand, you know, how do you take a bite out of this apple? How do you how do you get started?

Stella Ioannidou 47:58
For sure, and many organizations may be intimidated by the talent intelligence hypes, though it pays dividends, you know that actually, you can run this type of analysis by following a series of distinct steps that will get you where you want to go regardless of where you start. So first off, let’s say the first step even big before you start to think of what type of data do we have? What type of data do we need? Where can we find the data, who will run the analysis, because these are some of the most common questions that pop into, let’s say, the collective mind of organizations where they start to discuss how to bring in talent intelligence, is to take a step back. And first off, build a cross functional Center of Excellence. Bring in it, let’s say in a systemic and holistic way, bring in people from across the organization that can actually tie in what is being done, and contribute and chime in different parts of insights from throughout the organization, even within HR, but also from outside of the HR within the company. So bring in people of course, from talent acquisition from learning and development, from talent management, from organizational design, but also from finance, but also from sales from marketing people who can understand and bring in especially in CPG, this is so crucial, who helped forge the link that we’re taking a holistic cross functional approach to what we’re going to solve. And second, the second step here is to identify what is it exactly the challenge that you’re solving for? Because there are so many ways and so many steps and so many challenges and problems and top of mind priorities that one can let’s say boil try to boil the ocean through such an initiative. But if you saw your Remember the slide where we had the different organizations that have implemented pace center CPG strategies, you will see that not all of them start from the same place. Some of them start from recruitment and move their way inwards. Some of them start from retention and move their way in or somewhere, focus more on rescaling and then have that affect the way that they approach the other quadrants. But focusing on the one entry point, based on the most critical talent challenge to focus on prioritize is your next best bet. And of course, later on, you can do another team that focuses on another critical challenge. But it is crucial, especially if it’s the first-time round, trying to operationalize talent intelligence to identify the critical talent challenge to focus and start off with. And then this is where after you see what problem you’re solving for; this is where you go nerdy, and you analyze the roles and the skills and the trends. And you do all types of charts. And at first, they don’t make sense. But then they start to do and the more people that chime in and say, you know, what are we noticing here, the better it is, this is why it pays dividends to have a cross functional team at the at the beginning, because now you’ll have a different set of different viewpoints, when you

Unknown Speaker 51:22
actually look at the data

Stella Ioannidou 51:25
from totally different or have a big variety of points of view. And afterwards, this is where you start to work your way through solutions. You can use the for our model, you can see okay, which types of strategies work more for our organization based on the challenge that we’re working on, and the actual data that we have and what they’re telling us. So should we be focusing more on, let’s say, upskilling, our people in Data Management in our in machine learning as a CPG. Organization, do we need to ensure that while we’re doing that, we’re also let’s say hiring for the warehousing roles that we may still need, but at the same time, ensure that we are actually retaining the roles that are very critical to understanding and maintaining a fruitful relationship with our consumer. So this is where you start to see through the four R’s, what strategies work for your organization, there is no, let’s say, there are a lot of good practices. But each solution should actually be tailored to the organization based on their data based on their challenge and the organizational ecosystem. There is no one way to solve this.

Janet Mertens 52:46
And still, I wouldn’t, I would chime in there because I love that and what I what’s really important, and one of the things that we found is that it also changes over time. So that real time data and that real time intelligence is so incredibly important, because we know now that we are living in a world of nonstop disruption and external forces that are constantly changing. And so having that, you know, this is not a one and done approach. And I think that also sets apart. And I know there was a question and in the chat around peace centers, you know, what is you know, what sets them apart. And it is that constant continuous focus and an awareness of real time intelligence. And so I wanted to chime in and add that

Stella Ioannidou 53:34
100%. And this is exactly where it gets like iterative because you work your way through when you plan and you design, this is not actually a project. It’s more of a process. It’s a new capability of the organization that you bring in. It has a space. This is why we call it a center of excellence and not a talent intelligence project team, right is the center of excellence. So this is where you work your way through. You plan. You design you develop, you test the waters, and then internally. We’re continuously you know, you measure what’s happening, and you iterate, and you continuously improve. And to your point, Janet, we have seen that pacer organizations do possess this unique skill, which allows them to be leaders at their market, which allows them to be employers of choice, which allows them to be awarded and acclaimed for their accomplishments both as talent, let’s say, leaders and a market leader.

Janet Mertens 54:33
Wonderful. Stellar Thank you. Listen, I know we’re almost out of time. I know we can talk about this for hours. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions about the research that that I wanted to hear your thoughts on. And, you know, as researchers, we always think about what’s the finding that surprised us most or what’s the insight that really made us stop and think you know what’s going on here and look under the hood a bit for you, when you studied this industry, and you spent a long time, you know, really digging into the data talking to organizations, what’s the one, maybe two things that really stood out for you that you were surprised by or really kind of just, you know, made you stop and think and go, what’s going on?

Stella Ioannidou 55:23
There were actually two things that really surprised me with the consumer-packaged goods industry. The second one is how dynamic and how, let’s say how fluid the relationship with our consumer is and how impacted consumer packaged goods organizations are by it. So you used to, let’s say, as a CPG organization, you used to rely so much on your strong brand that many organizations didn’t even consider that they have now, competition, but now access to Tech has actually given rise to so many CPG startups that are actually threatening, if I may use the word let’s say this traditional status quo, or big CPG organizations have, let’s say, no one is really safe from this, it’s like it’s not impacted because technology is not so expensive anymore. So CVT startups do have the ability to invest in biotechnology, and food science and chemical analysis in advanced statistical and predictive analytics and modeling. And they can actually offer products that they’re better, let’s say, ease of adopting them and changing them based on what their consumers are telling them because they have a direct relationship with it, because the majority of those CPG startups are sold via their shops. So you’re seeing how it can get easily scaled up and easily disruptive in a very, in a very short time. And, of course, the other thing that surprised me about the researcher, I don’t want to say surprised what I really enjoyed was that analysis of roles and skills. And when we saw the emphasis that pays that organizations are giving to getting the product, right, and at the same time getting the right product to their consumers that’s unparalleled. That’s like you have you have the powerhouse organization, if you can actually know that you’re bringing in front of your consumer, the right product at the right time, at the right price. And how do you base that you base that on your strong reading, not alone, you’re also basing that on your solid research your scientific footprint that’s telling you that this is the right way to go. And this is I think, a very strong message to CPG organizations nowadays trying to let’s see, figure their way of, okay, where everyone’s talking about skills, right? Where do we start? Well start from your R&D skills, start from your predictive analytics and your predictive modeling skills. This is where let’s say the big money is looking ahead.

Janet Mertens 58:09
Fantastic. Well, and I think that’s a great note to end on Stella, we are at the top of the hour. You know, this is this has been a an incredible, you know, kind of journey, I think, into the industry and the talent challenges. We’ve been studying CPG now for, for her for a long time, it feels like, and we know that we have we’ve observed certain things about the industry stellar what I might close on is also the cross-industry application here. And truly, you know, I know we’ve got lots of CPG folks in the audience and maybe some who are from other industries, what we are uncovering as we continue to dig into individual industries. We’ve now done three, as you mentioned, stellar healthcare, consumer banking, and now consumer products, is truly the characteristics or the operating principles of these NorthStar companies across industries, the pace setters, as we call them, and so we have some research true. And we’re kind of continuing to build on that to show what does what does a, what does market leadership look like inside an industry and across and so this is one more piece of that puzzle. And I’m thrilled that we were able to share it today with the with the group, likewise. Well, thank you everyone. I’m going to turn it back over to Kelly to close us out.

Kali Figueroa 59:37
Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you, Janet and Stella for a great presentation. If you miss part of today’s webinar or want to share with a colleague, the on-demand recording will be available through the link you use to log in today and we will also have the on demand recording available on April’s website. Thank you again and have a great day everyone.