Now it’s time for HR and supply chain leaders to turn their attention to the skills, leadership development approaches and succession plans that their organisation’s supply chain operations need to transform and thrive. Supply chains of the future will prioritise resilience over low-cost sourcing and will leverage data and advanced technology tools to provide better customer service, more agility, shrewder right-shoring decisions and stouter revenue assurance. When trade restrictions, climate events, sudden policy shifts and geopolitical confrontations disrupt existing networks, supply chain teams need to leverage data-driven models to identify next best actions quickly. Developing these capabilities requires new skills, as well as the addition of newly valuable skills. Trade compliance: Brexit complications and uncertainties have elevated the demand for supply chain professionals who can help UK-based organisations determine where to establish new distribution and manufacturing facilities while navigating still-evolving important-export restrictions and new duties. Technology and data: As is the case in most industries and companies, supply chain operations have a growing need for data analytics skills and experience with machine learning (ML), process mining, data modelling and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Customer support: Delivering on revenue targets requires supply chain teams that can develop new customer support models that enable swift, even real-time, responses to customers when disruptions arise. Global sourcing: Supply chain leaders and managers increasingly need to recruit on a global basis while managing geographically and culturally diverse teams.

Recruiting, developing and retaining those skills represents a difficult task – one that requires supply chain leaders and their HR partners to perform other talent management processes, including the following. Prioritising leadership development: To transform their supply chain operations, most organisations must both buy and build new skills. This makes recruiting and leadership development crucial. Organisations that responded to recent global disruptions and volatility better than most other companies tend to hire top talent from the universities and business schools with the best supply chain programmes. These high performers typically possess a blend of old-school domain expertise, new-school data-management savvy and a resilience-first mindset. They often serve dual roles as change agents by modelling the skills and behaviours supply chain operations need to thrive today while simultaneously developing the supply chain of the future. Other hallmarks of effective leadership development capabilities include an emphasis on development activities that support and advance the corporate mission and vision, along with related supply-chain performance goals – the active involvement of the COO and even the CEO – and the establishment of leadership networks that extend beyond the company to organisational alumni, trading partners and customers. Expanding succession planning: Leadership development and succession planning should operate in lockstep. It is important to extend succession plans deeper into the supply chain operations hierarchy. Organisations have put dynamic, data-fluent leaders into the COO’s office and director of supply chain seat, only to see transformation efforts falter, due to resistance from supply chain managers several organisational levels below, who are execution-minded and set in their ways. Current supply chain leaders also should candidly communicate with their chosen successors about their career paths. As COOs and supply chain directors overhaul traditional supply chain models, they should integrate behavioural change considerations and actions into talent management activities. For example, when supply chain leaders introduce major initiatives and overhauls (e.g. moving from a price-first sourcing approach to a resilience-first sourcing mindset) they should clearly lay out the rationale behind the decision (e.g. because doing so will strengthen our revenue assurance capability). Supply chain leaders also should communicate identical messages regarding the nature of the change and the “why” driving the decision. Additionally, performance management links to new goals and outcomes drive behavioural changes. If customer support is a new priority, performance can be measured, in part, based on the speed and efficacy with which an individual or a team responds to customer issues. Upskilling everyone: Broadening training and upskilling programmes to include larger sections of the workforce, especially managers and leaders, also helps drive behavioural change while sending a clear message on talent management priorities. We’ve seen leading supply chain operations mandate that all supply chain professionals, from warehouse workers to the most senior leaders, complete classes and programmes related to machine learning, Python and using modelling to solve complex problems.

It is easier to perform these actions and related supply chain talent management actions when HR leaders and supply chain leaders are on the same page. Happily, this alignment exists in a growing number of organisations based on what we’ve seen in our recent work with HR and supply chain groups. Productive HR-supply chain partnerships tend to centre on several high-priority collaboration touch points. Making skills and expertise trade-offs: While it would be ideal to hire and develop supply chain experts who possess the perfect blend of extensive domain experience and cutting-edge modelling and analytics skills, those unicorns remain rare. That makes it important for HR and supply chain to discuss and agree on the types of skills trade-offs that make sense for different types of supply chain management roles. Years and variety of experience may be more important for an operations manager role, for example, whereas data analytics and related technology expertise may be weighted higher for a logistics manager position. Managing the employee experience: As more organisations focus on improving the employee experience to drive a range of positive outcomes – such as higher productivity and employee retention, greater customer satisfaction and compelling links to bottom-line performance – it is important for HR groups to help equip supply chain leaders and managers, with the knowledge and tools they need to manage and improve their employees’ experiences.

Developing learning and development opportunities: Distinct from traditional training classes, learning and development programmes feature a blend of job responsibilities, organisational experiences and training activities designed to build the comprehensive skillsets that employees need to ascend to new levels and roles. Focusing less on jobs and more on skills: Pressure to develop and implement new supply chain models and innovations is intensifying. In many cases, however, supply chain leaders cannot simply hire more ML experts, data scientists or supply chain orchestration specialists, because these types of skills are in such short supply. This makes it prudent for HR and supply chain leaders to leverage technology solutions, such as AI-driven workforce planning/design software and talent intelligence tools, to produce more detailed and real-time views of all of the skills that reside throughout supply chain operations. These inventories can then be used to redesign supply chain roles, make teams more productive and sharpen talent forecasting activities. As supply chain and HR teams address these focal points, they should also consider which skills the organisation will need three, six, nine and 12 months from now. Increasingly, HR is responsible for working with supply chain leaders to determine what skills will make the supply chain of the future arrive sooner than expected and so the quality of these alliances is an imperative.

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