Sarah facilitates a discussion with Cedrick Rochet, BU Operations Manager at Intel Corporation; Newland McKelvey, Core Delivery Director at Fujitsu; Krish Venkataraman, Head of Global Operations, Transformation & Customer Success Asia Pacific, India & Japan at Hewlett Packard Enterprise; and Kshitiz Agarwal, and independent consultant about the unique and creative approaches their organizations are taking to improve recruiting, hiring, onboarding, engagement, and retention.
Sarah Nicastro: Thank you, James. Hello, everyone. Happy to be here with you all today with a wonderful panel. We're going to have a discussion on this panel about the skills gap, the labor shortage, the talent gap, you hear it referred to in many of these ways. And talking about some of the actions companies can take, both on the people side and on the technology side, to address this challenge. So, as James said, my name is Sarah Nicastro, I am a part of IFS and I actually run a thought leadership resource called Future of Field Service. So I interview folks regularly about their business transformation journeys and am thrilled to be here with four great guests today. So I'm going to ask you all to introduce yourselves briefly. Cedrick, do you mind going first?
Cedrick: Yeah, sure, Sarah. So hello, everyone. My name is Cedrick, I'm currently working at Intel Corporation, so it's a processor company. And specifically in the branch of Intel called Internet of Things Group for Autonomous Driving Cars. So all the latest fancy stuff there. And so a little bit about me, so I have basically 10 years in engineering in the last 10 years, much more on the business side where currently I am running the operations of the business units.
Sarah Nicastro: Okay.
Cedrick Rochet: So that's it.
Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. Newland?
Newland McKelvey: Hello. Hello everyone, my name's Newland McKelvey. I'm core delivery director of Fujitsu, so responsible for day-to-day delivery of the managed services that are provided to a big, major public sector body. And actually prior to that, was responsible for the setup of trader support service, which is the customs intermediary supporting organizations dealing with the sort of outcomes of Brexit need for those things to be handled in a new way. And I've been with the company a few years, actually, James, we've just been speaking, we were talking last week and I realized I joined Fujitsu before James was born. So one of those quirks of life, but yeah, so glad to be here.
Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. Krish?
Krish Venkataraman: Hello everyone. My name is Krish Venkataraman. I'm part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which you know needs no introduction, those in the IT industry. And I'm looking after the Asia Pacific and Japan customer operations, global operations, and the customer experience. Part of that, that's my area of focus. I'm based in Singapore, like what Newland said, maybe I joined this company before James was born as well. So that was back in 1988, so it's a long time. Thank you, very happy to be here. I look forward to a great session. Thank you.
Sarah Nicastro: Thank you. All right. Kshitiz?
Kshitiz Agarwal: Thanks Sarah. So hello everyone. My name is Kshitiz Agarwal and I'm currently working as a self-employed consultant where I'm helping small businesses with their clean energy transition. I'm a former site service director with Mitsubishi Power. And one part of my role is to develop the teams for these energy transition and prepare our training strategy. So I'm really looking forward to learning from all of you and sharing some insight. Thank you.
Sarah Nicastro: Okay, great. All right, so as James said in the introduction, this recording is going to live on for eternity, so we're going to make sure we make it a good talk. So I want to start off just by everyone weighing in a bit on how is the labor shortage or skills gap impacting each of your businesses. Okay, so let's just kind of level set with what is this issue meaning to you in your organization. So we can just go around again, if that's okay? Cedrick, if you could start?
Cedrick Rochet: So yeah, so currently labor shortage is quite an interesting topic at Intel because every world area has actually different dynamics. So for what, Intel being based in the West Coast, we have tremendous talent pressure on the West Coast of the US. And also in quite specific spots where you have other IT or technology companies, such as Ireland or Munich area or Singapore also, I mean, quite a few spots, Malaysia, for example, where we have competitors that are present also because we build the ecosystem around as we grow, there are also factories around ours over time. And so essentially right now, it is a little bit of a challenge for skills, specifically experienced individuals. And at every levels, from the engineer that is starting until the senior vice president that are being taken from one competitor to the other. So it's touching us at every level.
Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right. And Newland, what about you?
Newland McKelvey: Again, with Fujitsu, and sort of echoing Cedrick, it's a global issue for a company like ourselves as well, where we've got global delivery centers as well as regional centers. And the experience and skills shortage is impacting across the board. And that can be in deep technical specialism or even in more generic skills, like experienced project managers in development or service setup and transitions, equally down to simple things like, or more simple things, like actually even standing up a support center now. There's just such a huge demand across the base and a lot of competition out there. And it's getting the right people in, but equally retaining and actually encouraging people from years ago instead of going to IT, I find ourselves doing other things that we'll probably talk about later.
Sarah Nicastro: Sure. Yep. Okay, Krish?
Krish Venkataraman: Yep. This is great question. And good input also from Cedrick and Newland. The way I look at it is also I used to wonder at times on the one side, we will take any countries' numbers. They'll say there is X number of people unemployed, at the same time, there are Y number of openings, roles that are there that they can't find the people. So be it in any industry, be it in manufacturing, technology, customer service industries, anywhere, the gap more I see that as the fit between what we need and what we have. And whether the people are building to see themselves as a different person. For example, there's a one quote I wanted to share with the team. It was predicted in 2012, hey, you're going to have two sets of jobs, the jobs that somebody will tell the computer what to do, and then the jobs that the computer will tell them what to do.
Krish Venkataraman: Okay. So these two divides, however, we all know in our whole day, different times, we act in different roles. There is one task I do what my computer tells me to do, and 10 minutes later, I'm doing a task that I tell the computer what to do. So it's not always this one side or the other. Now but the challenge here is how do we accept that? How do we internalize that? And how do we help the people recognize that and play that correctly? That's where I generally see some gaps as well, because I may have good set of candidates, good set of pool of people, but they are not having that right skill set and right training to do the right thing. So how do we bridge that gap is definitely a thing we'll be talking further, but that's how I see as the gap.
Sarah Nicastro: Okay. All right. And Kshitiz?
Kshitiz Agarwal: So basically, I'm from energy industry. So I had a little bit different perspective and different set of a challenge. So right now, because the energy industry is going through the massive transition. So it is a kind of an imbalance between the skilled workforce, as well as adaptation to the required or new skills due to digitalization. And this is happening, from my experience, this is happening because of two reason. One is specifically because of aging workforce. And secondly, it's because they are not enough new or young people coming into the industry, especially to the blue collar job that had created massive gap between the industry. So as Krish said, it's the right matching the skills as well as matching what is available in the market is right. But at the same time, I think the perception of the industry or perception of the job taken toward the market or toward globally basically, is also important in this, play a key role in the skill gap.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I'm looking, as we're talking, I'm looking at my long list of questions and realizing there's no way we're going to get through all of them. There's a lot to dig into related to this topic and it's one of my favorite topics to discuss. So instead I'm going to try and make sure we get to four questions at least. And then if we have time, we'll come back to some of the others. So the first thing that I think is interesting is really having a conversation around what we're calling this issue. So you hear it referred to as the labor shortage, the talent gap, the skills gap, the experience gap. And those are all really different things. And so I think one of the first questions we have to ask ourselves, for each of our individual businesses, is what is this problem to us? Which of those is it?
Sarah Nicastro: So what I mean by that is, I think historically... Now we're on a panel with people from different industries, different geographies, so we have to kind of look at things from a high level. But I think historically, most organizations, for most roles, are accustomed to hiring based on experience. And so I think one of the biggest issues with this topic is that I don't know that I believe we have a skills gap or a talent gap. I think there are people with skills and there are people with talents, they just may not have the experience that we, as organizations, are accustomed to be able to hire based on. And so I did a presentation on this topic a few weeks ago and it was around controlling the controllables. Because the labor shortage, the actual statistics around how many people are available to hire in any given location, isn't something you can necessarily control, but your perspective on this as an experience gap versus a talent gap versus a skills gap, those are things you can control.
Sarah Nicastro: And I think the first thing we need to do is take a look at our historical recruiting and hiring practices and ask ourselves: Do we need to adjust to today? So if we're always looking for people with X number of years experience, is there a way to achieve the same outcome by looking for different criteria in the folks that we're looking to hire? So the first thing I wanted to talk about is just your thoughts on that and any you've made within the business, or have thought about making within the business, to sort of shift from looking for experience, to looking for the skills, traits, characteristics, abilities you need, and finding ways to provide some of that experience. So that's the first point. Does anyone want to volunteer to go first?
Kshitiz Agarwal: So yeah, I can start. First of all, the thing is we cannot generalize the skill experience and the talent. It depends on the geographies, it depends on the industry. In some industry, it is required to have more experience than other, because it might be life in that situation. So we cannot generalize that. But I think from the industry where I am right now, traditionally and currently as well, the priority is always given to experience than young members. But because of this gap that we are facing between the aging and the young people right now, companies have started looking at the different perspective. One of the perspectives is as simple as looking at the talent or new workforce from the global perspective, rather than geography location. That is the one way they're tackling it. Another way they're tackling it is engaging to the indirect recruitment process, which is more they get engaged with the new graduates right from the time in their university, and then recruit them and train them.
Kshitiz Agarwal: Apart from that, from my experience, there's... We all heard about the apprenticeship program, especially in Germany. Those programs actually, over the period in history, they prove themselves very, very effective way, especially in mechanical industry or electrical industry. And I believe more and more organization right now are coming up with these program, apprenticeship program and the graduate programs, to bridge that gap so that they can train the people or train the new employee right from the base foundation level to the place where they need them to be at to bridge this gap.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I certainly was not suggesting we just put people that are not capable of a certain job in role. It was exactly what you're saying. How do we become more creative about ways to sort of farm talent instead of just looking for it ready-made. So things like what you're saying are exactly my point, which is it really comes down to, as organizations, we may need to do more work than we've done historically because we just don't have a wealth of people to bring into the business that have 5, 10 years’ experience. So we have to look at how do we give them the training, the experience, the time they need to be capable, but take some more responsibility for doing that. Yeah, go ahead Newland.
Newland McKelvey: Yeah. So I was going to actually just going to build on what's has been said, because I think, in terms of apprentice programs, grad programs, et cetera, those have all proved, across many industries, including IT, whatever, really, really beneficial. But one thing that we've been doing over the last few years, and not just ourselves but I've seen it elsewhere, is when we look to recruit or appoint new roles, we don't just look within, I'll call it, the professional communities for want of better description, but actually look even internally outside that. For instance, so when you're bringing somebody, and I've seen examples where someone from a finance background has become a manager of a development team over time. And the reason for that is that the good thing is that they know the company, they maybe got a few years to understand, if you like, the mechanics of the organization. So they don't have that as a learning curve.
Newland McKelvey: Then supporting those people from sort of those diverse non-technical backgrounds, who have good management skills, to actually become managers in an area where we desperately need someone come along and really help build teams, et cetera. Where they've got the skills, it's just bringing the technical level up as well to support that. And I think that's helped us several times in the past where we've had gaps.
Sarah Nicastro: And a lot of the conversations that I've had on this topic, Newland, kind of echo that approach, which is if you find the right, whatever you want to call them, core skills, soft skills, you can provide the technical knowledge needed in many cases to compliment that. So that kind of opens up doors for you to look in different industries, different areas, things like that. Also, I recorded a podcast on this topic at an event I was at last week and one of the things, I think Cedrick you said, this isn't a challenge for just entry level workforce, it's a challenge all the way up. But one of the points that came up in that conversation is that a lot of younger workers, they don't come into a role and plan to stay there for 20 years. They want progression. So if you can kind of restructure the way you look at your recruiting and hiring practices and figure out how to map them up within the business, it gives them the progression and growth that they want, but also helps you when comes to filling roles above just the entry level.
Sarah Nicastro: So Cedrick, what have you seen in terms of ways that that Intel has adapted here?
Cedrick Rochet: So Intel is a very interesting company. Before being at Intel, I was working at Emerson Electric, which was a very industrial company. And now being at Intel, I see a very culture shift, mostly, maybe because Intel is West Coast based where also ecosystem and the startups is over there. But actually as much as an industrial company, you have people that were staying 5, 10 years on a job, when I was a younger professional, I was seeing that. Nowadays, when I am at Intel, actually, you see, well, the person is expected to stay maybe three, maximum five years on the role before moving up. Now what's happening is that also, I have to be honest, Intel has a huge competitive advantage is that we have a huge skills and talent pool within our employees. I mean, we are a rich company.
Cedrick Rochet: And to give you an idea, the quality department of Intel is about a thousand people, 800 of them have PhDs. So just when we speak about talent pool, that's what we need. To have people with PhD and MBAs, standard. You cross them everywhere almost. So when you take these people, you can almost have them going from one job to the other with too much problematic. Now that said, you still have to retain these talents. And it's not because you have great foundations, as I was saying, but you need also to close the talent or the gap that is a problem that you have to solve on that moment. And compared to other companies, at Intel, we have an internal volunteering program. So how does it work?
Cedrick Rochet: And also this is also coming from the West Coast, it's basically you have for over five years, you accumulate vacation days and at some point you go on sabbatical. Meaning that for five weeks, in a batch, you go out and when you come back, you still have a job. Now what's happening is during these five weeks, somebody needs to take care of the job. And so we create what we call GIGS where somebody that has nothing to do or is interested maybe in this role, can apply so as a temporary gap filler, if you want, and test the job itself. And maybe as a person moves on to the next job, basically somebody is kind of seeing what's going on in that role and has to be experienced. I mean, five week is not tremendous experience, he's not going to break anything really. But still you get a look and feel about what it means or are you feeling ready for taking on this job, maybe in another organization.
Cedrick Rochet: I mean, Intel, we have the, the advantage of the size. So we have a huge internal job market that address many, many people. And so in order to fill these gaps of talents gaps that we might have, this is one of the way, by doing this so-called GIGS, temporary work that is outside of your standard job that can help on filling that gap. Something that I've never seen in any other companies that I've been into before Intel.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And you bring up really good points, Cedrick, which is you mentioned the approach at Intel is far different than that of Emerson. And so I think you have that a lot with companies that are more on the modern, innovative type of culture versus something that has more legacy. And I think that's where these type of conversations become very important, because that doesn't mean that someone with a completely different culture can just mimic what Intel is doing. But I think this is an area where companies need to look at what others are doing and maybe just have some thoughts. So it doesn't need to be a blueprint for how they go back and do it, but just some different, new, fresh ideas to bring in and to try some different things.
Sarah Nicastro: Because I think we can all agree that this problem demands more creativity than perhaps we've leveraged before. So Krish, I want to come to you and ask certainly if you have any insight on kind of where you're finding new candidates, that's fine. But the other part of sort of the recruiting side is for new places to find folks and maybe changing the criteria upon which you use to hire a bit, but also making sure that you are speaking the language of the people you're trying to hire and making sure that the roles are appealing to the candidates that you are addressing today. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about any changes that have been made or any work that's been done to make sure that as you're recruiting, you're offering an appealing opportunity for people that you're looking to bring into the business.
Krish Venkataraman: Great. Thanks Sarah. So let me start off answering that in a couple of parts. First one, the way we look at things is, as you know, Hewlett Packard Enterprise operates in 190 countries. So there's no one size fits all for us. The challenges are different in different geographies. So what we are doing as a starting point is see a need to rebrand the way we sell a role to the candidates. What appeals in different geographies, we need to be cognizant of. For example, in some geographies, the people want to know how am I contributing to the vision of the company, how am I part of the success story, how am I part of the community contribution that we are making. So that's very important for them. We also want to take the value properly. It's not just a job, it's not just a role.
Krish Venkataraman: We take the total value proposition of being part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in different dimensions. So it's beyond just compensation and benefits. Looking at the career advancement, work environment, culture of the organization, and also the ability for an individual to shape the way they want to take their career development, personal development, forward in any direction they want. So that culture of the organization promotes that very well. People could walk across and do a shadow assignment in another part of the organization, no barrier. People could ask for a stretch assignment. Somebody could be maybe in finance, but they want to go and do a stretch assignment in marketing, vice versa, or some other areas, even in geographic stretch assignment. So all those facilities are there for the people to take advantage of that. And it also helps them to shape, determine, take control of their own career path and career direction.
Krish Venkataraman: And nobody's telling them what to do, but the options are there. So that's the real important cultural shift and the framework that we have in place to support that. Now in terms of how we look for also candidates or also, we need a good diverse set of candidates. So we we talk about the diversity equity and inclusion. So we want to make sure that that is practiced at all levels of the company. And actually, it's also part of my key focus area. Every year I measured on how many of those mix I am managing and continuously nurturing those mix of different things. It's not just the gender diversity, cultural diversity, and various other forms that we do want differentiate between how people want to express themselves or how they want to identify themselves, but how they can be part of the team and complement each other.
Krish Venkataraman: And we have a thing called Employee Resource Group, which is an internal community that's really, really supported right from the CEO level, to grow this further. At the same time, we also shifted our focus a little bit, we're using automation, for example. Quite often, this, what you call, unconscious biased comes in in the way we are writing something, on the way we are expressing something. So using a lot of automation to identify them very early, filter them out. For example, the way a job description is written should be very, very neutral, location neutral and agenda neutral, all sorts of neutrality being brought in consciously into that. Even the employee value proposition, all the external internal communication, there is a lot of effort and focus also drives that. And people feel that, hey, I'm part of this organization that do not differentiate this and values diversity. So we see this definitely helping both.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So you brought up a couple really good points. And I did a podcast a while back with the woman who runs talent globally at Tetra Pak. And it was all about the move to outcomes-based recruiting and hiring. So I think it's a great episode for anyone to go and look up, but it's this idea of, well, there's more to it than just job descriptions. But what you just said about job descriptions, there's this idea of are we putting words or things in here that are going to have people leave themselves out that may be a really good fit? So are we limiting ourselves? How do we kind of get to the root of what is the outcome of this role and leave it with strictly things related to that so that you get a good broad pool of diverse candidates to apply?
Sarah Nicastro: The other thing is this idea of, and this probably sounds obvious, but you would be shocked how many companies aren't doing it, which is when is the last time you updated or revisited your employee value proposition. Do you know what is important to candidates that are coming into the workforce right now? It's not just about money, it's not just about collecting a paycheck. They want to feel heard, they will want to be empowered, they want to feel they're making a difference, they want to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, they want opportunities for career development, they want flexibility. So starting to look at are we providing those things and are we articulating that we're providing those things. Because what matters to candidates today is different than it was 5, 10 years ago.
Sarah Nicastro: So this kind of segues us into the next topic I want to talk about, which is retention. So Cedrick, if you can kind of start off and just share. This is kind of a natural segue because you bring people in with sort of this value proposition. And then it becomes a game of making sure that they are engaged, empowered, that they're having a fulfilling employee experience so that they want to stay. So what's your take, Cedrick, on retention?
Cedrick Rochet: So retention is quite, I mean, it's quite a vast topic. And over the years, essentially, to keep employees, companies are, I mean, at least at Intel, we are trying many different areas and trying to tailor, actually, to where even to the person is in his life cycle. From the young engineer that comes into Intel, that wants to revolutionize a world, that has plenty of energy and coding and things like this that wants to do this, to the younger adult that, I mean, later adult that wants to start a family. And so we have programs such as parental leaves, where basically I want to take care of my kids, they are bored and so on and so, but without the fear of losing your job at the same time. Then for later, when you are more experienced, then basically it might be going into an expert track or into a leadership track.
Cedrick Rochet: So you have, for example at Intel, for that, your salary... I mean, many times, and if I go back to my Emerson Electric experience, many times if you want grow, it was just go up the ladder, more people you manage, the bigger you are, da, da, da, da, da, da. At Intel, actually, there's a difference between a leadership track, which is exactly it's the traditional, the more people you manage, the better, da, da, da, da, da, da, and you get the salary increase. But there is also the engineering track, so basically you become a specialist from the young engineer to a principal engineer to a fellow who is on standards committee that is influence standards directions at the national level. And the great thing is actually the same thing as a leadership. It doesn't have the same name, but essentially you have the same grade, we call that grade internally, but you can be a senior vice president and just be a simple engineer, but because you are basically helping on steering committees for international standards, you are at the same level or considered at the same level of grade as maybe a senior vice president.
Cedrick Rochet: So by creating these two possibilities for more experienced people to grow into what they aspire, basically you get much more retention and you adapt to basically the different stages that a person might be. And of course, I mean, and you have plenty of internal trainings, that is quite standard in every company. You have another thing that actually, and a little bit provocative, that we are doing also at Intel that I've never seen before, is what we call returnship. So basically when a person left the job because they want to raise their kids and come back 10 or 15 years later saying, well, now my kids are grown up, they don't need me anymore, so I would like to go back to the workforce. Well, you still need the period of adaptation and we call that returnship where we allow people that have been potentially 10 or 15 years out of the workforce to get started again. And this is something that I've not seen in many other companies that have been to.
Sarah Nicastro: I love that idea, Cedrick, especially because when you look at the impact that COVID had on women in the workforce, and I mean just how we need to look for ways to help and to build bridges for them back in and all of those things. I'm conscious that we are going to run out of time and James is going to get mad at me because we haven't gotten to questions. Newland, so here's what we're going to do. James is going to bear with us for just a moment. Newland, if you can answer the same question about retention and then for Krish and for Kshitiz, I have one other question and then we'll get to the audience questions. So Newland, what are your thoughts on retention?
Newland McKelvey: So for people coming into the company new, we've set a strategy that retention starts from onboarding, and that onboarding starts right at the first interview, your first of the recruiting engagements, and continues throughout. So by the time somebody lands in the company, they've already experienced both interface with their management, they'll have a body, they'll have had different events, and that's the external recruitment. Equally, going back to Cedrick's analogy of moving people about internally, we do have sort of something similar, it's called career pathways. If someone's keen then wants to move into a role from that, moving role internally can be quite a step change. And again, it's a similar principles, because you don't want someone coming into a team and finding it's the wrong role.
Newland McKelvey: So the first thing is, is what Cedrick's outlined, equally as well is then making sure that onboarding process and induction and everything else really works for people. And then the final thing is also the concept of career, which Krish and others have outlined, it is broader than the vertical. It's very much a you're looking for cone-shaped people where they've got a number of areas of expertise and more general knowledge, but rewarding that as well and recognizing that, so it's not just a vertical hierarchical pay and reward, but actually rewarding and what they bring and the outcomes that we talked about earlier, trying on build that.
Sarah Nicastro: And this is where the complexity comes in. Because you can understand what's important to your talent pool that you're looking to hire, and you can tell them that you're doing all of those things, but if they come in and that is not the reality, then you have no chance of keeping them. So you have to be marrying the work on the recruiting side with really making sure that you're evolving the employee experience and offering people a rewarding place to be so that they do want to stay. Okay, all right, we're going to try and do this in two minutes. You guys each get one minute and I want to ask... Krish, we'll start with you and then we'll move right over. I want to ask what role has technology played in alleviating, assist, helping with this challenge?
Krish Venkataraman: Okay. So in terms of technology, the basic thing, for example, let me give an example of automation. When we use automation to redesign the workflow and the operating model becomes so elegant makes the flow much more agile, collaborative, and also nonhierarchical, and it empowers the people at the right point to make the right decision so that there is no need to go back and forth. So clearly the technology has played such a big role here and it can be leveraged for many other areas in a similar way. And we find that to match that... So what does that mean is we need education people with different set of background, with a different set of knowledge and skills, to take the full advantage of that. One of the challenge we always find is even though the technology is there, the people are not really ready to go on and take full advantage of that. So if we have that cultural shift and the technology enablement with the right people at the right the skillset, I think we can the best out of that.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay. And Kshitiz, your thoughts on technology?
Kshitiz Agarwal: So technology is playing a wider role right now, especially in mitigating this skill gap, what we're talking since the beginning. So for example, I was involved in developing a training program using AR and VR, augmented reality and virtual reality, to train the people on the health and safety side while working on the site. And similarly, there's also in energy industry specifically, there's an increased use of robotics, whether it's a remote control or autonomous robotics to do those job which are not required a human interaction. And not only it bridges the gap, but it also makes a safe working environment, which is more important at this moment. And from the point of view of the retention, again, technology is again making a huge difference as Krish rightly said. It bridges the gap, that hierarchical gap between the different people. And it enables different people from one role to easily shift from one role to another role and one job to another role, which they consider as a progression in their career path. So, yeah.
Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I always look at technology on the tactical side, the strategic side. So tactically, what are the ways we can leverage technology to help alleviate areas of this challenge? So is our current workforce optimized and fully utilized. So when you look at scheduling and things of that nature, are we appropriately using the people we do have? And then automation, are there aspects of work that are not value-add that we can automate to allow more capacity for our workforce to do really important things? I think a lot about knowledge capture and knowledge management. You have such a volume of expertise leaving the workforce, are you capturing that knowledge so it can continue to be leveraged? And then the point got brought up about augmented reality and different training tools to get people able faster to get into the workforce and to be impactful.
Sarah Nicastro: On the strategic side, Krish, I completely agree and it's obviously a completely different conversation. But the idea of what new roles need to exist? What reskilling and upskilling do we need to do to make sure that we're leveraging technology strategically as a part of our value proposition? Okay, so James, come on in and yell at me for going over. And I'm sorry, but it's such a good conversation, we should have allotted more time.
James: Yeah, no, don't worry. I'm not one to get mad. I'm not going to shout anyone. Let you guys do your thing. That was great. Yeah, I'm just conscious of our next speaker who's probably waiting in the little pre-check and worried that I'm not there. So we've got time for one question I think. We'll give hard stop after five minutes, just so I don't panic her. So question here from Christine: There are any recommendations as to the split you should have between retained employees versus outsourced contractors resourced to deliver digital innovation?
Cedrick Rochet: I will take this one if I may, because this is, actually, I think I would say it's a hot topic, not in every areas of the company, but in this. And most of the time what we are doing is that we are looking at whatever we are doing is the position a long-term. And what we mean by long-term is three years. So will be there jobs to be done for the next three years for a person to come on board. If yes, we open a job. If not, then we look at a contractor, contingency worker. And some areas of Intel, we have very few contingency workers. In others, which is much more customer project based with very short time turnarounds, then basically we use much more because we cannot predict really what is the next skills set the customers will ask us to support them.
Cedrick Rochet: And so it's very much becomes very customer oriented adaptation. But it doesn't mean that at a strategic level, we see... I mean, contingency workers or outsource workers cost a lot more. So there is also other times, strategic reviews internally to try to find the right balance. To be honest, we haven't found it yet. We look for it, but all the time trying to balance between the business objectives on one side, but also having a much more stable head count or strategic gaps that we might need. And it's always a balance between the two. And for that one, yeah, we try to do our best, but sometimes it's not that easy with business and our expenses.
James: Anyone have anything they want to add there just quickly?
Newland McKelvey: The one thing I would add is that odd enough to sort of let the lens that Cedrick applied slightly different in our type of organization, where we're actually looking at whether it's an area where we're growing, expanding, versus one where if we have a gap, but reality it's a legacy area. And if it's wherever we're growing and expanding, we want to bring in very specialist skills to help recruit, retain, and actually develop our own internal workforce. But the ultimate aim will be that. Whereas if it's legacy, we'll focus more on moving some of those people on and using contractor, external staff to sort of supplement. So we've got that sort of moving wheel of people internally as well. Krish, I'll let you speak.
Krish Venkataraman: Thank you. Quickly, one area we look at it, James, is transformation. Organizational transformation. Organizations go through continuous transformation. It's not always that the organization may have the right skills, knowledge internally to do the transformation. They need that external help to do the transformation, and then the internal core organization can continue to move onto the new platform and operate, but the need to shift them to move that. That's where I think the external sourcing would be very helpful.
James: Brilliant. Thank you guys. I would love to let everyone else chat for another few minutes, but I'm afraid we have to call it day there. All I'd say is when we overrun a bit like this, it's always suggestive of a great conversation. So thanks so much guys. I'm sure you'll all stay in contact and likewise. Sorry to anyone who didn't get their question answered. If you are going to the agenda tab, you can find each of us speakers there. You can message them directly. Or you can put them in the event feed, or just email them to me and I'll pass them on, you'll definitely get your questions answered. So for now, just go ahead and exit this stream. We're back in 10 minutes for our final session of the day, with Rainy from Nokia. I'll see you all then. And thanks to our panelists.
Sarah Nicastro: Thank you everyone.