Topic 2: Human Resource Planning and Work DesignHuman resource planning and work designAs you can see from our website, CERA is pretty clear about its vision and strategic choice. This is largely thanks to Mark French and Kellie Lincoln. We’ve sought to differentiate ourselves in the market by our high-contact service orientation and our innovativeness in design and engineering. One area that has been problematic for us has been workforce planning, or HR planning. We’ve tended to be fairly reactive to developments in our external environment. I guess also we’ve been fortunate that the work has grown at a rate that was manageable. But the attention to HR has been patchy, and it has only been recently that the company has turned its attention to HR in a serious way. In our senior executive team, I’d have to say that Kellie Lincoln and Jonathon Simon seem to be the most switched on when it comes to matters HR; but Rachel Amaro and Lane Scowcroft are lukewarm. I suspect that these two aren’t really very interested in my role as HR Manager, though they’ve never said it in so many words. Susumu Takada, the Manager, Finance, Legal and Administration, is supportive although I’m not sure how much he really gets what HR is about beyond payroll and administrative staffing transactions.I decided some time ago to bite the bullet on workforce planning, especially after doing some informal canvassing of industry figures and our own people about CERA’s prospects in the next five years or so. I thought it best to meet with each of the managers separately to test the wind before going too far. I decided to start off with Kellie and Jonathon, the two most switched on people.”“We met over a coffee at the cafe just near our building. Kellie Lincoln was pretty impressive, I must say. She had the figures on projected demand just about at her fingertips, and she could see the need for CERA to move beyond its core metropolitan footprint. She could also see that as Lane’s work on smart structures took off, the skills set of her team would need to diversify. In particular, she spoke of the need for a stronger environmental engineering focus in our people, as well as needing an adaptivecapability to work on specific and unique engineering challenges faced in rural areas if CERA went down the path of moving outside greater Sydney.”“Jonathon Simon echoed Kellie’s views, especially on the need for environmental engineering capability. He also pointed to the need for his people to become a lot smarter at doing more sophisticated environmental impact assessments involving a broader range of stakeholders. Although he was fairly confident that his group was well positioned for some of the challenges ahead, he was cautious because the planning division was a small, tight team and there wasn’t room for mismatches between demand and supply of professional skills.”

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