Aim
The aim of this module is to work out what strategies you may use to source the roles and capabilities your business area needs in the future and identify your priority roles.
Objectives
By the end of this module, you’ll have developed sourcing profiles for the priority roles you’ve identified.
Activities in this module
Activity 1: Sourcing strategies
In this activity, you’ll come up with a sourcing strategy for the roles and capabilities you have identified.
A sourcing strategy is how you’ll get or access the capabilities and roles you need for the future.
You can have more than one strategy for the same role or capability.
There are 4 sourcing strategy types in this activity:
Build strategy
Use this strategy to develop the existing workforce or team with training, coaching, mentoring and skills building.
It can work well for roles that have a high impact on service delivery but are in low supply in the labour market.
Buy strategy
Use this strategy to recruit talent from the Jobs and Skills Exchange or externally.
It can work well for roles that are in high supply in the labour market.
Borrow strategy
Use this strategy to borrow the skills and capabilities you need from other parts of your organisation or the public sector.
This may provide learning opportunities for your workforce and increase mobility.
Rather than source a permanent employee, you may:
- borrow people during peak demand for a short time
- use labour hire
- use professional services for specialist advice or work.
Bot strategy
Use this strategy for augmentation or automation opportunities that may exist for repetitive tasks and process-driven work.
Surge capacity
Surge capacity roles are roles required during peak times such as emergencies, seasonality or crisis.
Surge roles can be sourced using buy, build or borrow strategies.
How to do this activity
To do this activity, you’ll need to have completed the previous activity in design module 1 and use:
Role profile template (PowerPoint, 1.1MB)
Determine sourcing strategy template (PowerPoint, 1.2MB)
Using the roles you identified, plot these on the impact and supply matrix in the determine sourcing strategy template
While all roles should be strategically aligned:
- some roles have a higher impact on the execution of strategy
- others enable delivery
- some require a significant investment in training to achieve performance standards.
For a high number of roles, you may want to prioritise the roles that are essential for achieving the strategic goals of your organisation, have a high impact but are in low supply or new roles.
Review your strategy and reflect as a group with these questions:
- what are our priority roles?
- which of the sourcing strategies would be appropriate for each role?
- do we have a good balance?
- are we relying too heavily on one sourcing strategy?
Activity 2: Sourcing profiles
To do this activity, you’ll need to have completed the previous activity and use:
Role profile template (PowerPoint, 1.1MB)
Determine sourcing strategy template (PowerPoint, 1.2MB)
Using these templates, list the roles you’ve identified for each sourcing strategy.
For each role consider the questions below to complete the template:
Build strategy questions
- What qualifications or experience do we need for this role?
- Do development programs exist for our workforce?
- What other organisations may require these roles?
- How will we retain people once we train them?
- What are the surge implications?
Buy strategy questions
- Who are the competitors in the industry for these roles?
- Do we require a surge pool for these roles?
- What roles and functions have similar or transferrable skills?
- How will we attract new talent?
Borrow strategy questions
- Is there another area in our organisation we can access roles from?
- What are the barriers to borrowing talent internally?
- What labour hire providers or professional services organisations can we obtain this talent from?
- What are the cost considerations and barriers to borrowing externally?
- Does a surge pool exist?
Bot strategy questions
- What process or tasks may benefit from digital or technology adoption?
- Does our organisation have the digital capability to enable automation?
- What are the cost considerations and barriers to automation?
How to run this module as a workshop
If you are running this module as a workshop, you’ll need:
Design: module 2 workshop slides, facilitator guide and speaking notes (PowerPoint, 1.2MB)
Workshop facilitator tips for this module
If you run this as a workshop:
- include someone that understands technology and digital capabilities in the labour market for your industry
- break into smaller groups to brainstorm and research each sourcing strategy, if you have a large group
- have a good mix of people, as it can be hard to think of complementary or adjacent skills
- have a very strong facilitator or split this session into 2 to keep it on track, as there is a lot of thinking to get through.
Workshop timeframes
Run workshop: 2 hours
Analyse workshop outputs: 2 hours
Total: 4 hours