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When Vincent Favre, organizational development director at multinational food corporation Danone, told a room full of HR leaders to facilitate workforce planning by “hijacking the business routine,” it sounded almost rebellious. But his point was practical.
Too often, he said, strategic workforce planning (SWP) is treated as an HR project that lives outside of business operations. Danone took the opposite approach. “Don’t create a new process for workforce planning,” Favre said at the Gartner HR Symposium this year. “Hijack business routines.”
From HR process to business strategy
Danone’s goal was to move workforce planning from an annual exercise to an ongoing business capability. Instead of running strategic workforce planning (SWP) as a separate HR process, Favre and his team embedded it directly into the company’s business reviews and operating plans.
By doing so, workforce planning became part of the rhythm of the business. “It’s not about the budget,” Favre said. “It’s about the conversation.”
Vincent Favre, Danone
This shift changed how business leaders engaged with HR, according to Favre. When the company’s zone presidents now review their business units each quarter, they include three slides dedicated to workforce planning. Those slides don’t just show headcount numbers. They highlight how workforce
