Digital HR Leaders with David Green

Most organisations say Strategic Workforce Planning is a priority. Far fewer are prepared for what that actually requires.

Because the challenge isn’t just predicting how many people you’ll need. It’s understanding how work itself is changing, how skills are shifting beneath stable job titles, and how today’s hiring, reskilling, and entry-level decisions are quietly shaping capability and leadership risk years into the future.

In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Vincent Barat, Founder and CEO of Albert, to explore whether organisations are thinking about Strategic Workforce Planning at the right level - and what it really means to make workforce planning truly strategic in today’s environment.

Drawing on Vincent’s experience working at the intersection of business strategy, skills, and workforce dynamics, this conversation explores:

Why SWP is shifting from a planning exercise to a capability and risk discipline
What truly puts the “strategic” in Strategic Workforce Planning beyond headcount and budgeting
Where organisations most often struggle when trying to move from SWP theory to execution
How AI is reshaping skills and tasks beneath job titles, and the implications for reskilling and redeployment
Why reduced entry-level hiring today could create leadership and succession challenges tomorrow
The practical priorities HR and people analytics leaders should focus on right now

This episode is sponsored by Albert.

Albert is your strategic workforce planning co-pilot, built for global HR leaders who are done with Excel, chaos, and finance-led headcount cuts.
Albert helps you decode complex people data, anticipate change, and make confident, cost-saving decisions on skills and hiring without hiring a single analyst.

Discover how to handle the people side of your long-range plan with zero guesswork at albertapp.com/davidgreen

Links to resources:
The SWP Cookbook
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People analytics has spent years building credibility through data. Now the pressure is different. Business leaders aren’t just asking for insight - they’re expecting direction. Where should we invest? What should we stop doing? What risks are we not seeing yet?

But many teams still find themselves pulled back into reporting cycles, ad-hoc requests, and an overemphasis on metrics that don’t always lead to better decisions.

So what shifts when people analytics starts operating more like a product and less like a project function?

In this episode, David Green is joined by Ashar Khan, Head of People Insights and Solution Design at Autodesk, to explore how the function evolves from delivering data to shaping choices at scale.

Join this conversation as they discuss:

The skills and mindsets modern people analytics teams need beyond technical expertise
What an effective people analytics operating model looks like in practice
The core capabilities required to bridge HR technology and HR strategy
Where “metric fixation” leads organisations toward false confidence and poor decisions
Why the assumption that AI automatically means “fewer people” misses the bigger picture
Practical advice for CHROs building or redesigning a people analytics function today

This episode is sponsored by Worklytics.

How productive is your organisation, really? Worklytics makes it clear - with privacy-first insights from everyday work data. See how meeting volume, manager effectiveness, collaboration health, and AI adoption are impacting your team’s focus, efficiency, and outcomes - so you can make smarter decisions, faster.
No surveys. No assumptions. Just clear insight into work. Right now, Worklytics is offering podcast listeners a free 30-day trial of their productivity analytics dashboard.

Learn more at worklytics.co/productivity

Link to resources:

The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook
David Edwards’ Dark Artistry Newsletter
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AI is changing tasks. Skills strategies are evolving. And yet visibility into capability, cost, and risk across the workforce often remains fragmented.

So how do organisations move from reacting to workforce change, to planning for it in a way that actually shapes business outcomes?

In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by David Edwards, strategic workforce planning practitioner, advisor, and author of The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook, to explore what it really takes to make strategic workforce planning work in practice.

Join this conversation as they discuss:

Why workforce planning can feel “deceptively threatening” inside an organisation
What changes when leaders shift from thinking about headcount to thinking about capability, capacity, cost, and risk over time
What goes wrong when people analytics and workforce planning operate in parallel
Why looking beyond permanent employees reveals hidden workforce risk
How AI is forcing organisations to rethink work design, not just skills strategies
The stakeholders' strategic workforce planning really needs

This episode is sponsored by Worklytics.
How productive is your organisation, really? Worklytics makes it clear - with privacy-first insights from everyday work data. See how meeting volume, manager effectiveness, collaboration health, and AI adoption are impacting your team’s focus, efficiency, and outcomes - so you can make smarter decisions, faster.
No surveys. No assumptions. Just clear insight into work. Right now, Worklytics is offering podcast listeners a free 30-day trial of their productivity analytics dashboard.
Learn more at worklytics.co/productivity .

Link to resources:
The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook
David Edwards’ Dark Artistry Newsletter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI was supposed to make work more efficient. So why are people busier than ever?

As organisations move into 2026, many leaders are realising that while technology has changed quickly, the fundamentals of how work gets done haven’t kept up. Activity is increasing, output is accelerating in places - yet coordination, focus, and decision-making often feel harder than before.

So what’s actually going on?

In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Philip Arkcoll, Founder and CEO of Worklytics, to unpack this very question.

Join this dynamic duo, as they discuss:

What the data reveals around where organisations were getting stuck in 2025, and how the way we work is changing in 2026
What collaboration and activity data reveals that traditional HR metrics often miss
Why decision-making, not output, is becoming the primary bottleneck in AI-enabled organisations
How increasing spans of control are reshaping the role, and load, of managers
The emerging divide between teams and individuals who are benefiting from AI and those who aren’t
What HR and people analytics leaders can do to measure, diagnose, and redesign how work actually happens

This episode is sponsored by Worklytics.

Worklytics helps leaders understand how work actually happens with data-driven insights into collaboration, productivity and AI adoption.

By analysing real work patterns - from meetings to tool usage - they empower teams to work =

Learn more at worklytics.co/ai

Link to resources:
5 Ways Work Will Change in 2026

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Why are so many HR leaders experiencing “what just happened?” moments at work - and what does it really take to respond to authoritarian leadership with courage instead of fear?

That’s the question Kristen Kavanaugh, Leadership Strategist, former Head of DEI and Talent Management at Tesla, explores in this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast.

In this episode, host David Green sits down with Kristen to unpack what happens when fear quietly becomes the operating system inside organisations, why authoritarian leadership styles are becoming increasingly normalised, and how HR leaders can reclaim their agency in environments shaped by power, pressure, and public leadership behaviour.

Tune in and learn:
Why fear-based leadership creates short-term gains but long-term damage
Why HR leaders often underestimate the agency they actually have
How Kristen’s Agency Loop framework helps leaders navigate tension, misalignment, and difficult decisions
What courageous leadership looks like as AI reshapes roles, skills, and power at work
Why HR has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape a more humane future of work This episode is sponsored by Worklytics.

Worklytics helps leaders understand how work actually happens with data-driven insights into collaboration, productivity and AI adoption.

By analysing real work patterns - from meetings to tool usage - they empower teams to work =
Learn more at worklytics.co/ai

Link to resources:
Courage over Fear: Harness the Power of Agency to Lead in Uncertain Times
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