UNLEASH World: Philips’ Anastasiia Kolos

Editor Jon Kennard talks to Anastasiia Kolos, head of research and talent intelligence at Philips on day one of this year’s UNLEASH World.

They discuss the uncertain future and challenges for talent teams across industries. We join the conversation as Anastasiia talks about purpose.

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Anastasiia Kolos: …my team is making sure that our company stays up to date with all the trends, so you really hear the voice of our talent and our employees. And purpose has been always the core of our company. So it’s not something that we’ve changed recently. But I also see a bit more shifting of the focus from talent, to employees really seeking purpose in everything they do.

Why do I need to work for certain employers? What is my purpose at this point? And then also bringing more focus on the employer value proposition, which is probably the top priority of chief HR officers. So how do we offer as an employer the value proposition to our people to make them really on board and happy?

Jon Kennard: Another theme that has been around the last couple of years is about the skills agenda as well. Is that something that’s really coming through in your talent teams?

AK: Yeah, exactly. That’s where we are shifting our attention from from job or role to skills, right? And given that there is no new normal anymore, we don’t know what’s the future.

It means that we need to be more agile; what kind of skills we hire for and really, hiring for behaviors and learning agility on the job.

JK: We’re at the last quarter of 2022, moving into 2023. What are your big people challenges going to be next year? Or can you not predict that [because] things are changing too quickly…

AK: I think what every company is now facing is a challenging time, right? So we are in a time of recession, which of course has an impact on HR. And I know that probably 50% of companies are now having a hiring freeze or even planning layoffs. So I think now the big challenge would be how do we balance the short term gains or short term measures that some companies need to manage like freezes or layoffs or some other measures with the long term; a focus on growth, a long term focus on engaging people and employees.

So I think that’s one of the challenges is how do we balance, how can we make our operations more efficient, but at the same time, keep on engaging our employees, keep on motivating our employees, and at the same time, having enough capacity to focus on preparing for the future, which is already here…

Listen to the full conversation above.

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