PEOPLE
PEOPLE
People and skills development
Training
Key elements of the people development process (all respondents)
opinion State of Flux
Here we can see a curious pattern with organisations investing time and effort at the start of the process, holding back from doing the hard work in the middle and then investing again at the end. It is clear that the people and skills process in many organisations isn’t particularly well planned or coherent. Potentially organisations are designing jobs, placing people in them and providing training without ever having tried to understand what skills are required or assessing the skills people already have. What is clear is that in most cases it’s SRM Leaders that are approaching this topic more effectively and efficiently, although even here there is significant room for improvement.
Another pattern reproduced from previous years comes in the shape of training. While any investment in training should be applauded it’s difficult to ignore that training is more effective and efficient when it’s targeted and represents good value for money. While we can’t vouch for the training content, it’s reported that across all companies 47% have invested in some form of SRM training in the past 12 months, a figure that leaps to 86% in the case of Leaders.
Defined the main SRM role
55%
Defined the SRM roles of operational personnel supporting SRM
46%
Created or updated job descriptions
35%
Developed an SRM skills and competency framework
Personal objectives
The best organisational and resourcing model for SRM remains the cause of considerable debate. What can’t be ignored in this is the significant resource and budget constraints that organisations are required to work within. While there will be ideal models most organisations will need to compromise. The goal of matching supplier key account team’s person- for-person is still a long way off.
29%
Personal objectives refer to the job-specific goals of each individual employee and are important because they communicate to employees what is important and what is expected of them. This couldn’t be more important to SRM as its objectives and capturing tangible outputs are often seen as a challenge. It’s also the case when the SRM role is combined with others that the SRM element can be harder for the individual to deliver when compared with the easier-to-measure category management or sourcing element. This year we find that just under 40% of companies are currently building SRM into personal objectives compared with 73% of Leaders.
Completed an SRM skills and competency assessment
17%
Some regional variation on people development
Provided SRM training
48%
This compromise usually takes the form of the SRM role being combined with Category Management and/or Sourcing. This has long been a problematic combination with the more traditional and easier-to-measure procurement-focused roles taking precedence. Where this model has been more successful has been when positions and job descriptions are taken apart and rebuilt to achieve a balanced set of objectives and deliverables that recognise not only the what but the how. In the year of Covid our research has revealed a worrying
People and skills development is one of the areas with a more marked regional variation. Europe would appear to be clear leaders in this regard with North America trailing mostly in the development of role profiles and job descriptions with one in four reporting no activity. Australasia however, is further off the pace being on average 20% less likely to have implemented the main activities and with more than one in three not having done anything in this area.
Included SRM in personal performance targets and measures
It clear that the people and skills process in many organisations isn’t particularly well planned or coherent.
39%
lack of the skills needed to manage supply chain risk. This has to be a wakeup call for organisations to take a more thorough and systematic approach to risk management using people, process and technology. We are at pains to point out the importance of understanding the skills and competencies required to be an effective SRM practitioner and deliver the potential from supplier relationships, and we tend to hold up Leaders as exemplars. While we point out the marked difference between Leader, Fast Followers and Followers we should also point out that 60% having developed a skills and competency framework and 41% a capability assessment still leaves considerable room for improvement. It’s hard to criticise companies for investing in training, even if this could be done more effectively and efficiently by combining it with a skills and competency assessment and capability assessment. For organisations seeking a complete SRM training solution you can find out more about the State of Flux SRM curriculum on our website.
SRM training conducted in the past 12 months
Leader
Fast Follower
Follower
Personal objectives refer to the job-specific goals of each individual employee and are important because they communicate to employees what is important and what is expected of them.
Yes
86%
63%
Snapshot analysis
27%
No
Possibly the most worrying statistic of all is that almost 1 in 4 companies responding to this year’s survey have taken no steps to develop the requisite SRM skills for their organisation.
13%
31%
70%
Don’t know
1%
6%
3%
58 STATE OF FLUX
2020 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
59
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