An Introduction to Total Talent Strategy

Why thinking bigger about your workforce could be the difference between surviving and thriving

Martin Thomas has seen enough Excel spreadsheets masquerading as strategic workforce plans to last a lifetime. The veteran talent strategist, who spent nine years transforming how Philips thought about its global workforce, has a simple rule: "If you ever have Excel involved in your strategic workforce planning, you've just lost the strategic part."

It's a provocative statement that cuts to the heart of a fundamental shift happening in how the world's smartest organizations think about talent. Welcome to the era of Total Talent Strategy—where the old playbook of replacing departed employees with carbon copies is being rewritten entirely.

The Great Workforce Awakening

Picture this: A key employee leaves your marketing team. The traditional response? Post the same job description, run the same recruitment process, hire another marketing specialist. Rinse, repeat, perpetuate the cycle.

But what if that's exactly the wrong approach?

Thomas, now director at Workforce Strategy and Partner at the Talent Intelligence Collective, argues for a radically different mindset. "If an employee leaves, don't automatically replace them with an employee," he explains. "If a contingent worker moves on, don't automatically go for another contingent worker. Think about how you can get that work done."

This isn't just philosophical musing—it's strategic necessity. Western labor markets are facing what can only be described as a demographic cliff. The European Union has experienced roughly 30% fewer people available over the last 60 years. The United States faces similar challenges. Traditional talent pools are shrinking while the complexity of work is exploding.

The solution? Stop thinking about filling roles and start thinking about getting work done.

Strategic Workforce Planning: The Foundation That Changes Everything

Here's the uncomfortable truth most organizations refuse to acknowledge: they have no idea what their workforce needs will look like six months from now, let alone three years. They're playing a reactive game in a world that demands strategic foresight.

Thomas learned this lesson during his time at BT, where they were rolling out broadband infrastructure across the UK. The challenge wasn't just technical—it was human. Broadband cabinets require different skills than traditional copper telephone systems. They need power, electricity, a completely different expertise set.

"We needed people who would be flexible and willing to move around the countryside deploying broadband literally across the country," Thomas recalls. "And we found that people coming out of all aspects of the military had great skills—they were used to dealing with power, telecommunications, and they had that reliability and willingness to be mobile."

This wasn't about filling predetermined slots. It was about understanding the work that needed to be done, identifying where those skills existed, and creating pathways to access them. It was strategic workforce planning in action.

The key insight? Great workforce planning starts with understanding your future needs, not your current gaps. It requires looking beyond your industry's traditional talent sources and thinking creatively about skill transferability. Most importantly, it demands that you abandon the comfort of spreadsheets for the complexity of strategic thinking.

Total Workforce ≠ Total Talent: Understanding the Full Spectrum

If you've spent any time at talent conferences lately, you've probably heard "total talent" thrown around like confetti at a graduation ceremony. But Thomas makes a crucial distinction that most organizations miss entirely.

"Total talent is about how you get the talent—how do you acquire the talent," he explains. "Total workforce is around how you think about your broader workforce, how you think about getting the work done, getting it done in the right way, in the right place, at the right cost."

This isn't semantic nitpicking. It's the difference between tactical recruiting and strategic workforce design.

Consider the emerging reality of global talent distribution. By 2050, Nigeria is forecasted to have the same population as the current European Union—roughly 400 to 450 million people. By 2100, Nigeria could have a population approaching that of present-day China, while China's population is expected to halve.

Organizations that understand total workforce strategy aren't just aware of these demographic shifts—they're building them into their talent strategies today. They're asking fundamental questions: Where will the skills we need be developed? How can we access them? What partnerships, technologies, or operating models will we need?

This thinking extends far beyond geography. It encompasses automation, AI, internal mobility, partnerships, outsourcing, and yes, traditional hiring. It's about orchestrating all sources of capability to meet your organization's needs.

The "Bot" Factor: When AI Breaks Down the Job Description

Here's where things get really interesting. Artificial intelligence isn't just changing how we work—it's fundamentally altering what work needs to be done by humans.

Thomas advocates for what he calls "augmented intelligence" rather than artificial intelligence. "I think we should be able to look back on it and think in the day that it's now just a tool like that spreadsheet," he says. "People thought that with the internet and email were going to destroy jobs—they just changed jobs."

But this change isn't happening at the margins. It's happening at the core of how work gets structured.

Smart organizations are deconstructing roles into constituent tasks and asking hard questions: Which of these tasks can be automated? Which require human creativity, empathy, or strategic thinking? Which can be enhanced by AI tools? Which might be better outsourced or handled through partnerships?

This isn't about replacement—it's about optimization. The most valuable talent you have is the talent you already have. But that talent needs to be deployed against the work that truly requires human capabilities, enhanced by technology where it makes sense, and supported by the full spectrum of workforce options.

The organizations that figure this out first will have an enormous competitive advantage. They'll be faster, more efficient, and more adaptable. They'll also be the employers that the best human talent wants to work for—because they'll be focused on meaningful, impactful work rather than tasks that could be better handled by machines.

The New Role of TA: From Headcount to Workforce Capability

If you're in talent acquisition, this evolution might feel threatening. After all, if organizations are thinking more strategically about work design and less about traditional hiring, where does that leave TA professionals?

The answer: right at the center of the action, if they're willing to evolve.

"Recruiters are very good at taking the need from multiple managers and translating it to something that the candidate can understand," Thomas observes. "They could be in a very good position going forward once we get through this cycle."

But that evolution requires a fundamental shift in mindset. Instead of being order-takers who fill requisitions, TA professionals need to become workforce strategists who help organizations think through their total talent needs.

This means developing new capabilities: understanding workforce analytics, becoming fluent in skill-based hiring, learning to work with procurement teams on contingent workforce strategies, and yes, figuring out how AI can enhance rather than replace their work.

It also means getting comfortable with ambiguity. The future TA professional won't just be filling known roles—they'll be helping organizations figure out what roles and capabilities they'll need next.

Building Your Total Talent Strategy: Where to Start

So how do you actually implement a total talent strategy? Thomas offers practical advice based on years of real-world experience:

First, get HR and procurement talking. "Number one thing I would say is get the two of them talking," Thomas emphasizes. "Talent acquisition within the HR piece—they are out talking to the hiring manager who actually owns the demand every single day. Procurement can't do that, they haven't got enough people."

Second, think partnerships before build-outs. Don't assume you need to build every capability in-house. Thomas recalls how AIG built their first operation in India through a build-operate-transfer model, using a third party to establish the operation before taking it internal.

Third, invest in talent intelligence. Understanding where skills exist globally, what educational institutions are producing the capabilities you'll need, and how talent markets are evolving isn't nice-to-have information—it's strategic necessity.

Fourth, map your internal skills. Many organizations have valuable capabilities they don't even know about. Use AI tools to analyze the skills in your current workforce and identify opportunities for internal mobility and development.

Finally, abandon the spreadsheet mentality. Invest in business intelligence tools that can integrate data from your HRIS, VMS, finance systems, and external talent intelligence sources. "Don't try and do that in any one of those systems," Thomas advises. "Put it in a business intelligence tool to display it, to show it, to bring all of those data sources together. That's where you get the wow moment."

The Future Is Already Here

As organizations navigate the ongoing economic uncertainty and technological disruption, the ones that will thrive are those that think differently about their workforce. They'll be the companies that see beyond traditional job categories to understand the work that actually needs to be done. They'll be the employers that can access global talent pools, deploy technology strategically, and create meaningful work for their human workforce.

The demographic realities, technological capabilities, and economic pressures that make total talent strategy necessary aren't emerging trends—they're current realities. The question isn't whether your organization will need to evolve its approach to talent and workforce planning. The question is whether it will lead that evolution or be forced to follow.

Martin Thomas has seen the future of work, and it's not about filling positions. It's about solving for capability, thinking globally about talent, and orchestrating all sources of work completion to create competitive advantage.

The organizations that understand this distinction will write the next chapter of business success. The ones that don't will find themselves trying to play tomorrow's game with yesterday's playbook.

And in a world where Nigerian universities are producing engineering graduates "like it's going out of fashion" while Western birth rates decline, that's a game they're unlikely to win.

The Total Talent Strategy isn't just about hiring better—it's about thinking differently about work itself. And for the organizations bold enough to embrace this shift, the competitive advantages are just beginning to emerge.

---

Check out The Open Talent Report: Total Workforce Strategy: The Future of Talent with Martin Thomas