The Leader - September 2007 - (Page 86) e x ecu t I v e p ro f Il e Fidelity’s Sarah Abrams: Follow the Talent by peter hollaNd Fidelity’s Sarah Abrams discusses why work-force planning must be at the heart of a company’s location strategy. The President of Fidelity Real Estate talks with CoreNet Global’s Peter Holland. holland: Fidelity understands the integration of real estate, human resources and the company’s business strategies. Many of your peers only aspire to an organization that operates at this level. How did you accomplish this? abrams: It takes a vision and plan that can be communicated by a compelling story and value proposition. In addition, it takes a deliberate influencing strategy. A compelling story in my view is one that is thoroughly researched, factually accurate and consistently told – no leaps of faith are required to agree with the end result. I always start with facts that are indisputable and work from there. Then, that compelling story has to be used to influence outcomes – that has been a key focus of mine for the past two years – communicating the message that our locations strategy must be based on work-force planning prin- ciples to ensure that we are able to attract and retain the talent that we need to grow this firm. I have communicated constantly and broadly to senior management in oneon-one meetings, senior leaders and functional groups of influence (HR and Finance) in varied forums, and to individual employees 100-300 at a time through “executive connections.” holland: Let’s talk about work-force planning. abrams: Very simply, we recognized several years ago that demographic trends would impact the size of the work force and the location of talent. Talent is, of course, the key ingredient to the success of our firm. Therefore our location strategy needed to take into account these demographic trends. holland: What is the role of real estate in work-force planning? abrams: At Fidelity, our group has provided the thought leadership around the critical need for work-force planning and the importance of using it as a basis for our location strategy. One of my direct reports, Rob Reilly, holds the title of Vice President for Work Force Initiatives. Together with his colleagues who run Client Service Management (Chris Horblit) and Planning/Acquisitions/ Research (Sanjiv Awasthi) we perform demographic research and analysis, particularly on the “supply” side, engage with the businesses to help them develop individual location strategies based on their current and planned work-force needs and liaise in a collaborative and coordinated way with human resources to help develop business unit migration plans and the like. holland: I am not personally familiar with any other real estate department with a work-force initiatives component. abrams: I have not run across one that does it this way but I can’t say for sure that no one is out there. Personally I think it would be impossible for us to deliver on what we think is critical to the firm without this type of capability. th e le ade r 86 september / october 2007
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