Richard Kershaw

Richard has a lot of experience supporting Konica Minolta's business strategy by determining the right skills and capabilities people should have now and in the future. He sees himself as a partner and consultant. By analysing data, exchanging ideas and collaborating with a wide range of people in many different fields, he helps to shape the future of the company.

I'm a Workforce Planning partner in the people and culture team at Konica Minolta UK. I joined the company eight years ago, after I completed my CIPD in Human Resource Management. I started in learning and development, where I looked after training and development in particular. As I moved more towards behavioural skills, I learned a lot about talent management, a topic I focused on within my next role. I helped the UK business to shape talent and succession by working out different ways we could assist people with learning and enhancing their educational skills. I identified skills and capabilities for today and tomorrow, which was useful for workforce planning, given that we are on the edge of something quite exciting in our digital evolution. I'm now concentrating on data analytics in order to find solutions to questions such as: What do we need in term of skills and capabilities? What do we need our workforce to look like in terms of size and structure? And how do we start to work together with our stakeholders in the UK and Europe? I'm a big believer in the fact that you never stop learning. There's always something new on the horizon and at Konica Minolta, we have the opportunity to learn, grow and develop on a personal level.

As the company evolved, the opportunities increased and we introduced more agile ways of working

Many of our conversations are happening virtually, with supporting technology across various platforms. I'm always looking for the next upgrade and what can be done differently. Recently we launched a collaborative tool. As one of the first users, I started to share benefits, add people and break silos by creating those virtual teams. I made it easy and more intuitive by tagging people in the chats and correcting documents in real time. Ultimately, I saved time, increased efficiency and shared technologies for supporting collaboration.

I'm not just a man of action at work! Outside the office I'm passionate about sport. People know me as a crazy runner because I run all the time no matter what the weather's like! Now I'm a very tired runner because we have a baby at home. I'm balancing a full-time job with also being there for a newborn. Konica Minolta has been incredibly understanding during these challenging times. Because of our agile working methods, I can take a lunch break with my baby. If I need to go to the dentist I can go at lunchtime and then work later that day. If I have to have a tyre changed, I can sit in the waiting room and work there for 30 minutes. I believe in shaping my day to suit both my workload and my private life. It's a kind of partnership. I work to solve the issues of the business and I schedule that for optimum results. I love having the autonomy to do that. Of course, you have to be disciplined. It's all about planning and anticipating. This is why the leader's role of the future is different. They will change from being task managers to becoming counsellors, motivators and coaches.

My colleagues are incredibly welcoming and friendly

The atmosphere stays informal even when someone new joins the team. Considering the size of the company, it's amazing to feel like a person and not a number. I enjoy a very collaborative approach, coming together, investigating and solving problems. I like the fact that we have the opportunity to change. Things are not static and rigid. People have the possibility to make a real difference. We have contributors, influencers and difference-makers all throughout the organisation. Personally, I feel proud of the contributions that people make to shape the company.

We are very loyal but also sometimes a bit too traditional, which might prevent people from flourishing quite as much as they'd like. However, we do a lot of work to enrich our people. For example, there's a massive focus on making the women's network inclusive. Many more networks can be joined and we always reach out to people through our platforms. We're working on enriching society and enriching people, for example through our charity commission.

Our way of working is more inclusive and less transactional

I like to think of myself as a business partner and a consultant. I support our people in our business. My aim is to understand their problems, doing research and checking with different people to find the best solutions. At the same time, I make recommendation and suggestions. I try to bring some data analysis and logic into decision-making, as we sometimes decide too much based on feelings. This means taking available data and providing insights based on internal and external factors concerning talent, workforce, skills and capabilities. If I spot a particular trend for which we need skills in the organisation, it's up to me to provide the data analysis to back this up, along with suggestions for how we can fulfil our needs.

One of my tasks is to be familiar with all the external trends in the marketplace and how these affect our business so that I can share this information internally. Recently I did a lot of thought-leadership with external and internal partners, sharing my research and thoughts with those people on areas such as the skills of the future, the future of work, the effect of automation on our workplace and how organisations can adapt. I'm also working with our Business Innovation Centre to optimise systems and procedures. So my expertise is not solely limited to "People&Culture". I also support the business by sharing knowledge and contributing to the development of digital practices. Through our in-depth digital work, the opportunity to learn has been enhanced. We don't need to be all in one room to run a workshop together. We are now more mobile and more agile. We can share information more interactively. People can work smarter rather than harder.

Anyone at Konica Minolta can contribute to innovation. You don't need permission! Everybody has natural ability and when we really want something and are prepared to fight for it, we get it. For example, in 2018 we identified a need to develop a better system for sharing performance-related feedback. In our social interactions we expect to be able to respond or leave comments without hesitation and it's important that we can do the same in our working environment too. Rather than wait six months or a year to share valuable insights, we thought of how we could achieve this more quickly. I brought the challenge to the Technology Innovation Programme, a unique entrepreneurship programme on a pan-European level with a real impact. There, I had six months to explore the idea further on my own terms with a cross-disciplinary team. At the end of this period we presented an app for instant feedback to 200 people and achieved second place in the competition.

Diversity and inclusion around thoughts and opinions are very important. How can I introduce more thought-leadership and offer people greater insights? I gather information, thoughts and ideas rather than just telling people what we're doing. Having that exchange of dialogue and including people helps to provide a more customer-centric approach. It's more inclusive and less transactional.