According to Gartner’s 2022 CEO study, the workforce has become the third most important priority for CEOs in 2022 and 2023,1 making this a top issue for the highest-level executives of the enterprise. A number of these workforce issues are the great resignation, hybrid work and burnout. All of these are at the forefront of the VP of HR agenda. Gartner has extensive research addressing these topics (see recommended reading below). However, the shift from the human capital function to CEO and boardroom conversations often has additional dimensions. Beyond attracting, acquiring, retaining and training talent, the collective delivery execution of remote, globally distributed personnel, workflows, processes, and enabling tools and technologies add to the complexity. This translates to productivity and utilization of personnel in pursuit of team-based synergistic collaboration. The collective impact on time (cycle time, elapsed time, reaction time), quality and risk is the boardroom conversation of “labor volatility.” The biggest market implication is business disruption; specifically, the inability to:Launch a new product or serviceDeliver an existing product or serviceAvoid significant delays that have a “material” financial impact The term “material” is an accounting term that means significant financial consequence that must be explained on financial disclosures. This podcast features a case study of global talent resilience to showcase the art of the possible for addressing labor volatility. The case study is about EPAM, which started in the U.S. in 1993 as a software engineering services company. The focus was to deliver application development and engineering services from Eastern Europe. Now, EPAM is a service provider that is a consulting firm, system integrator or managed services firm.PAM had been consistently growing at a strong pace from its foray into the public market (2012 IPO). At the time, financial and industry analysts had identified one of its areas of vulnerability as its unusually high concentration (85%) of personnel in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Thus, EPAM’s leadership developed and began executing a multiyear plan to derisk by shifting talent across 50 countries around the world. The plan was moving forward with investments in highly distributed collaboration tools, client engagement and people platforms, and new agile development approaches targeted to multicultural and time-zone-agnostic work techniques. Starting in 2014, a series of disruptive events occurred. There were significant geopolitical issues in Belarus, Crimea and other areas of importance to EPAM operations. This forced EPAM to accelerate its plan. Then, we were all impacted by the pandemic. Similar to many other companies, EPAM was navigating the complexities of the pandemic-mandated, almost instantaneous shift to fully remote operations.hen EPAM entered the public markets in 2012, it had 8,000 employees, with 82% concentrated in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). By 2015, it lowered its concentration in CEE to 71%, having grown to 18,000 employees. There was continued progress over the years. In the second quarter of 2022, EPAM had 60,000 employees, with a concentration of 31% in Central Eastern Europe. In this podcast, EPAM’s CEO Arkadiy Dobkin recounts how his team made the incredible shift of people and resources out of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to more than 12 other countries. From August 2020 through May 2022, EPAM shifted close to 10,000 employees from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to countries such as Poland, Georgia, Turkey, Lithuania and many others. In summary, EPAM went from 85% of its people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in 2012, to 69% in 2015, to 31% in 2022. By any standard, this kind of people pivot is amazing and is a demonstrated example of global talent resiliency.About the GuestOur host Frances Karamouzis is joined by Arkadiy Dobkin. Dobkin is the CEO, president and chairman of the board at EPAM Systems, a leading digital