Workforce planning

Workforce Planning is a continual process used to align the needs and priorities of the organization with those of its workforce to ensure it can meet its legislative, regulatory, service and production requirements and organizational objectives. Workforce Planning enables evidence based workforce development strategies.[1]

Workforce Planning Definitions

Workforce Planning is a core function of human resource management and it is related to the systematic identification and analysis of what an organization is going to need in terms of the size, type, experience, knowledge, skills and quality of workforce to achieve its objectives.[2] It is a process used to generate business intelligence to inform the organization of the current, transition and future impact of the external and internal environment on the organization enabling it to be resilient to current structural and cultural changes to better position itself for the future.

Strategic Workforce Planning: usually covers a three to five year forecast period, aligned to business needs and outcomes. It focuses on identifying the workforce implications, current, transition and future of business strategic objects and includes scenario planning.

Operational Workforce Planning: usually covers the next 12–18 months and should align with the timeframe of the business planning cycle. It is the process and systems applied to gathering, analyzing and reporting on workforce planning strategy.[3]

Workforce Analytics Approach

An analytical approach is important as it provides a fact based method of understanding workforce behaviors. This analysis typically includes reviewing employee recruitment, promotion and turnover patterns. The analysis also uncovers the hidden causes of overtime, absenteeism, and low productivity.

Steps in Workforce Planning

There are fundamental activities that make up a Workforce Plan:

Getting Started
Establishing the team, building the business case; linking corporate, business, finance and workforce strategy; establishing communication plan to engage stakeholders; segmenting the workforce against strategic priorities; reviewing existing data; identifying information gaps; identifying future focused business scenarios.
Environment Scan
Environment Scanning is a form of business intelligence. In the context of Workforce Planning it is used to identify the set of facts or circumstances that surround a workforce situation or event.
Current Workforce Profile
Current State is a profile of the demand and supply factors both internally and externally of the workforce the organization has today.
Transition Workforce Profile
demand and supply factors for the transition from current to future workforce.
Future Workforce View
Future View is determining the organization’s needs considering the emerging trends and issues identified during the Environment Scanning.
Analysis and Targeted Future
Once critical elements are identified through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the future targets that are the best fit in terms of business strategy and is achievable given the surrounding factors (internal/external, supply/demand) are determined.
Risk Assessment and Risk Mitigation
The process is about determining appropriate actions to manage risk assessment and identify risk mitigation strategies to deliver the targeted future.
Action plan to embed strategic workforce planning into business planning process.
Monitor and measure impact of strategic workforce planning on business outcomes.

References

  1. Sloan, Julie. The Workforce Planning Imperative JSM, 2010. ISBN 978-1-921037-37-5 (pbk.)
  2. Buettner, Ricardo (2015). A Systematic Literature Review of Crowdsourcing Research from a Human Resource Management Perspective. 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Kauai, Hawaii: IEEE. pp. 4609–4618. doi:10.13140/2.1.2061.1845. ISBN 978-1-4799-7367-5.
  3. Sloan, Julie. The Workforce Planning Imperative JSM, 2010. ISBN 978-1-921037-37-5 (pbk.)
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