Workforce Planning Best Practices
From OrgChart.net
Contents |
Workforce Planning Overview
Workforce Planning is a systematic process which helps an organization ensure availability of talent for achievement of its current and future objectives. It is workforce planning which, when undertaken well in time, avoids problems due to either a surplus or shortage of people. Workforce Planning considers the experience, knowledge, skills and capability required for the successful and smooth functioning of the organization.
Workforce planning is an ongoing effort within the organization to ensure the alignment of the workforce with the company’s strategic objectives is proper and all legislative, regulatory and performance requirements are met.
Planning efficiently puts the right number of people with the correct skills in the right places at the right time. Complexities of the business environment and the iterative nature of the workforce planning process requires HR professionals to manage the progress of the workforce, which facilitates increased employee engagement and consistency in performance.
The Process of Workforce Planning
Workforce planning starts with a sound assessment of strategic position of the business, which involves:
- Size of labor force
- Key population
- Business goals and objectives
- Long-term intent for expansion/ diversification
- Location specific detailing
- Timelines for affecting changes
This assessment of the strategic business position is fed into the forecasts regarding workforce supply and demand which helps in identifying talent gaps and development a suitable plan. There should be attempts made regarding closing the gaps which is usually done though:
- recruitments plans,
- training and redeployment plans,
- plans related to redundancies, and
- talent retention plans
Components of Workforce Planning
The essential components of workforce planning are:
- Forecasting and assessment
- Succession planning
- Leadership development
- Recruiting
- Retention
- Redeployment
- Contingent workforce
- Potential retirements
- Performance management
- Career path
- Backfills
- Internal placement
- Environmental forecast
- Identifying job and competency needs
- Metrics
Major Areas of Thrust
Workforce-planning systems have four basic areas of focus:
- Talent Forecasting: This is a process for predicting changes in the demand for talent and how it is likely to be supplied. It could be a consequence of:
- change in company growth, output or revenue, or
- a demand stemming from need for special skills or technical knowledge, or
- an estimate of future vacancies based on:
- turnover rate,
- retirement data
- other
Availability of software which analyses data in relation to business goals helps generate accurate forecasts which can save the organization losses in terms of talent and costs.
- Targeted Action Plans: The next step is to provide the company with an advantage over its competitors. Action plans are generally developed for each of the forecasted areas. The action plans define responsibility and outline steps that should be taken by HR professionals to keep a talent pipeline going and to maintain the talent inventory in keeping with the firm’s growth and other requirements. Action plans concern themselves with:
- sourcing and recruiting adequate supply of key talent,
- internal development and supply of key talent, and
- forecasting the gap between talent needs and its availability.
- The Integration Plan: Action plans must be executed well if a company desires to meet its future workforce needs successfully. Support and willingness is required from Senior Manager to see the execution of workforce plans through to complete implementation.
- Revision: A good workforce plan is flexible and is anticipates revisions as changes never end. Metrics help in gauging what is not working so plans can be adjusted accordingly.
