Strategic Workforce Planning: A cheat
sheet for STARTUPS
With the rise of HR, both in terms of domain spread
and perceived importance, a lot of “buzzwords” have
been making the rounds of corporate and academic
domains. One such term is Strategic Workforce Planning. There are multiple definitions of Strategic Workforce Planning, as demonstrated by multiple articles,
white papers and research papers. The basic reason
why Strategic Workforce Planning, or SWP, is doing
the rounds is that it borrows the already tested methodologies from different functions such as Operations,
Marketing, Finance etc. and applies them to an HRoriented function. An advantage to this approach is
that it lays the foundation to an integrated-systems
approach across domains. While the formulation of a
Strategic Workforce Plan and carrying out the entire
process has received decent limelight in recent times,
there are certain issues which any organisation faces
in its implementation. This is especially true for new
enterprises, or startups, who for the dearth of funds
and entrepreneurial capabilities, begin/tend to ignore
a lot of such important issues.
10
Strategic Workforce Planning: A cheat sheet for
startups gives a checklist of sorts. This checklist is intended to point out certain issues in the form of questions; these questions may be asked throughout the
SWP process or at specific instances as deemed fit by
the organisation. The primary intent is to have some
“strategic tollbooths” (ST) in place; these tollbooths
are meant as evaluative measures to check whether
the direction in which SWP is proceeding is appropriate for the organisation or not.
DOs
ST#1: Understand the role of HR in the overall
business
While this may seem as an obvious statement, research shows that an overwhelming majority of the
companies do not fully understand the role that the
HR function plays in achieving the overall business
October 2014 |CONSILIUM