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Dear Planning Challenged,
Please let yourself know: What workforce planning is?
How to begin with it and why do we need it?
The world’s economy is growing at x%, combined with
increasing globalization, accelerating technological
change and soaring competition. The reality of easing
economic and operating pressures is a major risk to
comprehend the severity of the long-term talent and
skills shortages organizations are facing around the
world. Albeit, for recent years of slump, market might
be tempt to put Workforce Planning on the back burner
but now the depth of talent shortages have starkly
coming obvious initiating war for talent already.
With different publications highlighting different
definitions, the basic interpretation for Strategic
Workforce Planning is the process of identifying,
analyzing and forecasting the talent an organization
needs to achieve its strategic objectives. Although it
might sound very obvious, most companies have not
been in this position to determine what kind of talent is
required on their strategic plan. This is the reason for
which Strategic Workforce Planning requires business
leaders to exercise a business-focused strategic practice
that is best completed within the annual business
planning process. In previous years, workforce planning
had different synonyms of human resources planning,
human capital planning, workforce analytics etc. The
limitation of these programs was to target short-term
budgeting requirements. However, Strategic Workforce
Planning emphasizes on fulfilling requirements with
long-term talent trends, external market influences and
proactive planning. The focus is on the crucial link
between strategy and HR confirming relevant HR practices and programs.
So to begin with our planning, let’s look at the steps
one needs to take when setting up a new function:
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1) Set specific goals
Find out what we’re trying to accomplish. Are
we trying to increase retention or employee
productivity? What is the key driver which is
one of the factors to that one achievement? For
each goal, one needs a metric to periodically
assess whether the HR systems are moving the
workforce in the right direction.
2) Adopt a forecast
Since we are trying to achieve a business
change that is a driver to workforce change, it’s
better to adopt an existing set of forecast either
related to sales, budget, business plan et al.
3) Identify first movers
It’s better to work out on the historical research
of the firms which have already acted first.
Tracking and benchmarking them can help an
organization to draft an early-warning system.
4) Cooperation
Without integrating from existing HR programs
of recruiting, retention, succession planning,
business relevance can’t appropriately be
created.
5) Planning programs
To make a start, if the adopted forecast delivers
revenue for business, then prioritize business
units and focus on high-impact areas to achieve
that objective.
Fig1. Need of Strategic Workforce Planning to
build image of HR
October 2014 |CONSILIUM