What, Why and How of Strategic Workforce Planning
Why do we need it?
Major Components of Strategic Workforce Planning:
As already marked, Strategic Workforce planning is a
systematic & fully integrated organizational process that
involves proactively planning ahead to avoid talent surpluses or shortages based on the premise that a company can be staffed more efficiently if it forecasts its talent
needs as well as the actual supply of talent that is or will
be available.
There is no standard format for a plan. Some workforce
plans contain many components, while others contain
just a succession plan for senior managers. There is no
one-size-fits-all model. While there are some basic components that all plans should include, there are some
supplementary components that can and will work
better for some companies than others. The following is
an indicative list of the most common components of a
workforce plan:
Unfortunately, even after knowing the definitions well,
the way that HR people act or fail to act compounds the
pain of the boom or bust phases. The issue is even
though HR call themselves strategic business partners,
they tend to lack a long-term, big-picture view of HR and
the business. As a result, more than 90 percent of HR
departments have no independent planning and forecasting function. So HR should need to understand the
impact this process could make on revenues with the
following reasons as to why do an organization need
planning.
Planning for Talent management
Action plans outline what specific actions HR and managers will have to take in terms of talent management.
They are designed to attract, retain, redeploy, and develop the talent a company needs in order to meet the
forecasted quantity and quality of employees in the future. The action plans designate responsibility and outline the specific steps that should be taken in order to fill
the talent pipeline and maintain the talent inventory at
the levels required for the firm’s projected growth rate.
Each action plan has a set of goals, an individual who is
responsible for making sure the plan objectives are met,
a budget, a timetable, and a measurable result.
Succession Planning
Retention
Redeployment
Career Path
Recruiting
Metrics to determine effectiveness of workforce
planning
Step Forward
The primary reason for doing workforce planning is economics. If done well, it will increase productivity, cut
labor costs, and dramatically cut time-to-market because an organization would have the right number of
people, with right skills, in right places, at right time.
Strategic Workforce planning works because it forces
everyone to begin looking toward the future, and prevents surprises. It requires managers to plan ahead and
to consider all eventualities. Effective planning is an integrated talent-management system that has been underused and underappreciated.
Fig 2 Maturity Levels of Strategic Workforce
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October 2014 |CONSILIUM