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Workforce planning requires in-depth insight into what a company needs in terms of talent and skills. This kind of planning generally adds a level of abstraction to operations, allowing HR a bird's eye view of the business.
From there, HR administrators can determine whether a hire is a good fit overall, not just because of their qualifications — several aspects are typically considered, including where the company is coming from and where it is headed, as well as the employee’s own goals and dreams and how they fit with the organization.
Here, 14 experts from Forbes Human Resources Council examine some of the key steps in workforce planning and why they are so crucial to the organization’s success.
1. Ensure Alignment And Goal Clarity
The most critical step in strategic workforce planning is alignment — alignment of business strategy, organization structure, people and results. Ensure clarity around strategic objectives, then ensure you have a holistic organization design and talent plan to drive getting the right people in the right role at the right time to deliver results. Sounds easy but takes discipline! - Elisa Gilmartin, Fuze
2. Understand Where The Company Is Headed
Strategic workforce planning is a key component of the overall talent strategy. It starts with understanding where the company is headed; future organizational capabilities. This helps the organization identify new skills and competencies needed to inform learning and development opportunities and its talent acquisition strategy. - Sarika Lamont , E3/Sentinel
3. Execute A Current State Assessment
Executing a current state assessment in workforce planning is absolutely critical as many workforces tend to jump into planning without truly understanding what resources they have in the first place. An organization needs to understand who they have in place right now, where they're going and how they’re developing to create a more accurate plan of action for the future. - Srikanth Karra
4. Create A Staffing Model
It's essential to create a staffing model to predict and drive workforce planning. For example: how much revenue can an account executive generate, or how many calls can a customer service specialist take per day? Along with revenue and operating plans, answers to questions like these help shape your strategic workforce plan, for both headcount and timing. Without them, it's just a guess. - Jennifer Marszalek
5. Determine Current Talent Gaps
To create the right workforce plan, you need to identify your organization's current talent gaps and needs and understand how those relate to your strategic roadmap. If you determine something is in conflict, then you can create the right plan to focus on uptraining your current team or hiring new team members with that missing expertise. - Jessica Adams, Brad's Deals
6. Identify The Long-Term Needs
Identify the long-term needs of the business beyond the next step. Research and awareness of the long-term future will allow you to take the next step in your workforce strategy knowing what you need to develop in the workforce for the step thereafter. When we just plan for tomorrow, we are behind the change curve because development and hiring for the future must be one step ahead of tomorrow. - David Alsop
7. Challenge The Status Quo
The expectation must be set up front that we need to think differently about workforce planning. Then, challenge the status quo and try to really evaluate where people are really needed, why, how and how many. - Lotus Buckner
8. Ensure All Data Is Collated In One Place
The first crucial step in strategic workforce planning — and where many companies run into a roadblock — is making sure all the information is collated in one place to perform that planning work. That marrying of human capital, workforce management and financial data is not always easy to accomplish based on different systems in place. - Jeremy Ames
9. Start At The Finish Line
Start at the finish line. You can't know when you've arrived at your goal if you don't know where that is. If you start with the finish line, you can work backward to figure out what you need and when. - Elizabeth Roberts
10. Focus On Core Competencies
Understanding where individual team members rate against specific core competencies necessary for driving the business allows you to understand which competencies you need to add going forward and in which department. Focus on the trio that makes up a competency — knowledge, skills and abilities. - Sherrie Suski
11. Think Beyond Hiring New Talent
Think beyond hiring in new talent. This is one lever, and an important one, but not the only option — certainly not if you want to retain and engage your current talent. Invest in developing their skills, knowledge and experience so that they can rotate and enjoy a variable career journey within your organization rather than going external. - Paul Phillips
12. Constantly Follow Through And Pivot
One essential step in strategic workforce planning is the follow-through with evaluating, monitoring and making ongoing adjustments to the workforce plan. Ensure regular performance monitoring on the implemented solutions to identify if gaps are addressed. A workforce plan should be ongoing and fluid to pivot as the strategic direction, workforce supply and workloads change over time. - Sherry Martin
13. Consider Your Budget And Forecast
The most critical step is to consider your budget and forecast for the second half of the year. Before hiring and moving back to business as usual, companies need to consider their needs for six, 12 and 18 months out and take into account employee retention, internal promotions and internal lateral moves. Retention and investing in employee growth are key to profit increase and workforce planning. - Polina Wilson
14. Consider Your Company's Site Strategy
Considering your company's site strategy is a major component of workforce planning that tends to be overlooked. Where do you want your people? Which groups must be co-located? Should you pivot to a remote-first environment? Many companies are looking at this now, and rightfully so. Clarifying the company's philosophy on site strategy is closely tied to both business and workforce planning goals. - Tracy Cote