Like strategic planning, workforce planning can seem daunting at first glance. But if the two work in tandem, your organization is on the path to efficiency, profitability, and long-term success.
Workforce planning is the process of leveraging data to ensure that your workforce meets business needs on an ongoing basis. It is essential to keep your company right-staffed, and it empowers your HR team to make more informed decisions about your talent needs.
The Benefits
Effective workplace planning can help lead to operational efficiency, higher employee engagement, and a stronger competitive edge in the marketplace. You can’t achieve any of those goals without the right people – and workforce planning helps you to proactively manage your workforce, anticipate any talent gaps, and address them before they mushroom into bigger problems.
Data is Key
Workforce planning is based on analysis of data around current and anticipated staffing, employee retention and promotion rates, time to hire, and other key HR measurements. By using it as your starting point, you can make and justify fully-informed talent decisions.
Steps to Take
With data and stats as your North Star, make the following steps part of your workforce planning process:
- Develop your plan in alignment with your company’s strategic plan. Unless you have a full understanding of your organizational direction, effective workforce planning will be futile. Give this work the time and resources it deserves. If at any point strategy is unclear, take a beat and eliminate any disconnects.
- Get all the right people in the room. Workforce planning needs to be a collaborative process with input from relevant stakeholders across your business. This extends well beyond HR to senior leadership, finance, and front-line managers.
- Keep people in the loop. As you communicate your plan, share the “whys” and “hows” so employees company-wide understand the reasons behind any workforce changes.
- Define your KPIs. These may include headcount, attrition, retention, or promotion rates, tenure, quality of hire, voluntary and involuntary turnover, and diversity metrics.
- Pay attention to the labor market. Stay abreast of labor market trends in your industry as you assess potential staffing needs. For instance, if your competitors have ramped up hiring, it may provide some key insight into what you likewise need to do. It can help greatly to work with a staffing company for access to this market intel.
- Think out of the box . Beyond hiring and terminating, workforce planning may encompass other business considerations, such as technological solutions and the use of temporary or contract workers. It also may involve adjustments to operations to remove any bottlenecks or achieve scalability. Keep your entire business and all its facets on your radar screen.
- Monitor your efforts. Continuously track your workforce planning and adjust your future strategy as needed. Have retrospective conversations with all parties involved to learn from your experience.
There’s a lot involved in developing and implementing successful workforce planning. A qualified staffing partner can be an invaluable resource. To learn more, contact PrideStaff Modesto today.
