Workforce Planning
Does your organisation has the necessary capability to succeed and achieve its vision?
Literature tells us that most companies fail to develop an effectiveness system to continuously improve and create real value for customers and employees.
What is workforce planning?
Defining it simply, workforce planning is “a systematic process for identifying, acquiring, developing, and retaining employees to meet the needs of the organisation.”
Workforce planning is a tool that assists organisations and managers plan for the future, anticipate and integrate change, manage the workforce and meet business goals. It provides a framework for making workforce decisions that align with meeting the strategic goals of the organisation. The workforce plan identifies how future staffing and skill needs will be met through recruitment, retention, staff development and training. Achieving this balance requires careful long and short-term planning. Most importantly ensuring all of the above are aligned to business aims and objectives. This ensures that planning is proactive and talent surpluses and shortages are avoided, where possible. Workforce planning includes the following steps:
- Workforce Analysis - understanding the organisation’s strategic direction and external environment, and analysing its impact on the workforce;
- Forecast needs - Analysing the current and future workforce needs and competencies;
- Analysing the gap - between the current and future needs;
- Developing strategies - to address workforce gaps;
- Implementing strategies - the execution of specific programs and projects to develop and maintain the workforce capability and capacity requirements;
- Monitor and evaluate - the effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce planning strategies in meeting objectives.
