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Steps For Successful Strategic Workforce Planning

Steps For Successful Strategic Workforce Planning

Date : Aug 18, 2020

Here are 5 steps to follow if you want your strategic workforce planning to be a success:

  1. Hire based on your long and short term business strategies – Whether you are planning to expand your current office, set up a new factory or launch a new product, who you need to hire and when should be aligned with your strategies. For this, assessing the present workforce and identifying any skill or knowledge gap is important, so that you know what you need in the new recruits. Also consider if the existing employees can be trained to achieve the results you have in mind.
  2. Identify essential roles and consider the hiring timeline – Strategic workforce planning requires you to decide which roles are absolutely essential and need you to hire relevant candidates in the near future. For example, a company might have too many accountants but not enough people in sales. Looking at the cost and revenue figures is also essential to decide which roles are necessary. Moreover, assess the recruitment process and the time it will take. It might usually involve screening and interviewing a candidate, making an offer, waiting for his or her notice period to get over, followed by onboarding.
  3. Assess your existing employees and analyze pain pointsEmployee assessment & development is a crucial aspect of strategic workforce planning. This means, you need to figure out the competencies of your current employees and detect any gap in knowledge or expertise. Taking a look at exit interviews or surveys can be helpful too, to understand how satisfied they are. Remember that employee engagement is vital for attracting as well as retaining the right talent. Periodic and fair reviews of performance should also be carried out to identify employees who are stagnating, performing below par, or might be better suited for a different position or department.
  4. Crafting and implementing the plan – After you decide on the kind of talent you need and when you need it, devise a plan that considers the following:
    1. How much it costs your business to carry out recruitment, promotions, work plans and retention, and how does it impact employee psyche
    2. In the light of the pandemic, assess if the new employees will be working remotely, as this will determine your office space requirement
    3. The impact of production downturn, organizational restructuring and more competition on your plan
    4. Consider if your new hires will have the necessary skills to keep you ahead of competitors and disruptors
    5. Major stakeholders and what aspects of the plan they need to review
    6. Decide how your strategy will be implemented and how seamless communication can be ensured
    7. Zero in on the technology that can track the progress of the workforce plan and measure its success
  5. Study the progress of the plan – Being able to analyze data will make your strategic workforce planning truly efficient. This way, you will know if the plan you had come up with is working or not. However, not many companies are comfortable with this practice. To stay ahead of competition though, detecting the link between business results and talent data is important. Companies can hire experienced management consultants for this purpose too.

When it comes to strategic workforce planning, remember that it is something that needs periodic revision to accommodate organizational changes. From recruitment and retention to compensation and development, you need to focus on multiple aspects to reduce people problems, invest in the right talent, and improve your bottom-line.