Many companies have started to consider Strategic Workforce Planning as a tool to boost their productivity. However, some still don’t know what this is about and how they can implement it. For this reason, it’s important to be well-informed about these terms that could take your business in the road to success.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at a strategic view of workforce planning. You’ll learn how this activity can improve your recruitment and your operations. Let’s observe:
- 5 Things you should know about Strategic Workforce Planning
- What is strategic workforce planning?
- What is the purpose of strategic workforce planning?
- Which common misconceptions about workforce planning you must let go?
- How do you create a strategic workforce plan?
- What are the five steps in the workforce planning process?
- How can Connect Resources help you with workforce planning?
Things you should know about Strategic Workforce Planning
When a company is growing, it needs to hire employees that can carry out the essential tasks that keep the business running. However, few companies know how to do recruitment strategically, and this can harm the organization severely.
There are many hiring behaviors that companies do that are negative. For example, incurring in hiring cycles, where a company fill open positions once a bunch of employees have resigned, but they end up hiring the first applicants that may not be the best match for the vacancies.
If an organization handles hiring and recruitment with arbitrary decisions and implementing at-the-moment solutions, then it’s not doing a Strategic Workforce Planning.
Why do you need to worry about hiring and recruitment?
Perhaps you may feel like it’s not necessary to worry about recruitment. But if you’ve been hiring people quickly just to fill vacancies without considering if they’re the right fit for the future of your company, you may not have an outstanding workforce.
Here we have the best reasons why you shouldn’t make a quick hire without planning it strategically:
- It can damage your company in the long run
- You may not have the right people with the right skills to boost your business
- You’ll end up with a reactive workforce and continuous cycles of resigning and hiring
- Without great talent, your business won’t grow successfully
A reactive workforce is that where you only add people at the moment. This workforce won’t suit the needs of your business in the long term. For this reason, you must start considering how to plan your manpower.
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What is strategic workforce planning?
When we talk about Strategic Workforce Planning we refer to analyze your hiring needs so you can predict what kind of employees with which skills you need in the future. This way, you ensure your talent supply gets optimized and you can have the perfect staff at the right time.
Let’s observe the key aspects of how you can make your workforce planning strategically:
- Analyze your overall business strategy and needs
- Forecast and plan your employees regarding the skillset you need
- Define at which time you’re going to need to hire these employees
By implementing a strategic view for your recruitment you’re able to define plans that help your business grow. You can balance business demand and ensure the supply of key talent whenever it’s needed.
Why do companies struggle with workforce planning?
A lot of companies don’t know how to do strategic workforce planning because they lack the right expertise. If you don’t have the necessary experts that can develop a good plan, you’re not able to do it right and further you can have the services from outsourcing companies in dubai.
In this regard, there are several risks that you could face with a bad workforce planning. Here we have some of them:In addition, it’s difficult to have a great workforce planning because it involves other aspects outside of recruitment such as employee retention, training, compensation, and more.
- Impact negatively your existing employees
- Take too much talent with can be unnecessary
- Not hire the necessary employees at the right time, which may not account for your growing business
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What is the purpose of strategic workforce planning?
With Strategic Workforce Planning, corporations are able to tailor their staff according to their needs as the time goes by.
If you’re wondering what is the purpose of strategic workforce planning? Here we have some of its main objectives:
- Identify your business specific staffing needs
- Scale up or down your business with a local or global scale in mind
- Create an appropriate talent solution for your corporation
- Get the talent supply over time as per your business needs
- Balance the business demand regarding employees
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Which common misconceptions about workforce planning you must let go?
Before starting with Strategic Workforce Planning, it’s necessary to get rid of some of the most common misconceptions surrounding this topic. This is because these wrong beliefs affect your planning negatively.
Here we have some of the ones that you should let go:
It’s not for small business
Many small-sized corporations and start-ups don’t do workforce planning because they wrongly believe it’s not suited for them. However, it’s advisable for companies to plan their workforce strategically, no matter its size.
In this regard, workforce planning is also great for small businesses because it allows them to have a solid hiring budget. This way they ensure that you spend your efforts and money in hiring the right people.
And for larger corporations it’s also great because it helps them to plan their workers according to their needs.
Workforce planning doesn’t admit modifications
Another great misconception regarding workforce planning is the fact that companies believe it has to be perfect. Many think that once you have done your workforce planning, it has to be perfect and with no modifications.
But, the truth is that once you implement the plan you can make as many changes as your business needs.
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How do you create a strategic workforce plan?
To create your Strategic Workforce Planning successfully you have to consider a few aspects before.
In case you wonder how do you create a strategic workforce plan? Here we have some considerations you must have in this aspect:
Assess and understand the changes in your workforce
To have an effective planning, you first have to understand your workforce to know what you need. You must know how your business grows and which changes are occurring.
Here we have some of the aspects you should consider:
- The nature of your workforce and its quality: skillsets, qualifications, motivation, productivity, etc.
- Your company’s brand in the market
- Employee retention rates
- Business performance against its competitors
Get the resources you need to start planning
Once you have understood the nature of your workforce, you have to gather everything you need to start planning.
You need multiple resources, such as the following:
- Data: you need essential data about your employees to start planning. Get to know how much existing employees in each role you have, as well as their pay and location. Get also the number of temp workers you’ll need, retention rates for department, cost per hire, and any other useful data for recruitment.
- Technology: Once you have gathered your data, you need to process it to obtain usable metrics. You can use predictive analytics technology. With these tools you can get reports, predictions and forecast about your workforce.
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Create lines of communication between teams
It’s important to have collaboration among teams and departments, since they know exactly the employees they need. HR department has to have an open communication with other managers and company leaders.
Put together the team
Having your data and resources ready to start is part of the process, however, you must have a team to do the workforce planning.
It’s crucial to involve your top management in this process. Your planning team should consist on the following:
- Company leader: CEO, VP, board member, or other
- Top members from functional teams such as technology head, production floor manager, etc.
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What are the five steps in the workforce planning process?
When it comes to Strategic Workforce Planning, you must follow some steps so you can carry out this process successfully.
If you’re wondering what are the five steps in the workforce planning process?, here we have them:
Business strategies and hiring needs have to be aligned
To have an effective workforce planning, you must align your short and long-term business strategies to your hiring needs.
Your business strategy is related to whether you have a new product to be released, you’re planning a geographic expansion, you’re planning to enter a new market, or any other.
Therefore, you have to determine which of these business strategies could change your workforce and how these impact your acquisition strategy.
Keep in mind that this is the first step and it’s the most important. If you don’t have aligned your business and recruitment strategies, you can’t start.
Identify the skills and qualifications you need
Once you have determined your business strategies you must define which skills and competencies you need to support them.
Define the talent supply you need regarding the kind of employees and which qualifications you need in them. You have to ask yourself the following:
- What kind of talent do I need to fulfill these business strategies?
- In how much time do I need these employees?
- What is the timeline for each stage of the hiring process?
- Which roles are a priority to ensure success of the business strategy?
Determine the gaps in your workforce
To know how to plan you workforce it’s essential to analyze the current skills and competencies you already have. By doing this, you’re going to be able to determine the potential gaps in your workforce.
These are the ones you must fill, and you should plan your workforce in terms of them. In addition, examine the demographic trends so you can use this information in your recruitment process.
You’ll be able to know if you need to add any compensations and value propositions against your competitors.
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Talent acquisition strategy
With all the information you have gathered before, you are able to identify which talent you need and when you’ll need it.
The next step is to develop a tactical plan where you establish your course of action. You should include the following:
- Determine the cost for each talent strategy and impact on employees
- Succession and development plans
- Technology to implement to review and monitor the current workforce plan
- Training strategy for your workforce
- Establish the course of action for each stage: recruitment, retention, promotions, work plans, etc.
Monitor your progress
When you have your plan, you’re ready to start implementing it. However, keep in mind that it’s an evolving plan so it accepts changes and modifications. Thus, you must monitor it and evaluate it regarding your business goals and strategy.
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How can Connect Resources help you with workforce planning?
If you need assistance with Strategic Workforce Planning, here in Connect Resources we can help you. We can develop a set of procedures that help you define and get the best talent for your business. In addition, we can offer a comprehensive service where we offer assistance with retention, recruitment, and more.
Would you like to contact Connect Resources for PEO Services? You can call at +971 433 166 88 or send an email to contact@connectresources.ae, and you’ll talk to one of their representatives that will gladly answer all of your questions.
