How to Create a Workforce Planning Model

Do you use a workforce planning model? While this buzzword is often mentioned, many people don’t understand the concept. A good workplace planning definition is that it’s a strategy for any organization that advises on how to plan the workforce to match strategic goals, staffing, and skill sets. A workforce planning model includes recruitment, retention, employee development, knowledge transfer, succession planning, and management.

There are three components of strategic workforce planning. They include:

• Analysis of the current workforce and their skills
  You can’t effectively plan if you don’t know what you’re working with. This step provides an overview of current people, processes, strengths, and inefficiencies. You may find that the organization is short-staffed in some areas and top-heavy in others. You may also uncover where staff needs to be retrained in areas that lack productivity.
• Projections of future workforce skill needs
  The company’s strategic goals should help in determining whether additional staff are needed. You should have an action plan in place that helps identify where employees can be moved to support future needs while creating a flexible scenario to support staff and customers.
• Development of strategies to meet those needs
  Strategies developed should coincide with the action plan to ensure nothing is missed. This not only includes staff and employees but also shifts the focus to the management team. Are the right managers in place to move the company forward? Are they promoting a healthy company culture? These strategies should also address the technology and resources needed to support current and anticipated needs in the future.

These directly align with the main principles of workforce planning, which are to reduce labor costs; identify and respond to the changing needs of customers; identify relevant strategies for efficient and effective people development; target inefficiencies; improve retention; and improve the productivity and quality of work.

What is the role of workforce planning in HRM? Human resources must lend their expertise to management in helping build an effective workforce plan. HR must also make sure the talent is there to support the plan and identify the talent that will take the company to the next level. HR will future-proof the workforce of the company while educating the management team on how vital it is to invest in upskilling and personal business development for employees.

Workforce planning examples include talent mobility, retention, employee development, knowledge transfer, and succession management. There are different types of strategic workforce planning examples, such as short-term and long-term planning. One workforce planning model example is the Flow Model. This asks different types of questions to determine what type of roles the company may need in the future.

An example of workforce planning in business is taking the time to assess employees and determine good candidates for leadership positions within the organization. Leadership has been and may continue to be a challenge. Leaders in a company must be able to encourage efficient processes, improve productivity, take the lead, implement new policies and create a positive company culture. There must be a plan in place outlining current management and identifying their abilities.

What is the workforce planning process? This is where you will address any gaps or inconsistencies between today’s workforce and what the company needs tomorrow.

Here are the workforce planning process steps that must be taken to be successful:

• Set a strategic direction
  A strategic workforce planning model aligns any workforce requirements and coincides with the annual business plans.
• Review your company’s current employee skill profiles
  By reviewing the skill profiles, you’ll be able to see what the workforce has and needs. This can help set the direction for the future.
• Create an action plan
  An action plan helps put operational workforce planning strategies into place on the structure of the organization and where the workforce needs to be.
• Apply the action plan
  The action plan will put things into perspective and identify internal or external barriers that currently exist.
• Plan and revise closely
  As you implement the plan, it’s important to take notice of the gaps that may become detrimental to the plan, revise, and pivot.

Although there is a difference between workforce planning and talent management, they somewhat overlap. While workforce planning analyzes, forecasts, and plans the workforce supply and demand, talent management ensures that the organization has the right people in place with the right skills at the right time.

When considering a workforce planning framework, you must have a way to collect and understand all the data of your workforce to accurately create a usable model. The strategic workforce planning framework helps HR identify the talent needs of the company to create a strategy to set things up for the future. The framework outlines and implements all aspects of workforce planning, including how to merge the right talent, tech, and workforce models to reach the organization’s goals.

Knowing the right tools and talent software that can help with the large-scale management of your company’s skills and talent data is important. There are different examples of workforce planning tools that could be helpful to your organization.

Many may consider some of the best workforce planning tools for HR professionals to be a strategic workforce planning map that shows how workforce planning activities align with the organizational strategy; the 9-Box grid that maps both employee performance and their potential in 4 phases; HR dashboarding, a compensation and benefits analysis that groups individuals in overpaid and underpaid categories, and scenario planning that anticipates different outcomes of the future to make sure contingency plans are in place. These are used to identify current workforce capabilities.

When considering a workforce planning framework, you must have a way to collect and understand all the data of your workforce to accurately create a usable model. The strategic workforce planning framework helps HR identify the talent needs of the company to create a strategy to set things up for the future. The framework outlines and implements all aspects of workforce planning, including how to merge the right talent, tech, and workforce models to reach the organization’s goals.

Knowing the right tools and talent software that can help with the large-scale management of your company’s skills and talent data is important. There are different examples of workforce planning tools that could be helpful to your organization.

Many may consider some of the best workforce planning tools for HR professionals to be a strategic workforce planning map that shows how workforce planning activities align with the organizational strategy; the 9-Box grid that maps both employee performance and their potential in 4 phases; HR dashboarding, a compensation and benefits analysis that groups individuals in overpaid and underpaid categories, and scenario planning that anticipates different outcomes of the future to make sure contingency plans are in place. These are used to identify current workforce capabilities.