Strategic Workforce Planning: A Value Adding 5-Step Process

Workforce planning is a process that is often poorly understood and rarely implemented within organisations. One reason is that it implies long-term thinking. This can be in contradiction with the short-term orientation of companies. However, the ability to effectively anticipate future labour needs and match them with the organisation’s trajectory is a necessity for HR departments. We've outlined a simple 5-step process that gives insight into how to approach workforce planning for your business. But first, let’s define what workforce planning is. 

Workforce planning analyses a company’s strategic objectives, anticipates their impact on the organisation’s operating activities and accurately plans the human resources needed to achieve these objectives. Workforce planning typically involves asking both qualitative and quantitative questions: How many staff do I need? With what type of skills? In what type of organisational structure? For how long?

Strategic workforce planning is still rarely implemented in companies. Like any planning exercise, it is difficult to quantify its impact and it is often regarded as a non-value adding activity. Often because its value can only be measured at a specific point in time. But this is a mistake. Human Resources departments must convince their companies of the importance of strategic workforce planning. 

Failing to do so can bring the organisation into a delicate situation. For example, if the company finds itself with a sudden shortage or surplus of staff, the impact on the HR department will be huge. More efforts will have to be made in order to hire new talent or relocate others accordingly. 

This is why workforce planning should be considered a critical task by any HR department. It should take into consideration the company’s strategic focus and make sure every stakeholder is aligned towards achieving the same goal.