See Pigment in action
The best way to understand what Pigment could do for you is to see it in motion. Sign up for a personalized demo with our team today.
Ebook
Workforce Planning: An HR leader’s playbook
In this guide, we explore 5 steps HR leaders can take to ensure they’re setting up their organization for success.
Table of Contents
01. Introduction
Authors
Albane Bressolle-Chataigner, Head of People, Pigment
Steve Taylor,
Solutions Consultant, Pigment
Tom Cvijanovic,
Director and Solutions Lead, Viridian
Workforce planning (WFP), broadly defined, is the process through which an organization seeks to understand current and future workforce needs. Whatever the short or long-term goals of your organization are, the first step to achieving them will be to ensure it’s the correct size and shape.
But getting this process right can be extremely challenging - it involves a multitude of different data sources, requires collaboration between stakeholders who often have contradictory priorities, and relies on a great deal of foresight, which can be challenging in a shifting business environment.
In this playbook, we will explore 5 steps HR leaders can take to ensure they’re setting up their organization for success - after all, your people strategy is your business strategy.
02. Workforce planning has never been more important
Workforce planning should already be a top priority for your business, but over the coming years it’ll become ever-more important. But why?
Hiring (and firing) is incredibly expensive
Recruiting people is expensive. Recruiting the wrong people is even more expensive. A workforce plan that’s aligned to your business objectives will mean that you’re able to fill seats with the right candidates for the job, and that they’re more successful in their roles (therefore driving down attrition).
It forces the whole business to think strategically
Planning is something the finance department is accustomed to already, but the rest of the business might not be as hot on.
Workforce planning provides a good opportunity for finance to develop relationships with business partners in other departments, and acts as a catalyst for those departments to think strategically about their requirements, and how they fit with business objectives.
It keeps you ready for disruption
A tumultuous decade of change worldwide has left one thing clear: it pays to have a plan (and a backup plan, or two). Supply chain disruption, the pandemic and work-from-home revolution, Brexit - all of these have had massive workforce implications for organizations globally.
A well-oiled workforce planning process – one that allows you to model multiple different scenarios and prepare accordingly – is your organization’s best friend when navigating uncertainty.
Skills requirements are changing
The skills required to thrive in the workplace 10 years from now might look drastically different than they do today - with AI poised to transform many jobs, organizations will need a plan for how to accommodate change.
And it’s not just AI to think about. What if your strategic plan requires hiring experts in quantum computing, for example? Do you know where to hire those people? How much should you pay them? Your peers may already be asking these questions, which means you should be too.
It is for this reason that many organizations are seeking to become more skills-based.
According to Deloitte:
Becoming a skills based organization will mean you’re more flexible, agile, and resilient in the face of changing business conditions.
03. What does best practice look like?
In Strategic Workforce Planning: Best Practices and Emerging Directions, author Tanya Moore identifies four stages of maturity that exist in modern workforce planning:
Level one
Companies at level 1 are operating in a mostly reactive manner, over the short term, and typically only for the purpose of cost management (rather than strategic workforce initiatives). This level of planning is driven by finance and from a pure headcount/budget perspective, without any meaningful insights or analysis.
Level two
At level 2, organizations are beginning to use methods like 9 Box to assess the nature of the workforce in the company from a talent perspective. These methodologies can be useful in identifying top/bottom performers and skills gaps that exist in the organization, and can help identify areas where strategic focus should be placed from a planning standpoint.
Companies at level 2 start standardizing their role and skills taxonomy - an important foundational step to take that enables progression to more advanced workforce planning techniques.
Level three
At this level organizations are getting more involved with their own data - examining things like attrition rate, promotion rates, ramp time, and more. To do so, at this stage most organizations invest in technology to support workforce planning.
Based on their analysis of the company as-is and where it will need to go, level 3 organizations know the specific levers they must turn to achieve their goals, and deploy targeted programs to do so.
Level four
At level 4, workforce planning is no longer seen as a HR process - it is engrained in the organization across every department, with involvement from business leaders, IT, operations, and finance.
Workforce planning takes place over the short and the long term, with scenario analysis taking place regularly to ensure the business is ready for any surprises that might be lurking in the future.
You’ve read 10% of the content. Fill out the form to read more.
