There are many things HR leaders need to stay on top of within modern organizations, but workforce planning can be one of the most difficult to get right.
It boils down to getting the right people in the right jobs at the right time, taking into account everything from demographic changes and budgets to flexibility and talent management. The process aims to balance what you have today with what you might need in the future, in a bid to reach company goals and achieve growth.
There's no doubt it can be a challenge, but workforce planning is crucial if you want to take a long-term, proactive approach to scheduling and recruitment, rather than a haphazard, reactive outlook.
So what can you do to raise your efficiency on this front and ensure your strategy is generating results?
The first thing to work out is what you'll need to measure to get you started on your workforce planning journey, whether it's productivity, sales, seasonal customer demand, staff turnover or anything in between.
Once you have a clear idea of the key concepts you need to explore, you can find the right tools and make the most of HR analytics to offer insights into your current workforce. A good business optimization tool could be your ally here, as it will provide an overview of your business and a simple way to see when staff are working, what people and skills you have, your overtime situation, all budgeted hours and much more.
When the quality and quantity of your personnel are mapped out through analysis, you'll be able to move on to the next stage of planning ahead.
The next step is to make projections, and to do that you'll need to understand and respond to the goals of your organization. Establish a detailed and concrete set of ambitions for the months and years ahead and ask yourself what the company needs, in HR terms, to achieve this.
You can then use insights such as when your busiest times occur and when clients most need help to build up accurate forecasts and work out how to have the right person in the right job at the right time.
With your projections in hand, you can then move on to the next stage of workforce planning, which is identification of gaps.
What barriers are standing in the way of your company goals? Where can you see that not enough skilled individuals are employed at busy times? This is your chance to take an objective look at the business opportunities that might be falling through the cracks and how that problem can be avoided in the future, perhaps by training existing employees or moving to an alternative recruitment model.
The fourth step will really get the ball rolling, because it involves laying out and modeling different scenarios to see how they impact your workforce and how they should be managed for the business to achieve its goals.
For example, could you model how many calls a sales rep can make each day to see how staffing levels in this department will affect lead nurturing and conversion rates? How about examining the impact of a long-term absence in your busiest department?
In doing tasks like this, you should be better able to create new schedules, workflows and team strategies that are a better fit for your organization and your people. This is important, as improved working methods can cut costs, make employees and customers happier and raise productivity. In the long run, that makes future planning easier too.
When you have your new strategy ready, it's time to think about implementation. Perhaps you've realized that you're in need of employees at different times, so you're bringing in flexible workers to plug the gaps.
Maybe your communication has been lacking, so you're implementing new collaboration or project management software to keep teams on task and informed about what they need to know. It could be that the gaps you've identified can't be fulfilled within your organization, so some strategic hiring is required.
Remember that your overall aim is to save time, lower costs, boost productivity and make your employees happier, which means they will be willing and able to deliver better results for the business.
Finally, don't assume that once your workforce planning is done for now it's done forever. It's vital to see the plan as constantly in motion and therefore in need of regular monitoring and adaptation where necessary.
By being flexible, you'll be able to make your business model more intelligent, achieve your goals more easily, and create an engaged workforce that makes customers feel more valued and important.
Implementing these steps will help you make real progress towards truly understanding your workforce, preparing for the future and making positive changes that generate the best outcomes for your employees and the business as a whole.