Why Strategic Workforce Planning?
In today’s environment, an organisation’s business strategy shifts rapidly. To match its direction and pace an organisation needs to continually focus on planning the workforce. This then becomes the evidence-base for all decisions around the workforce and workplace design, culture, conditions, leadership and talent sources. It not only protects an organisation’s investment in the business strategy but strategic workforce planning often brings the business strategy into clearer focus and can help accelerate performance.
Strategic workforce planning takes into account important external factors that affect current and future talent sources, including demographic shifts, the rise of emerging markets and ever-evolving technology. Without adequate planning, organisations will discover all too late that the talent they need will simply not be available.
Organisations are challenged to understand the roles, capability and skills that are critical not only now but for the future. Lack of continual workforce planning will deprive organisations of the talent they need to perform well. Determining where talent is coming from and which talent should be cultivated long-term versus short-term puts the organisation ahead of the game.
At Workforce Planning Coaching we coach managers and HR teams to think differently about the workforce, plan for the future and create strategies to build engagement, increase performance and drive results.
We help managers reflect on:
- Where are we now?
- What is our context?
- Where are we going?
- What action will we take?
- How will success be measured?
A very experienced HR Director that I worked with said – I’ve been in this HR game for years and I’ve become good at solving the problems that come up in the day to day. But last year our Board wanted something different, they wanted evidence of how we were effecting change and improving performance. It was not until we undertook the workforce planning process that I realised the benefits. The CEO and I worked closely together to refine the plan and implement the actions. Now the Board is much happier. It saved our jobs.
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