Comprehensive Guide to Strategic and Operational Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is defined as the systematic identification and analysis of what an organization is going to need in terms of the size, type, experience, knowledge, skills, and quality of workforce to achieve its objectives.
The process results in the generation of business intelligence. This intelligence informs the organization of the current, transitional, and future impact of both external and internal environments on the organization's plans and strategies.
The primary purpose of this planning is to enable the company to be resilient to changes, allowing it to better position itself for the future.

Strategic Workforce Planning:
- Duration: Usually covers a $3 \text{ to } 5$ year forecast period.
- Focus: Identifies the workforce implications for achieving the business' long-term strategic objectives.
- Methodology: It can often include scenario planning, where a number of different future possibilities are considered.
Operational Workforce Planning:
- Duration: Usually covers the next $12 \text{ to } 18$ months.
- Alignment: It aligns strictly with the timeframe of the current business planning cycle.

A vital component of workforce planning is the human capital plan, which addresses the following inquiries:
- Source: Where are future employees coming from?
- Mode of Attraction: How is the organization attracting these individuals?
- Origin: Are candidates internal or external to the organization?
- Engagement: Once acquired, how will the organization engage these employees?
- Progression: How will these employees move through the organization over time?
Workforce planning specifically examines the stock and flow of people within the organization.

When engaging in strategic planning, organizations must ask critical questions regarding change:
- Growth/Shrinkage: Will planned growth or shrinkage require new recruitment strategies, new selection techniques, or specific training programs?
- Process Evolution: Will new business goals require new processes, work procedures, employee performance standards, or training?
Workforce planning serves to link human resource strategies to desired business outcomes.
- Example: If an organization plans a widespread expansion and wants to promote from within, it must assess current talent to select the right people for new roles. This requires a credible performance management system.
- This process may necessitate an audit of the current performance management system to ensure it meets new business goals.
It is common for the findings of a workforce plan to result in significant change management initiatives.

In a global economy, organizations must monitor changing environments and ask:
- Labor Market: What is happening in the labor market and the labor pool?
- Legislation: Is there any new legislation coming into place that affects the workforce?
- Stakeholder/Customer Demands: What do the customers and stakeholders want?
- Organizational Identity: What does the organization itself want, and what is the current workforce profile?
Decision-making regarding workforce adjustments:
- Is there a need to re-strategize or reorganize?
- Is it necessary to shrink, buy (acquire talent), or let go of employees?

Maintenance involves evaluating the current philosophy or policy:
- Stay the Same: A business strategy objective can be simply to maintain current staffing levels.
- Effectiveness: How can organizational effectiveness be improved?
- Liabilities: Identifying liabilities in the selected strategy concerning products, services, or company/brand recognition.
Strategic questions regarding standards:
- Is the existing training plan adept at keeping staff knowledge and skills current with industry standards?
- Is the company up to date on specific certifications like ISO certification or Six Sigma?

Organizations must determine how prepared they are to manage or redeploy staff during critical incidents or business disruptions.
This involves contingency planning and disaster planning:
- Does the organization have the necessary people skills, knowledge, and manpower to maintain staffing levels with minimal disruption?
- Are employees performing at the desired levels?
- Do employees demonstrate the necessary values and behaviors?

Internal capacity requires a review of the employee population base and demographics:
- Union Status: Are employees part of a union or not?
- Job Structure: What are the major job categories and job profiles?
- Talent Audit: Identifying where people are coming from and the types of people currently in the organization.
- Screening and Pools: Evaluating screening programs and the pools of employees available.
- Movement: Tracking how employees move between positions.
These factors help determine current or projected employee numbers to assess workforce competency requirements.

Measurement of core competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors) is essential.
Financial Efficiency: Accurate competency measurement prevents spending excessive money on external hiring when current employees could be trained more effectively and efficiently to maintain motivation and engagement.
Distribution of Work and Methods:
- Assessment of organizational structure (centralized vs. decentralized).
- Evaluation of the span of control (large vs. small).
- Understanding how decisions are made and how work is redistributed.
- Reviewing communication channels: How do employees talk and interact?

Organizations must understand the complexity of their workflow processes.
Example Hand-off Metric:
- Determining how many "hands" a product touches from concept creation to being placed on a shelf ready for sale.
- Is the product seeing $1,000$ or perhaps $2,000$ or more decision points and/or hands?
Requirements for effective workflow:
- Clearly defined workflow processes and standards.
- Proper workforce distribution and design.
- Work rules and, in some cases, collective bargaining agreements.
- Performance management and compensation audits.
Management Style Impacts:
- Controlling management styles can create interdepartmental dependencies that lead to bottlenecks, conflict, or confusion.
- Empowering management styles may make the workflow more effective, depending on the specific organization, environment, and situation.
Successful planning requires a recognition of the current situation and an accurate projection of the future state.