In a globally interconnected world of Big Data, complexity and disruption, the business environment is evolving faster than ever. Increased competition for talent, coupled with changing worker expectations and opportunities, is changing the nature of work. As well as more advanced technology for analysis, there is more data about people than ever before. These developments require a change in the human resources (HR) function, which should adopt an analytical mindset and become more quantitative. Workforce analytics offers a competitive advantage to improve business performance by enabling organizations to gain unprecedented levels of insight about people.
It can be defined as Workforce Planning in which the organization organizes the amount of labor force required by its activities and the level of qualification depending on the time in accordance with the jobs it receives and its expectations for the future. Especially in labor-intensive environments, workforce planning is more critical than the planning of other resources.
Is Workforce Planning the same challenge for every organization?
At what levels and in what details workforce planning should be applied within the organization in service delivery; the strategies of the organization, the services it offers, the environments and locations where the service is provided, supply chain relationships, the structure of customer demand will differ depending on all the elements that affect competitiveness in the Sunday in summary. In particular, the legal obligations that must be observed in employing personnel also cause significant restrictions when making decisions in service planning.
Another important difficulty encountered in service planning is caused by the preferences of customers and staff. The individual requests of the personnel employed with the conditions specifically specified by the customers regarding the services they will receive (permissions, preferences, etc.) often appear as elements that make planning difficult.
How is workforce planning done?
There are many different factors that you need to consider if you want to create a solid workforce plan. When used well, it allows human resources to plan the capabilities that they will need in the future. It is a wonderful and incredibly valuable tool that can help create a competitive advantage for your company. For this reason, in this article we have covered some of the tricks of effective workforce planning.
What is workforce planning?
You can think of workforce planning primarily as a personnel tool where human resources are used to predict employment needs, but it can also be critical for your personnel training plan, company design, and team development goals. This is achieved by knowing the current workforce capabilities, planning future scenarios, determining the desired workforce and taking steps to align the future workforce with this desired workforce. Teams with effective workforce plans, on the other hand, are better equipped to achieve their long-term goals and maintain long-term success.
How to make an effective workforce planning?
be successful, measure personnel needs, create training and development goals, have optimal staff and create a trained workforce. Effective workforce planning includes attracting, hiring and developing talent. In this context, the steps for effective workforce planning can be listed as follows:
Analyze your current workforce
How does your workforce look like right now? What people and skills do you already have in your company? As can be understood from these questions, workforce planning starts with your existing employees. At this point, analyzing the current workforce, in other words, talent analysis, can be very useful. This workforce analytics will give you an idea of the age demographic of your workforce, seniority profile and the type of contracts, among other data.
There are two main areas that especially need to be explored when it comes to the analysis of your current workforce. These are; the quality of the labor force and the quantity of labor force. The amount of the workforce is related to evaluating the amount of your workforce, including new hires and internal promotions.
Consider the long-term goals of your company
Workforce planning is about making sure that your employees are able to meet your company’s goals. For this reason, it would make sense to take into account the long-term goals of your company in workforce planning. Therefore, if you really want to tackle the job, it is important to involve all stakeholders before starting workforce planning. Then collect information about what your team needs to achieve, projected workload changes, and staffing levels.
Identify your future talent needs
Identify the skill surpluses and deficiencies that are related to the strategic work that you need to perform. Conducting a talent needs analysis will contribute to your workforce planning. For example, if you know which of your employees will retire when, you can start thinking about how to fill the gaps they will leave behind. This way, you can decide whether to hire new people or train existing employees, or adopt both.
Another factor that should be taken into account here is global digitalization and technological developments. This will create a digital need that needs to be met.
Be prepared for different scenarios
The future, of course, is unpredictable. However, this does not mean that you cannot prepare for unexpected scenarios. Being prepared for different scenarios also means being prepared for scenarios such as a sudden, significant change in your company’s financial situation or an even larger global economic slowdown.
It is up to human resources and their workforce planning to find a combination of attrition, retirement, upgrading and re-skill to start making predictions now and prevent large-scale layoffs in the future.
Don’t forget your corporate culture
The skills that companies need to achieve their business goals may vary. And yes, technology plays an important role in what skills to hire for. However, you should also not forget your company culture in your workforce planning. Just like the people and skills you need, your corporate culture is constantly evolving. When planning, we recommend that you think about how you want to guide the development of your corporate culture and what core values you want to maintain over time.
