The Strategy of Workforce Planning

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Strategy of workforce planning is the process of matching workforce demand and supply over a foreseeable time period. Organization conduct workforce planning that builds upon quantitative activities such as headcount planning and workforce analytic, and use these data as part of qualitative decisions to support and implement organizational strategies.

Workforce planning allows organization to better meet the challenges of a rapidly changing economy. By using business strategy to align shifts in demand with the existing and future supply of human capital, organization optimize the workforce to meet business goals, increase market share, and improve employee engagement.

When formulating a strategic workforce plan, one needs to take into consideration the external and internal operating environment, i.e. business or market-level and corporate-level strategies. This will ensure a good balance of strategy-based demand forecast - Strategic Priorities, with intelligent supply channels - Workforce Priorities. Besides considering Strategic and Workforce priorities, we need to look at the resource and process capabilities, i.e. Process Priorities as an input to fulfill the workforce or resourcing plan.

Recently, we sat in a meeting with senior staff responsible for large-scale strategic workforce planning in Singapore. After explaining our perspectives, one replied: "But how do you plan if the nature of work is not a process?"

Following our experience, there is always a process. A sequence of tasks needed to be performed is a process that determines the type of competencies and profile of workforce needed. If these tasks cannot be listed, workforce planning is an illusion. We cannot plan something that we do not understand.

No plan is totally accurate, the workforce plan needs to be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that approach and tactics deployed for fulfillment of the plan are valid and cater for changes in demand and in supply.

Workforce planning is not a one-way street that starts with strategy and ends with workforce supply. It is rather an iteration of strategic, process and workforce priorities. Strategies may change because of the availability of new ways of running processes, seen at many service providers who shifted their focus online. Processes may be varied due to the availability of enhanced workforce competencies, seen in many organization who build upon the drastically enhanced communication channels of their staff to the benefit of employees and customers likewise.

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