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| Exploring Workforce Planning. |
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| Workforce planning requires a lot of commitment and active participation from the top management |
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Workforce planning offers a means of systematically aligning organisational and program priorities with the budgetary and human resources needed to accomplish them. By beginning the planning process with identified strategic objectives, managers and their organisations can develop workforce plans that will help them accomplish those objectives. At the same time, these plans provide a sound basis for justifying budget and staffing requests, since there is a clear connection between objectives and the budget and human resources needed to accomplish them. To be successful, workforce planning requires the commitment and leadership of top management. Seniorlevel managers must lead the planning process, must assure that workforce plans are aligned with strategic direction, and must hold subordinate managers accountable for carrying out workforce planning and for using its products.
Similarly, program managers must take responsibility for leading the workforce planning process in their program areas and offices. Program managers will gain the most immediate benefits of workforce planning because the competencies of their own staffs will become better aligned with strategic goals and directions. Workforce planning requires all parties to step away from preconceived notions and to seriously consider change. Workforce planning requires a vision of what is to be accomplished, and what changes may be needed. Participants must be able to discard personal considerations and to perceive the shape of things to come. This need for an objective view, along with the amount and depth of analysis needed, has prompted some organizations to engage contract support for all or part of the workforce planning process.
Do I Need A contractor?
Using a contractor consultant in carrying out workforce planning is optional, but may be desirable
in some cases. An experienced contractor may provide a level of expertise in workforce planning that does not exist in the organization. In addition, a contractor may have a more detached view of issues than an organizations employees and managers can provide. The combination of experience and an outside viewpoint can provide a legitimacy for workforce planning that is not available to a strictly internal effort. At the same time, organizations must factor into their plans the cost of hiring a contractor with the necessary background to the organization. The addition of a contractor to the project will certainly impact on the workload and type of work associated with the project.
Evaluation
We noted that evaluation and adjustments are implicit in workforce planning or any planning process. Managers and project leaders need to build an assessment process in to any workforce transition plan they develop. Managers need not only to consider whether planned workforce changes are taking place, but also to review the assumptions on which the transition plan is based. Strategic direction is influenced both by internal program management and outside factors. If an organization does not engage in systematic formal review of its planning it runs the risk of not responding to changes that occur incrementally from within or more suddenly from outside.
Planning time frame
Organisations need to consider how far into the future to project when carrying out workforce planning. Managers need to balance the certainty of short-range planning against the need to plan for longer-range objectives. Longer time frames may provide more flexibility in planning workforce transition but also will require regular validation of the analysis of future workforce needs. Shorter time frames run the risks of requiring more drastic workforce transition management and of missing coming changes by not looking far enough into the future. A three to five year time frame for workforce planning generally will provide a reasonable balance between the two extremes.
Planning levels
What is an appropriate organisational level for developing a workforce plan? There is no single answer to the issue of appropriate planning levels. The most useful guideline in determining planning levels is to make sure that the outputs of workforce planning will relate to organizational or programmatic strategic objectives. This would point to carrying out workforce planning at on program level basis, or for staff organisations on a functional level basis. Therefore it does not make sense to conduct workforce planning at the Departmental level in more than the most general terms. Hands-on program management does not reside at the Departmental level (for the most part) and top-level directions will already be reflected in strategic plans. Similarly, it would usually make little sense to conduct full-blown workforce analysis for small subunits of an organisation.
Analysis
The concept of work-force analysis is one which needs to be fully understood in order to appreciate the importance of sound analysis in the workforce planning process. Workforce analysis frequently stops with the consideration of demographic information: occupations, grade levels, skills and experience, age, retirement eligibility, diversity, turnover rates, etc. This
information is valid workforce analysis and necessary to documenting the present workforce. There is, however, much more that should go into workforce analysis besides this sort of "snapshot" information. Trend data is extremely important to workforce analysis. Is the turnover rate changing over time? Are there identifiable factors influencing turnover? What types or positions have been filled recently? These and other factors have a direct bearing on the development of workforce transition strategies, since they help predict the rate of change that can be expected regardless of any planned changes. In addition, identification of influencing factors provides information on what the effects of various strategies may be.
In addition to going beyond demographichic snapshots, workforce planning also goes beyond the traditional permanent workforce. Especially in the context of strategic plans and Organizational plans, it is important to understand that there is not a single workforce, but multiple workforces to take into account. Workforce analysis needs to consider whoever performs the work and provides service, even though the ability to effect strategic change in that workforce may be limited. These other workforces include the "contingent" workforce (more appropriately described as the "flexible" work force), contractors, and even external workforces that are essential to service delivery and program success. The flexible workforce includes all of the non-permanent staff "persons on detail, students, temporary and term appointees, summer employees, interns, assignees, etc. The sources of the flexible workforce may, indeed, be limited only by a managers imagination. The key difference between them and the permanent workforce is that they are in place only to meet specific workload, not as permanent additions to staff. Frequently there is more opportunity to meet short-term needs with the flexible work force than with permanent staff. The
same is true of contractors, who may be able to bridge short-term gaps and to fill shorter-term needs for specific expertise.
Finally, workforce analysis should take into account other human resource processes such as succession planning, employee development, career development, and organization development. Each has a part to play in the identification of critical skills, forecasting potential vacancies, and preparing both employees and organizations to meet future needs.
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