Workforce Planning: The Strategy Behind “Strategic Staffing”

planning process. At minimum, HR, Strategic Planning, Finance, IT, line management, and any unions should be represented. This ensures that multiple perspectives are considered and gives the plan legitimacy.

Be sure to integrate the workforce plan with other HR programs - such as organizational development, succession planning, and career pathing - that are also designed to prepare the company and its individual staff members to thrive now and in the future.

Determine the scope of the project up front. Will you run a "pilot" in one or more specified departments, or will you immediately launch the program company-wide? Will you target a few key occupations or your entire staff? (In general, starting small allows you to continually improve the process by building "lessons learned" into each subsequent phase of the rollout.)

Assign a dedicated staff member to manage the process. For large-scale projects, additional resources may be necessary.

Avoid being overly prescriptive in your workforce plan. Rather, develop a simple model and tools that managers can adapt to their particular needs, and provide training and ongoing support on their use.

Despite this article's emphasis on competencies, many additional factors influence an individual's on-the-job success. According to Ms. Candland, 80% of job separations - whether voluntary or involuntary - are due to poor "fit." Advantage Human Resourcing therefore uses a multi-dimensional assessment to determine whether a candidate is well-suited for a company's unique needs and work environment. Their Can Do, Will Do, Will Fit approach evaluates a wide range of personal attributes (e.g., motivation, work style, attitude, and professional goals to name just a few), greatly enhancing the work performance and satisfaction of their Associates. Ms. Candland strongly encourages all employers to consider these issues along with skills during the workforce planning process.

Communicate the initiative to all levels of the organization, highlighting the benefits it will bring to employees as well as the organization as a whole.

Hold managers accountable for adhering to - and achieving desired results from - the workforce plan.

Most importantly, do not view workplace planning as a one-time endeavor. Rather, it should be a continuous loop that includes ongoing evaluation of both the inputs and outputs of the process. Specifically:

• Have the internal and/or external environments changed?
  If the assumptions underlying your solution analysis are no longer valid, it will probably be necessary to adjust your competency profiles and intervention strategies accordingly.
• Does the workforce plan serve the organization's needs?
  If the desired business outcomes
  The copyright of the article Workforce Planning: The Strategy Behind “Strategic Staffing” in Human Resources is owned by Christina Morfeld. Permission to republish Workforce Planning: The Strategy Behind “Strategic Staffing” in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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