RPO and Talent Management Blog by Ochre House | Ochre Talk

Strategic Workforce Planning – the what and the how

Over the past couple of months I have been speaking with a number of organisations who are grappling with Strategic Workforce Planning. What became apparent to me is that almost every organisation I have been in contact with is  transforming in some shape or form, but when it comes to the long term picture there seems to be a disconnect between the workforce plan and the overall business strategy.

Companies need to evaluate the skills and capability they have in the current workforce and identify what strategic capabilities they are going to need in the future to execute the long-term business goal. With the increasingly competitive landscape, convergence of technologies and diminishing talent pool, not planning for future capability now will become a major risk to company performance. So can we afford not to do it?

We hosted a HR Director’s Think Tank in Munich early December to explore this very topic. Nick Kemsley, Co Director of the Henley Business School Centre for HR Excellence highlighted that organisations make the mistake of thinking that a well thought out strategic workforce plan results in a nice neat set of numbers, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality there is confusion between Strategic Workforce Planning and simple Resource Planning. Strategic Workforce Planning should be something which is scenario based, fluid, and which feeds off macro data. We must be able to work with ambiguity, use judgement and assumptions in order to get our operational processes delivering value in the time scales required. This means that the real differentiator is not system tools but individual capability to work in this way.  It’s also not only about headcount planning per-se, but taking into account the wider organisational capabilities, internal and external context and linking the two together. By trying to start with the numbers, we are not asking the right questions, and therefore cannot expect to be laying down the capability required in time for when the business needs it.

Ali Gilani, Global Head of Resourcing at ArcelorMittal went on to explain their approach. In essence strategic workforce planning at ArcelorMittal consists of five steps – define the strategic direction of the business, forecast the supply and the demand, gap analysis and development of the workforce plan. Ali considers Strategic Workforce Planning as “a five year plan which is broken down into annual chunks”.  And the one to three year resource plan will inevitably feed in to this.

The key message seems to be that Strategic Workforce Planning is not just a question of determining headcount, but of working back from an organisation’s strategy and external context to understand what this means for people – placing the acquisition, retention and development of talent at the heart of an organisation’s commercial strategy. And for this to happen it cannot just be the province of traditional HR, but must be owned by the business as a whole. And that appears to be a challenge that few companies have so far dealt with in any meaningful way, but which none can afford to ignore. To share best practice and insight into planning for the future, we are hosting a series of think tanks for HR Directors, Heads of Talent and Heads of Resourcing on Strategic Workforce Planning globally with our partners, Pinstripe, in 2012. If you are interested in joining the discussion I’d be delighted to connect.

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Comments

1. Seema Shrotriya says:

   January 19, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    

   The issue of workforce planning is one of great importance, not just at corporate level, but at policy level as well. Both corporations and governments recognise that having a readily available pool of talent is vitally important for securing advantage in a fiercely competitive landscape. Both concede that there is a shortage of such talent and that long-term planning and structural reforms will be needed to ensure that people enter the workforce with the right skills. So far so good. However, as Prashanie’s blog indicates, what use is this insight if business leaders [and indeed politicians] don’t plan for it and act on it in a meaningful way? Sometimes I wonder whether the cause for such paradoxical behaviour is short-termism? Are businesses and politicians under so much pressure to deliver results in the short-term and that any long-term, value creating strategy is forfeit? May be I am being too cynical. May be my reasoning is flawed. After all, it is hard to imagine any leader ignoring the wide body of research available on the critical role creative human input plays in delivering companies and nations inimitable competitive advantage. … ??