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Workforce planning in the most stable of organizations
is a seemingly straightforward task: consider the workforce
supply, forecast the demand, and bridge the gap. Reality
is often something quite different. More often than
not, emphasis is erroneously placed on
the quantitative: crunching historic demographic data
and attempting to extrapolate future demand. While sound
data is clearly important in feeding supply and demand
analyses, overemphasizing this component of the workforce
planning process often dooms an organization to merely
repeat the past, rather than actively transform an organization's
vision of the future into tomorrow's reality.
The world in which organizations find themselves is
increasingly volatile, as organizations are confronted
with economic, political, and competitive pressures.
Front-line managers deal with these pressures every
day and know the sets of skills, competencies, experiences,
and capacities the workforce needs to respond to them.
They are also the group least likely to engage in systematic
workforce planning.
Our experiences working with government clients have
pointed to the need for a flexible approach to workforce
planning that engages managers and allows organizations
to respond to, and effectively navigate, the rapidly
changing environment in which they find themselves.
Workforce planning must be viewed as an integrated process
for identifying, securing, and developing the human
capital required to support the organizational mission,
and for developing and implementing the strategies to
meet these objectives.
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This article was published in the Winter
2003/2004 issue of Perspectives.
Please refer to our Terms
of Use policy regarding acceptable use of
content on the ICF International Web site.
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Our experiences working with government clients have pointed
to the need for a flexible approach to workforce planning
that engages managers and allows organizations to respond
to, and effectively navigate, the rapidly changing environment
in which they find themselves. Workforce planning must be
viewed as an integrated process for identifying, securing,
and developing the human capital required to support the organizational
mission, and for developing and implementing the strategies
to meet these objectives.
Too often organizations fail to effectively build the true
foundation and structure of the workforce planning process:
alignment with mission and strategy, and actionable solutions
and feedback loops. The data feeding the supply and demand
analyses can be thought of as the necessary fuel that powers
the machine, yet it is meaningless unless the levers exist
to effectively harness, transform, and direct the input.
Effective workforce planning aligns an organization's workforce
with its mission, strategic plan, and budgetary resources.
Workforce competencies and capacity must be mapped to future
needs, as identified in the mission, strategy, and other improvement
initiatives. It is this map that will serve to guide the organization
as it builds its workforce of the future.
Today's emphasis and priorities may not be tomorrow's. A
myriad of questions often arise.
- What skills should we buy (hire)?
- What skills can we rent (contract for) in the future?
- What can we produce or deliver through partnering with
other organizations?
- What skills should we build through development of the
current workforce?
The answers to these questions, and more, will help shape
the form of the future workforce.
Once these questions are answered, workforce data analysis
and future modeling are important components of gauging supply
and demand analysis. Organizations can improve the quality
and specificity of their workforce planning by using workforce
analytical software tools that can provide trends in hiring,
attrition, retirements, competencies, and succession plans.
 A
data model and system to catalog and extrapolate the managerial,
leadership, and technical competencies available within the
workforce, and in what relevant capacities, are a necessary
component to workforce planning. There must be an effort to
populate the database, which involves data collection, entry,
and verification. Balancing the complexity of the task and
the speed with which it must be completed requires considerable
project management experience coupled with information technology
development expertise.
Some of the most successful government organizations answer
these questions by creating greater flexibility and specificity
in hiring and training employees. They recruit, select, and
train multi-skilled employees to fill different roles. In
addition, they ensure that alternative hiring mechanisms exist
to obtain and interchange specific skill sets as needed. When
working in concert, these efforts allow organizations to effectively
respond to changing or emerging priorities.
Organizations tend to recreate the past rather than actively
define their future. Frontline operating managers frequently
address workforce planning in reaction to their own immediate
needs or in response to an annual budgeting exercise. Therefore,
solutions are implemented in an ad hoc, narrow manner. Managers
need to be challenged to consider longer-term organizational
needs and engaged to identify the competencies they will need
in the future.
Organizations must continually monitor and assess the effectiveness
of their workforce plan against the organization's mission
and strategy as well as the shifting external environment,
refining and redirecting efforts and resources. As the ad
hoc is transformed to the strategic, the chain must be structured
so that, rather than being linear in shape, it is circular
and includes a feedback loop. Performance based metrics must
be infused, and corrective action mechanisms established.
Learn more about ICF International's workforce
planning capabilities.
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