Strategic Workforce Planning

A cyclic history

 
The great thing about following the works of the experts that came before us, is that you increasingly learn that there is very little in the HR world that is truly new. Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) falls into this category. Many of those long-time experts are retiring, but thankfully they have left us with great books for our reference.
 

SWP had gone through multiple waves of popularity and disinterest during the time that I have been connected to HR. It's gone through even more cycles long before I knew anything about it. If you want a good historical summary of SWP, I recommend the book, Positioned, by Dan Ward. In it, Dan Writes that:
 
Efforts to try to define and organize strategic workforce planning go back to the 1960s and 1970s. Companies at that time made efforts to try to calculate the ROI on people investments, much like we saw in recent years and also in 2003-2013.

SWP received a renewed focus after the rapid economic drop in 2008. Many companies lost a lot of specialized talent after executing mass layoffs without having a list of their key roles in place. As these companies recovered financially, the specialized talent was no longer available on the market and they found hiring for these skills to be incredibly painful and time-consuming. By 2013, strategic workforce planning was the HR buzzword of the year.

By 2015, strategic workforce planning moved into a phase of disinterest, except within a small number of companies. Those that felt financial pain over the years opted to remove long-term strategic initiatives in HR such as SWP in order to "keep the lights on" with the day-to-day HR functions. Conferences and vendors associated with SWP combined the topic with other HR topics in order to remain viable.

As Dan comments in Positioned,
What has been created over the years are multiple models to view the same concepts. SWP, in modern day, has been diluted in its definition. Further, the pace at which things change has been a reason to forego the implementation of the full process. Originally, SWP had a planning timeline that was 5-10 years into the future. Today, planning two years out is ambitious. The short time period has become a reason not to do SWP.

That said, given a recent report by the world economic forum, some portions of SWP have become urgent. The report issued by the World Economic Forum, Towards a Reskilling Revolution, concluded that “95% of the 1.4 million US workers who are expected to be displaced in the next decade can be transitioned to new positions with similar skills and higher wages.” That makes closing the skill set gap with retraining, one of the most significant portions of SWP. This planning needs to be done proactively or these workers may remain untrained and unemployed.

There are now two key groups to manage within the SWP process: "Roles of Interest" (which some call critical roles but I avoid that term for political reasons) and those that will become redundant and need proactive retraining plans.

Welcome to the 2019 version of SWP and it's next wave.

Resources:
By the author, Tracey Smith: Strategic Workforce Planning, Guidance & Backup Plans
By Dan Ward: Positioned: Strategic Workforce Planning that Gets the Right Person in the Right Job

Tracey Smith is a recognized analytics expert, speaker and author. She is the President of Numerical Insights LLC, a boutique analytics firm addressing the needs of businesses large and small. Visit www.numericalinsights.com Follow @NInsights Contact Tracey Smith