Few companies know what lies ahead, and even fewer plan for it. In fact, less than one-quarter of companies today undertake strategic workforce planning that aligns with their business decision-making. Statistics like these tell us that very few organizations are in the driver's seat when it comes to:

- managing their resourcing costs;
- ensuring they always have the right skills and talents to stay competitive;
- maximizing tax and regulatory concessions; and
- choosing the resources and talent they want, not just what's available at the time.

The tactical and operational focus of workforce planning is a reflection of a broader business reality that few, if any of us, can now avoid. This is that business cycles have contracted—and continue to contract—with ‘change’ becoming an overarching constant.

Workforce planning can only be as accurate as the business plan it’s based on. And these days, most workforce planning efforts are limited to budgeting and headcount planning. As this shift has occurred, some HR practices have fallen by the wayside. And regrettably, the answer does not lie simply in picking them up and dusting them off again.

Organizations must revitalize their strategic workforce planning function to look across the entire workforce and align with business goals beyond the short-term, tactical needs. Additionally, to enable better talent planning, they must apply lessons from supply chain management.

This is because the challenges of managing talent are actually very similar to those of moving goods through any supply chain. The key issues to get right are appropriate speed of delivery, and successful predictions of what demand will be before supply runs out.

If companies wait for labor demand to peak before restocking their labor pool, they will miss out on critical opportunities. So, even when business forecasts cannot provide a long-term model to hire and develop talent against, the answer lies in applying supply chain management techniques.

This blog post belongs to the whitepaper, A Holistic View of Talent. You can download a free copy here.