Calling on All Strategic Workforce Planning Geeks!
By Rachele Collins, APQC
A couple of years ago, I was introduced to this organizational development (OD) technique called Open Space Technology, originally created by Harrison Owen in the late 1980’s. Open Space is essentially a meeting facilitation technique that is much less scripted, and much more, well, open, than someone who is extraordinarily Type A, like me, typically desires. One of the concepts of Open Space that profoundly bothers me is the idea that, if you designate a meeting topic and make the space and time available, then whoever shows up is the “right person” for the meeting (even if the meeting agenda topic nominator is the only one to participate).
So, this being my first blog post for APQC, I entered into this transaction with grand plans to make my post about strategic workforce planning funny and “sexy” (a term that my 12-year old has recently come home using to describe his football plays). But I thought to myself: I don’t need all that – Those who show up to read this topic will be the right people reading it, and those who continue reading it will be the ones who are really interested, with no additional jazz, bells, or whistles. Calling on all strategic workforce planning geeks (like me)!
So, here it goes….
APQC is very excited to be conducting a new best practices project on strategic workforce planning, and would like to invite our audience to participate. Strategic workforce planning has been defined as an important human capital process designed to ensure that an organization has the right people with the right skills in place at the right time. In the traditional approach for strategic workforce planning, companies conduct a talent supply and demand analysis, oftentimes using a simple tool like Microsoft Excel. But, when strategic workforce planning is done really well, organizations leverage quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques to proactively predict the recruitment, staffing, development, and retention needs of the organization and plan accordingly.
Top Ten Strategic Workforce Planning Best Practices
In preparation for this new study, APQC conducted a review of the secondary research on the topic, which revealed the following top ten, “generic” best practices for strategic workforce planning:
- Integration between strategic workforce planning/plans and other business and talent planning processes/plans
- Development of the strategic workforce plan with cross-functional input, collaboration, and support from the business and from senior leaders
- Proactively engaging business leaders by HR throughout the year in discussions about current and future talent needs
- The plan is a “living” document (agile, responsive)
- Leverage a formal, standardized, centralized methodology, process, and tools for strategic workforce planning (but at the same time allow for some local flexibility in the process)
- Focus on critical and key talent as opposed to all talent more generally speaking for the strategic workforce plan
- Ensure those involved in the process/methodology have the right skills, knowledge, and training to facilitate strategic workforce planning
- Leverage analytics techniques to inform strategic workforce planning
- Use advanced technology solutions to integrate potentially disparate data sources to feed into the strategic workforce plan
- Leverage a full range of potential talent solutions to address talent supply/demand gaps
Positive Outcomes for Strategic Workforce Planning
Furthermore, secondary research described many potential positive outcomes of successful strategic workforce planning, including better ability to anticipate needed staffing and development changes and modify staffing levels accordingly, better ability to identify and address current and anticipated workforce skill/capability gaps, the creation of a more robust talent pipeline, better budgeting and forecasting for current and anticipated talent needs, and the ability to make more informed business decisions related to talent. Ultimately, armed with successful strategic workforce planning practices, HR is considered a valued contributor to high-level business strategy decisions.
A Call to Action!
Most of the research that APQC reviewed, however, focused on the creation of the plan, with little information on implementation, or the use of analytics in strategic workforce planning. To further explore these topics, APQC has recently launched this best practices study on strategic workforce planning, specifically designed to delve more into the implementation and analytics aspects of this topic, and we are calling on all strategic workforce planning geeks and gurus who are interested in joining us to participate! The study is a sequential, mixed methods study, starting first with an online survey (survey close date November 11, 2016), and followed by qualitative interviews with companies with mature and successful practices. The final report and a report out webinar will take place in March 2017.
We welcome you to join us in this research by participating in the online survey. Also, please let us know if you have best practices you would like to share on this topic! We would love to learn more from you. And, as a reminder, the confidentiality of all of our best practices research studies is protected by APQC's Benchmarking Code of Conduct.
