Workforce Planning

Term Definition
Workforce planning is the process of getting the right number of people with the rights skills, experiences and competencies in the right jobs at the right time to advance the business. Workforce planning is a comprehensive process that provides organizations with a framework for making staffing decisions based on its mission, strategic objectives, financial resources (budget), and a defined set of desired workforce competencies.

The need for workforce planning has increased in the wake of shifting views of work, with more workers seeking to change organizations throughout their careers; greater competition for more talented workers; rapidly changing technology work and the skills workers need.

Workforce planning must address what the organization will need in the future to accomplish its business. The critical workforce characteristics and the desired distribution of those characteristics must be identified. This information will help the organization to narrow its focus and allocate its resources to the portion of the workforce that will most directly contribute to its success. Workforce planning analyzes the current workforce to determine the distribution of future workforce characteristics present day.

Once you have assessed the current workforce, you determine what gaps will exist between your current and projected workforce needs. The next critical step in is to determine what gaps will exist between current and projected workforce needs. Strategies are then implemented to address the gaps. The strategies might include recruiting, training or re-training, outsourcing,  competency-based assessment, leadership development, succession planning and technological enhancements.

Workforce planning enables organizations to strategically make human resource decisions. Change is anticipated and thus planned for in advance. Some components of workforce planning are succession planning, retirement projections and workforce demographics. The discipline of workforce planning gives focus to these components, how the uncontrollable actions will take from the workforce and key positions that will need to be filled.

Area of Application
Resource Planning