Five Crucial Steps To Strategic Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is an integral part of the full lifecycle of talent management in an organization, starting from hiring to retention. However, not many organizations actively take part in the effective workforce planning or fail to see its relevance in employee management. 

Workforce Planning, in simple terms, involves the process of analyzing, forecasting, and planning workforce supply and demand, assessing talent gaps and determining any talent management interventions to ensure that an organization has the right people  – with the right skills in the right places at the right time to carry out business operations effectively and efficiently. Here are the five crucial steps of effective workforce planning.

Identify Your Current Recruitment Needs 

Identifying your current recruitment needs is one of the core steps of effective workforce planning. Even if you’re sorting your workforce requirements through a manpower supplier, identifying the proper recruitment needs of your company is a crucial step. 

You can quickly identify the current recruitment requirements of your company by answering questions such as, What positions need to be filled? What positions are critical in your organizations? What areas or job positions do you have a hard time finding talent for? Like so systematically evaluating your current recruitment needs, can give you a clear outline of the structure or type of workforce you need. 

Assess The Current State And Future State Of The Workforce 

The next step of effective workforce planning is assessing the current and future state of the workforce. What is the current state of the workforce? Is the current workforce stable, or does it need a restructuring? If so, where? and what should your workplace or workforce ideally look like in 12 months down the line? 

Based on your company’s vision and mission, where do you see the essential requirements for the workforce or manpower supply? If you’re planning to launch a new product or a new branch in a few years down the line, what are new staff requirements? 

Determining answers to these questions will help you prioritize your workforce needs both in the present and the future and will help you develop appropriate recruiting and retention strategies that can easily set up your future organization’s workforce success. 

Identify Talent Gaps 

The next step you need to take towards workforce planning is to identify talent gaps. Sometimes,  although you might have all the positions filled in an organization, you might not get the desired results, outputs or performances because of the talent gap that exists. In simple terms, is the mismatch that exists between your employees’ current level of talent, skill, or competencies and where you require them to be to meet your organization’s or team’s goals. 

By identifying talent gaps appropriately, you can easily make sure your workforce planning is rectifying these gaps in future recruitment processes. They also provide sufficient insight into the types of training and development programs your current workforce requires to upgrade their competencies and performances to meet your organization’s objectives. 

Assess The Current Workforce Risks 

Workforce risks are an inevitable factor within an organization. Be it from a higher employee turnover or challenges in attracting suitable candidates; every organization has vulnerabilities in terms of staffing. Some organizations may also face workforce risks as a large group of senior talent quickly works towards retirement. And in some cases, workforce risks may come in the form of fierce competition for a particular group of talents (e.g. Tech talent) or trying to hire reliable candidates in less-than-desirable parts of the country. Likewise, by assessing your organization’s current workforce risks, it’s easier to ensure your workforce plans focus more on mitigating these risks, resulting in higher workforce productivity and effective recruitment and retention strategies. 

Develop A Recruitment & Retention Strategy 

The final step of effective workforce planning is to develop a robust recruitment and retention strategy based on the insights you gained from the other 4 steps. The ultimate goal of workforce planning is to ensure you’re hiring the right candidates and retaining them in the long run for your company’s success. Typically your recruitment and retention strategy should focus on the following, 

• Talent acquisition
• Candidate sourcing 
• An effective recruiting processes 
• Onboarding 
• Training and development 
• Employee engagement and retention 
• Knowledge transfer and exists 

If you’re struggling with an effective workforce plan to equip your business with precise talent, contact us at the World Star Manpower. As one of the leading manpower supply companies in the UAE, we have a proven record of experience in the manpower supply industry in the UAE. We assure to provide you with the right manpower, for every unique blue and white-collar job requirement across all major sectors with minimal downtime.