Reference no: EM133373735
Case Study: Workforce planning is an essential part of strategic planning, enabling organisations to have the right skills and capabilities in place to take advantage of improving market conditions. Workforce planning helps identify future workforce needs, optimise the use of the current workforce and determine the required competencies and skills that help realise organisational goals. An effective workforce plan provides the strategic basis for making human resource decisions.
An important aspect of workforce planning is availability of reliable data on the current workforce. It helps identify trends over time that may prove useful for predictive modelling. As a workforce plan leads to an expected change, organisations should also systematically address the issues driving change as part of the plan.
For the purpose of this assessment plan, you will be provided with a sample business plan. Your task would be to understand the business activities and structure of the organisation to develop the necessary context for your workforce plan (visit organisation's website for more information, if needed). A workforce planning model suggested by international consulting firm, KPMG, includes the following planning and implementation steps/components;
- Review organisation strategy/value chain
- Research labour market and forces
- Assess existing internal resource pool: quantify its dynamics and characteristics
- Identify future skills demands/needs and gaps: focus on critical and pivotal roles in the value chain
- Define workforce requirements
- Define objectives to retain required skilled as well as for workforce diversity and cross-cultural management
- Build workforce system and model
- Develop resourcing strategy with line managers
- Develop resourcing plan and engage with managers
- Implement and measure
- Integrate with other planning and HR processes
- Monitor and use feedback for improvement
This is provided only as a guide to help you structure your plan and you may not necessarily need to cover all of the above areas. A simplified structure is suggested below. You will need to work with some assumptions based on the given businessplan, especially in analyse the current workforce and its capabilities. You may rely on organisational information, publishedreports and news items to frame your assumptions.
A simplified workforce plan structure will typically include;
- Business Brief (context, current situation)
- Purpose and objectives (focus, expectations, scope, stakeholders)
- Strategic fit (integration with other plans, policies and procedures)
- Environmental scan (e.g. PEST, SPELT)
- Current labour market, supply and forces
- Current demand for staffing resources (business plan related)
- Future demand for staffing resources (scenario-based planning)
- Demand/supply analysis (identifying gaps between supply and demand)
- Situation analysis (potential workforce issues and challenges)
- HR strategies including workforce retention, diversity and cross-cultural management
- Expected costs (budget estimates)
- Action plan (to implement strategies and the workforce plan)
- Monitoring and evaluating strategies and action plan, including employee satisfaction surveys