Why Workforce Planning Is Important?

Strategic workforce planning is one of the most powerful tools for companies to reach and sustain performance against their strategic objectives in a highly competitive market.

Planning is the engine and the main link between talent management and workforce. A solid human capital management team is built around a comprehensive workforce plan.

Although many companies recognise the importance of better planning, most still lack the skills and tools to manage and execute strategic steps that will drive business results.

Let’s begin by explaining workforce planning and why it’s essential.

Workforce Planning

What’s workforce planning?

According to Human Resource Management Sydney, Workforce Planning refers to an organisation’s process of assessing its workforce and deciding the best steps that must be taken to meet future and current staffing requirements. It involves finding cost-effective and efficient ways to retain and recruit talent.

Why is workforce planning important?

Your future is built when you act with purpose. Agile workforce planning significantly impacts employee experience and allows companies to form cohesive teams for long-term, impactful results. Investor relations are improved, and talent management capabilities are enhanced.

Workforce planning assists companies to:

Attain financial goals

Business planning is made easier by the collaboration between finance and human resources. The productive union between these two groups enhances collaboration through connecting people, processes, and technology.

Finance and human resources depend on each other as a key source of revenue.

Finance should analyse people’s data to understand how they contribute to the organisation. With these insights, HR can strategise how to allocate resources, hire the right employees at the right time, create programs that nurture talent, and establish a workforce aligned with financial goals.

Enhance employee experience

Planning for a workforce is about people. A company that plans keeping its employees in mind, it prioritises and cares for their well-being, ultimately improving the employee experience.

Your organisation can increase business agility by utilising engaged employees and their talents. Flexible workforce plans tailored to employees’ experiences and needs will help you achieve this.

An analysis of your workforce can help you determine how to increase productivity and profitability. This will ensure that your hiring strategies align with business needs and your workforce plans align with your corporate plan.

Promote collaboration

Planning for the workforce is collaborative and encourages participation from all members. Collaboration is the only way to gain cross-functional insight and identify interdepartmental connections. Knowledge and teamwork can also broaden your horizons.

A focused approach is a key to getting the best out of your team. Where should you begin? There are four fundamental principles that can help you design your workforce planning model.

Expert Knowledge

4 fundamental principles of workforce planning

Right people

Many companies depend heavily on new employees to reach their goals. These companies may need to increase their workforce to handle their workloads.

The new world of remote business has made it possible to find top talent regardless of their location. Expand your talent acquisition strategy to find the best talent for your team.

Some things to consider:

• A global talent search
• Factors that impact staffing
• Productivity

Right skills

It is crucial to know what competencies your company needs from its employees in order to meet future challenges and fill skills gaps and this can be done through human resource consulting brisbane. Identifying the experience levels that support strategic competencies to translate hiring into strategy and turn business models into long-term success is crucial.

Some things to consider:

• Essential skills required throughout the organisation
• Impact of skills on strategy and business model

The right time and place

Continuing growth means putting the right people in the right positions at the right times and in the right places, and this requires that employees are evenly distributed across the company.

This means that companies must establish clear business goals to hire people who can help them achieve their company’s future objectives.

Some things to consider:

• Alignment between talent distribution and company requirements
• Adjustment to the hiring strategy to achieve business objectives

Right price

Consider the direct and indirect costs of hiring. This includes costs for job advertisements, interview time, new employee salaries, benefits, and insurance.

Knowing what these costs are will help you keep your budget within reach and make sure that you are optimising your costs by only hiring the right people when they’re needed.

Some things to consider:

• Aim to reduce costs for talent
• Planning for direct and indirect hiring expenses
• Budgeting only for the skills and talent your company requires

These principles should be the basis of your strategic workforce planning.

The 7-step process for strategic workforce planning

Once these are in place, you can use them as building blocks for a productive, engaged team.

Set goals

Strategic workforce planning is designed to help you achieve your business goals. The first stage of strategic workforce planning should assess your short- and long-term business goals.

Including the right people in this step is essential; it is not enough to have business partners or HR professionals only. Some of the best people to include in strategic workforce planning initiatives are line managers, business executives, financial service representatives, and HR technology experts.

Analyse the workforce

Analysing the current workforce is the second step of the planning process, and this step requires business leaders to assess the quality and quantity of their workforce.

Identify skills gaps

A skills gap analysis can provide valuable data for the future workforce. A skills gap analysis could indicate when an employee is planning to retire. The skills gap analysis would have given enough time to allow human resources to prepare rather than scrambling for the replacement.

Future issues are to be anticipated

Companies with adequate preparation for the future have a competitive edge in their industry.

Business leaders must create a workforce plan to anticipate future issues and provide steps to address them. Future workforce issues can include supply chain issues and labour market concerns.

Create an action plan

Next, you need to assess the objectives and analyse the workforce. These plans should include strategies to recruit & retain talent, restructure the company, and enhance technology.

Follow the action plan

Implementing the action plan involves ensuring that resources are available, roles are clearly defined, and that needs are met to achieve the business goals. This involves working with leaders and hiring managers to gauge the impact.

Monitor and test the plan

The workforce planning strategy must adapt to changing business needs. Regular Monitoring and testing of your plan allows you to monitor progress and identify areas for improvement.

Remote workforce planning

Companies can be prepared to adapt to the inevitable changes that are constant in the workplace through strategic workforce planning. It helps businesses to be agile in times of crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic that has already changed how people live and work around the world.

In order to provide safety and well-being for employees in times of crisis, many organisations encourage remote work. However, remote work has become the norm.

Companies must adapt their business strategies for remote work to allow employees to be productive and reach their goals.

These are some strategies to plan a successful remote workforce.

• With clear guidelines and rules, establish remote work policies. These policies should outline job responsibilities, departmental and organisational goals & objectives, customer impacts, job performance, and job performance.
• Choose the right people to do the job. It is important to identify the best employees for your job.
• Prepare for potential problems and be prepared to address them. It is important to act to prevent or solve problems.
• Set clear objectives and expectations and monitor and evaluate the company’s actions.

Summary

In today’s changing marketplace, it is more important than ever to stand out from the crowd and be able to attract and retain talent.

Planning your workforce is key to maximising everyone’s talents for the benefit of your organisation.

Unable to Put your Viewpoint in an Organisational Meeting? Here’s How to Get your Points Across

Maybe it’s the oversized tables and the closed doors. Maybe, it’s a colleague who shuns everyone’s opinion. Or maybe it’s just your fear that your ideas won’t be valued.

Whatever the reasons are, there are times when you just can’t find yourself the right words at the right time – or maybe you find the wrong words at the wrong time?  This is a very common situation that can happen to anyone while attending a meeting. But sitting quiet without any participation to avoid putting yourself in this type of situation can also send the wrong impression. Overcoming these blockers is likely to add to your own self confidence and contribute to better outcomes at work.

Besides, you aren’t the only one who finds it difficult to speak your thoughts out; there are many people who feel the same. And often some really good ideas aren’t shared due to concerns about ‘not getting it right’ in front of others

Make Notes

No matter how prepared you are before entered into a meeting, once the meeting begins and other employees start talking and presenting and sharing their thoughts to the people around, you might at times draw a blank or get confused about the things you want to say – because of the anxiety levels that rise at times like this. Either way, the result is that you fail to put your thoughts and ideas forward.

To help avoid facing such a situation, it might be a good idea to try to sort out your thoughts before the meeting and make a prepared list of points that you want to say. This way, you’ll be ready when it’s your turn to speak.

Have Confidence in your Own Idea

While putting across your points to a group of people in a meeting, you need to be confident that the idea will not only add positivity and be helpful in the whole decision process but also drive it to conclusion.

Often, when you are putting forward ideas there are likely to be others that have a similar idea. And in any case, putting forward a well reasoned idea – even if it isn’t always accepted and acted upon – doesn’t mean that your idea wasn’t a good one. Sometimes good ideas are simply put forward at the wrong time. The discussion about why it wont work is often useful broader context for future ideas and discussions.

Be Calm and then Express your Views

Always remember, voicing your opinion at the time when you are anxious or angry can be detrimental to the goal of the meeting. So, instead of aggressively putting your idea, think and act – don’t react. Listening calmly to others helps you in delivering your thoughts properly.

Relate to the Opinion of Others

Stephen Covey in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ identified how important it was to ‘seek to understand and then be understood’. Often, people can switch off part way through something was saying, because they assume that they know where it is leading, and they are preparing their reply on that basis. Sometimes this means that they miss a key element and their reply doesn’t properly take that into account. So, it’s advised to listen (not just hear) before you speak.

Avoid Getting into an Argument

While putting your points in a meeting be ready to face difference of opinions amongst employees present in a meeting room. But don’t take it personally, as a difference of opinion is a common yet important thing in any workplace.

After all, that’s how new ideas are created.

Final Words

When putting across your thoughts about ideas to address workplace issues, it’s better to ‘think and act – not react’. With the tips mentioned in this blog, you’ll able to think about how to contribute positively in meetings. And feel better and more confident about your ability to add value.

If your organisation is looking for professional advice and assistance in relation to how to encourage continuous improvement, enable good ideas to be expressed and considered, engaging with a human resource consulting company like HBA Consulting can help. Our expert team will offer practical and professional advice and assistance in relation to how to structure its human resource strategy to effectively build a culture that encourages innovation, creativity and a safe environment where people can contribute their ideas.

Why Do You Need to Revive your Company’s Policies and Procedures?

If asked when did your company last conduct an internal audit of your policies and procedures to evaluate effectiveness, what would be your answer?

Well, if you are like most organisations, your answers are likely to be ‘not sure’, ‘we’ve done some I think’ or ‘never’. If these are the types of answers that spring to mind, like many other companies, you are putting your business and employees at risk. Moreover, if the need to alter organisational policies is left ignored, issues cropping up from old, ineffective or undocumented policies and procedures can make your organisation vulnerable to a range of legislative, employment and reputational risks.

So, Your HR Strategy Failed Again? Here’s What Might Have Gone Wrong

The importance of HR plans in an organisation cannot be stressed enough. Most organisations today understand the value of and need for a strategic HR plan. But just recognising the value of something and wanting it isn’t enough.

Building a human resource plan requires proper planning, diligence and foresight. Even with a competent HR team in place, an organisation is bound to face challenges when developing an HR strategy.

Here are some reasons why most HR strategies fail. Avoid these situations to ensure successful implementation of your Human Resource strategy and business growth.

Not having the “WHY” figured out

It might be hard to believe but many organisations develop an HR plan simply because all successful organisations have one. That’s it. There are no clear linkages to the corporate objectives of the organisation, how the defined objectives and goals in the HR strategy link to these and why the company is developing specific HR initiatives to drive some or all objectives and how are they going to benefit the employees and organisation itself.

To make sure the purpose of HR plan you develop doesn’t get lost in the process, it needs to clearly draw together these key linkages and demonstrate how it can really make a difference and benefit both the company and its employees.

At the end of the day, its not ‘HR’s’ plan its the businesses plan for creating and sustaining its people to do what it needs them to in order to deliver on its mission and corporate objectives.

There’s no plan behind the initiative

Another often overlooked aspect of an HR plan is the “how” of it. Having an HR strategy that lacks a robust plan explaining how you are going to do things is as likely to fail as an HR strategy without proper linkages to the business strategy and objectives or a meaningful role in the employment framework of a business.

There are companies that come up with HR plans full of standard principles and ideas like “we want to deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction” or “we want to be the best in the region”. These plans are just about high-level goals and aren’t helpful in terms of implementation at the tactical and operational levels of the business.

The key is to know both the “why” and the “how” of the plan.

Lack of communication

The worst case of HR strategy failure can be when there’s clarity in planning, concept, purpose and execution but there’s also a major communication gap. There’s no point in developing a strategic human resource plan with defined objectives and initiatives to be taken to meet those objectives, if you don’t communicate it properly, consistently and regularly to the business.

For an HR plan to work out successfully, it is important to effectively communicate the key components of the plan and how they will support the organisation in varied operations and meeting business goals.

Lack of sustainability

Almost every plan starts off with a bang, but it is not uncommon for many big plans to fizzle out soon after their launch. This often happens because the HR professionals and employees eventually lose interest and enthusiasm due to changes in workload, responsibilities or other company circumstances. It also can happen because its not actively monitored, progress again plan analysed and the results (or lack of them) reported to the Executive team for consideration and action.

To avoid the situation, be sure to consider the long-term impacts of the plan and how its gong to be measured, monitored, analysed and managed.

Think about change management issues and project risk

No matter how efficient your planning, implementing an HR plan without thinking over the change management implications and risks can (will!) increase the chances of plan failure. If it’s the first HR strategy or a new version of it, the change implementation issues need to be identified, considered and addressed. While you can’t always foresee everything that could arise in the future, you can still forecast and take into account some things that might impact in the future and that need to be managed now.

The Art of Attracting and Retaining the Right Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

What’s one of the biggest challenges faced by the HR team of an organisation?

Well, if you guessed “helping the business areas to find and select the best possible candidates for an interview”, then you are partially correct. However, it’s not just about selecting the right candidate by running a professional, role focused recruitment process.  What’s often even harder is to retain the people that are selected.

This blog focuses on the need to ensure that business areas and Human Resource don’t drop the ball post the recruitment process. The hard work of retaining and developing the new people coming into your organisation is where the real return on investment is either realised or lost.

While there is no doubt that a strong remuneration and benefits package including components like performance bonuses, flexible work arrangements and assistance with health/fitness and child care services do play an important role in successful recruitment and retention, they are only part of the picture.

A recent study declares 91% of employees at small and medium size enterprises identified non-traditional benefits (like child care and gym memberships) as an important aspect of their job attraction and satisfaction

These non-traditional benefits can have positive impacts on employees’ well-being and likelihood to stay with an employer. A further breakdown pf this headline statistics shows that

• 85% of employees feel non-traditional benefits improve employee morale.
• 82% feel non-traditional benefits improve employee retention, and
• 73% feel non-traditional benefits boosts company culture.

Below-mentioned are a few tips that will help you to retain the right talent, help to keep them happy and more motivated to work with your organisation over time.

ENCOURAGE HEALTHY WORK/LIFE BALANCE: Good employees love to stay with employers where there is some ‘give and take’ in how and when work is done. Allow them to take an off to attend their children’s sports day, doctor’s appointment. Give them a birthday off or allow them to do work from home occasionally. Good employees will appreciate these types of offerings from there and in turn they can help to motivate that ‘extra effort’ when it’s needed.

PROVIDE AUTONOMY TO EMPLOYEES: Don’t try to be a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ constantly watching over your employees’ every move.  Show trust in your employees. The right employees want to take ownership of their own work and usually do tasks independently in order to come up with the required results. Conversely, don’t put off providing feedback to employees when they aren’t delivering – because good employees can get quickly demotivated when they work hard and others are carried at work.

RECOGNITION AND REWARD: The feeling of being genuinely appreciated motivates employees like nothing else. Meaningful recognition serves as a great motivation for employees to perform their best and grow themselves while continuing to work with the company. A simple ‘well done’ delivered as close as possible to the good work being done, and in a meaningful way and genuine way is worth a lot more to an employee than an award certificate or morning tea.

THE TAKEAWAY

The job with a new employee doesn’t stop when the recruitment process is finished, and the new starter arrives. All that investment can easily be wasted if they enter a work environment and culture that isn’t aligned with the employee expectations as set through the process. Aligning expectations with reality at work is a key obligation for all employers. Take time, invest time in new employees, be honest about the work and the organisation that they will be doing, recognise good work consistently and genuinely – are all critical to attracting and retaining good people.

Having a holistic and robust human resource strategy in place will help you to attract, develop, reward and retain employees in the most effective manner.

Co-lateral Damage – A Couple of Possible Reasons Why Good Employees Leave

Losing a high-performing employee is a real problem for any employer – especially in small businesses or when the employee has specialist skills or broad and deep corporate knowledge.

Most employers invest a lot of time, thought and effort in finding a competent employee with the right skills, knowledge and experience, the right attitude and then they pay them a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Even against this type of scenario, sometimes, and often apparently out of the blue, great employees let you know that they are leaving. When this happens, it can be the beginning of a tough time for the business. The window between notification and departure is often short, and in that time, it can be hard to keep on with business as usual while trying to understand where things are up to with the work program of the departing employee. And in amongst all of this, decisions have to be made about how and when (and maybe even if) recruitment can start for a replacement.

In amongst all of this transitional activity, its important for an employer to try to get a clear picture on why the good person is leaving. Honest feedback from them having made and communicated the decision to go can provide insights for a business that senior managers sometimes just cant see, and that can help retention of good people into the future.

While some employees quit their job or switch for reasonable like being offered a better package, better career progression pathways, less travel etc, for others the decision is driven by reasons that are often largely in the control of the employer to manage.

‘Taken for granted’ – load up the good performer

Over time, nothing tends to negatively impact on the motivation of a consistently good performer than being loaded up by other peoples work, and that this becomes ‘normal’. Good people will usually willingly rise to help get through a surge in workload, but if this doesn’t return to close to ‘normal’ in the short term, they will begin to resent it and then potentially begin to look elsewhere.

Recognition is a powerful retention tool – when used right.

Often hardworking employees decide to leave when they feel they aren’t being heard or valued. It’s natural for high performers to expect timely, meaningful and honest praise and recognition – and for those not pulling their weight to have their shortcomings identified and given an opportunity to improve. When good performers don’t regularly get meaningful recognition when they go ‘over and above’ at work, this can be a trigger for them to think about and/or act on leaving.

As a manager, if you happen to notice a high performer not giving their usual discretionary effort at times of need, it’s time to have a talk with them before it might be too late.

Meaningful Work Purpose – Understanding ‘Why’ and Being Able to Contribute at Work

People tend to work best when there is a strong alignment with, and ongoing visibility of, the fundamental purpose of the work done by each employee and their contribution to it.  When the meaning of work gets diminished or lost for high performing people, this can impact on their view of work and its importance to them. When this fundamental ‘reason for being’ is challenged or diminished, this can be a trigger for leaving.

To sum up

These are examples of things to look out for with key, high performing employees that might provide some signals to head off possible departures. This type of thinking forms some of the key inputs to a human resource strategy for a business to help attract, sustain and retain your top talent.