Approaches To Workforce Planning

Human Resource Planning Approaches

Discuss about the Approaches to Workforce Planning.

Human resource planning is the process of determining how to move organizational work force to desired position by management (Bhattacharyya 2009). To achieve the right number and the appropriate type of people to do the right thing at the right time and at the right place, the management has to do proper planning to achieve long-term benefit for both the organization and the individual employee. Cãtãlina (2011) notes that human resource planning has four phases which are; gathering and analysis of data through forecasting and manpower inventories, establishing manpower policies and objectives, designing and implementing plans to achieve manpower objectives for the organization and controlling and evaluating manpower plans for the organization. This process helps an organization to identify its manpower requirements and determine the issues that need immediate solutions. 

This report will be highlighting on approaches organizations can use to make sure the availability of work force to achieve the company’s goals. According to Bhattacharyya (2009) human resource planning aims to ensuring optimum utilization of current employees, assess future skills requirements and establish control measures to enable availability of resources when needed.

Workforce analytics is driven by the desire by organizations to move past the simple workforce planning to quantitative analysis due to growing interest in the cost of human capital and metrics. This goes examines the variables like employee demographics, job categories, cost and outcomes. This approach is useful in identifying trends and patterns in history of work force data that assist in understanding workforce dynamics. Quantitative approach to human resource planning is driven by management and considers HR planning as a game of numbers that is designed to track the departmental flow of people. It is founded on human resource inventory and information systems, techniques used for demand forecasting and work-study techniques (Momin & Mishra, 2015). 

Faster and marter decision-making due to improved organizational alignment

Workforce analytics picks disconnected data and brings it together in a single view bringing about understanding and a common language among all stakeholders. Thus, stakeholders work from same evidence based views setting conditions for efficient and strategic approach of decision-making and action (Bechet 2008). Organizational alignment is improved by differentiating between facts, beliefs and opinions. The decision makers in an organization can now rely on data and not intuition to make decisions making the process fast, efficient and credible.

Easier communication, better relationship, collaborative solutions and influence business outcomes in an organization

Benefits of Workforce Analytics

Solutions derived from workforce analytics are helping HR and talent leaders get connected and grow their voice across the organization as the solutions give credible and powerful views of organizations. Accessible and clear information that relates to recruitment and outcome strengthens relationship between hiring managers and make it easy to address gaps in approaches and processes to hiring and managing new hires jointly.

Efforts targeted and focused towards a common goal leading to stronger cohesion of the team

Human resource team gain interest in data due to the possibility of seeing data clearly and making important connections. This makes the teams committed and aligned to work towards common goals. Focusing on the right things is brought about by having team members working from a common point of understanding leading to improved teamwork (Vaidya, Et al, 2010.).

Empowers managers leading to accountability, ownership and taking action for business

When managers are provided with data they can understand and act upon gives very strong results Ward and Tripp (2013) thus the managers and their teams take active roles in creating  solutions to business problems and gear up to improving performance and achieving objectives of the business.

Workforce analytics can give a picture of areas and experiences of related to core values of the organization that are aligned and those not aligned. Workforce analytics solutions can demonstrate an organizations commitment to transparency by sharing insights as well as empowering employees by giving information they can use.

This methodology is as a result of the ability to analyze both past and current data to get historical trends, measure results and test relationships (Ward & Tripp, 2013). Accurate and precise projections are generated by use of historical workforce data.  Using modeling and forecasting the methodology borrows some business planning and risk management methods. It provides critical support to decision making by the executives. 

Availability of good data makes it possible for organizations to make reliable forecast regarding workforce as well as its environment. According to (Momin & Mishra, 2015) external conditions like regional labor supply, political climate, economic trends and the natural disaster like-hood should be considered when making plans for workforce. Therefore these factors should be identified and quantified to enable organizations make reliable forecast. This in turn aids in effective and efficient decision making by the executives of an organization.

Workforce segmentation works under the assumption that big workforce plans are too cumbersome to be useful Cãtãlina (2011) and are not as accurate as analysis that work using smaller workforce. Momin and Mishra (2015) argue that workforce planning is supposed to be selective. Workforce segmentation classified specific roles into job families depending on strategic importance. It requires intensive research to understand the dynamics of the segments. This research can be conducted inform of exit interviews, focuses groups or telephone interviews to get a in-depth understanding of the target audience. Workforce segmentation gives a reflection of tool and technological evolution. 

Strengthening Organizational Values

Workforce segmentation helps in customizing adaptable programs that benefit the company, employees as well as the customers therefore should be used to understand comprehensively and address an organizations workforce. In addition, it is important to put into place optimization strategies for workforce segmentation.

Workforce segmentation is important for identifying where there are shortages for qualified talents for critical roles, speeds up new talent identification process of potential candidates who upon hire have a potential of making significant business impact. According to Cãtãlina (2011) when integrated properly, workforce segmentation will improve communication between human resource and business units thus enabling them to identify and retain the best talents. It is also important for identifying skill gaps available in workforce to enable the organization strategize on how to have the gaps filled. This therefore enables identification of critical roles that should be filled to avoid hurting the organizations objectives. The filling of critical roles in turn will give the company greater returns. The workforce segmentation is done for the long-term benefit and takes time and great effort and commitment to put in place.

Regardless of the approach a company takes when planning for workforce, segmentation must come in at some point. This is because companies to make a difference of jobs that critical to the mission and those that are not, therefore, the need to identify employees that are most difficult to replace in the organization.

Aging workforce and those near retirement age - The managers of companies with employees who are more than average age need to analyze the impact of retirement and plan on how to replace these employees upon retiring. Projected and current labor shortage requires planning to make sure these deficiencies do not affect the organization achievement of objectives.

Globalization - Businesses shifting to the emerging global markets have to consider the pros and cons of shifting workforce to these new locations.

Increasing use of contingent, flexible workforce - Due to the employers need for workforce that can swell or shrink on demand and the employees need for flexible work, contract jobs were started to meet this demand. Therefore, workforce planning becomes vital in managing this diversity and analysis’ the cost benefits of this kind of relationship.

Mergers and acquisitions - Because of acquisitions and mergers, companies apply workforce-planning strategies to get to understand the workforce in the new addition, analyze gaps and broaden talent management.

Technological and tools evolution - The advancement of technology has heightened the need for workforce planning to avoid redundancy and make sure that the workforce available is relevant to the present time technological and job requirement.

Conclusion

Human resource management involves making plans on how to move workforce requirements of an organization to the desired place. Human resource planning involves four phases, which are; gathering and analysis of data through forecasting and manpower inventories, establishing manpower policies and objectives, designing and implementing plans to achieve manpower objectives for the organization and controlling and evaluating manpower plans for the organization.

Some approaches that organizations can use to ensure they have adequate manpower have been discussed. They include, workforce analytics, which is driven by the desire by organizations to move past the simple workforce planning to quantitative analysis. Scenario modeling and forecasting which is as a result of the ability to analyze both past and current data to get historical trends, measure results and test relationships and workforce segmentation that works under the assumption that big workforce plans are too cumbersome to be useful and are not as accurate as analysis that work using smaller workforce.

Human resource planning is done by organization due to any reason like aging population. This report shows that human resource planning is very critical for companies as it ensures adequate staffs are in place for productivity.

References

Bechet, T.P., 2008. Strategic staffing: A comprehensive system for effective workforce planning. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. 

Bhattacharyya, D.K., 2009. Human resource planning. Excel Books India. 

Cãtãlina, L., 2011. Human Resource Planning. Ovidius University Annals, Economic Sciences Series, 11(1), pp.1124-1130. 

Momin, W.Y.M. and Mishra, K., 2015. HR Analytics as a Strategic Workforce Planning. IJAR, 1(4), pp.258-260. 

Vaidya, R., Porterfield, R., Moffett, C. and Schuhmann, P., 2010. Strategic Workforce Planning. Annals of the International Masters of Business Administration at UNC Wilmington, 3(2). 

Ward, D.L. and Tripp, R., 2013. Positioned: Strategic workforce planning that gets the right person in the right job. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.