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Strategic Workforce Planning is a key part of an organization's HR strategy. It is an undeniable performance lever for human resources management. What is strategic workforce planning?
What is Strategic Workforce Planning?
Strategic Workforce Planning involves analyzing, forecasting, and managing workforce supply and demand, identifying gaps, and implementing targeted talent management strategies. The goal is to ensure the organization has the right people with the right skills, in the right places, at the right times to meet its mission and strategic goals.
Also known as workforce planning or talent review, workforce planning enables organizations to identify employees with a promising career trajectory or are the pillars of your organization.
Workforce planning is often managed using a Human Resources Management System (HRMS) that offers talent management solutions to centralize key data.
Why is workforce planning important?
Workforce planning helps to reconcile the needs of employees (career development prospects, professional fulfilment) with the strategic goals of the company.
✅ Shining a light on the high performers at every level
Workforce planning helps to identify a company's star employees. Smart and highly skilled, these employees easily adapt to different situations and environments. They are particularly skillful and effective when it comes to contributing to their organization's objectives. Effective in their tasks, they are not afraid to take on responsibility.
Thanks to these employees, the company benefits from valuable human resources in disruptive situations or periods of transformation. They can even limit costs associated with external recruitment, which is often time-consuming and sometimes counterproductive.
✅ Highlighting high-potential profiles
Talent reviews can be a useful way of identifying potential high flyers. These people represent a promising segment of a company's workforce. They stand out because of their profile or their performance, which suggests that they have the potential to serve upper or executive management positions.
High-potential employees are quick-witted and have a remarkable ability to learn. They are quick to make the right decisions, spot flaws and anticipate change. As true leaders, they know how to bring out the best in everyone and lead their team to success.
One of their most striking traits is their desire for professional development and prospects in a fast-changing business world. Driven by growing ambition and strong determination, they are looking for missions that match their abilities.
✅ Retaining employees
A transparent talent review or workforce planning process is a powerful tool for retaining employees. Thanks to prospects for development (pay rises, promotion, internal mobility), employees feel that they are useful and valued. For the company, this recognition translates into productivity gains and therefore higher net profits.
How to set up a successful workforce planning process?
To start your workforce planning process on the right track, you need to follow a precise methodology.
✅ Define the stakeholders
Talent review brings together various stakeholders, including
- HR teams, who are responsible for leading the process and ensuring that it runs smoothly
- Direct or line managers who know the employees
- Upper management whose key objectives are central to the HR policy in terms of talent review
In this way, we can distinguish between the roles of contributors and observers when it comes to identifying high-potential employees and measuring operational performance. Each role is invaluable in determining the most appropriate development plans.
✅ Choosing the right time
A talent review can be organized before or after an employee’s performance review. However, when a talent review is carried out before the annual performance review, the talent review helps to align HR policy with the company's strategic objectives. It also provides a framework for dialogue between stakeholders and employees.
Carried out after the individual interviews, the talent review offers richer data. Information related to an employee's career aspirations, past performance, key skills, training needs and feedback on their work is more accurate.
✅ Taking account of the company's imperatives
Workforce planning is a response to both strategic and operational challenges. For engineering firms, the benefits of this practice lie in identifying experts and enhancing the value of consultants. For industrial companies, this management tool enables them to anticipate succession plans and manage internal mobility. Other companies will see this process as an opportunity to structure career management, assess skills on the ground and anticipate training needs.
Depending on the company's context and strategy, the HR department will steer its workforce planning approach in the desired direction.
✅ Carrying out an assessment
The main purpose of workforce planning is to identify the right employees for the right positions and at the right time. This can be carried out at the time of recruitment or during the employee's career.
Using a 9-box matrix, talent reviews can reveal different types of employees:
- Employees who meet performance objectives
- Highly engaged or committed employees
- Employees whose performance is on an upward trajectory
These employees generally need advice, motivation and opportunities to improve their performance. As a result, the talent review also benefits them. The tool offers them the opportunity to access appropriate training to enhance their skills, improve what they already know and develop their soft skills.
✅ Assessing employees
Identifying talent is a complex exercise, since it requires an objective and comprehensive view of an individual. Companies engaged in this kind of process will need to use a variety of tools and methods to assess an employee's performance and potential for development over the long term.
One of the tools frequently used is 360-degree feedback. Using a questionnaire, an employee's skills are assessed by a variety of stakeholders (colleagues, managers, line managers) and indirect partners (customers, suppliers, service providers). This feedback is supplemented by a self-assessment. Analysis of the data draws up a professional portrait, enabling the employee being assessed to become aware of his or her strengths and weaknesses.
Performance reviews can also shed light on promising or high-performance employees.
✅ Offering tailored support
Following qualification, an individual support plan (customized coaching, mentoring, exclusive training, personalized feedback, etc.) is offered to employees targeted by career development programs. The aim is to support or accelerate the progress of those who promise to increase the company's productivity.
✅ Ensuring personalized follow-up
Regular monitoring throughout the integration phase (trial period) increases the chances of success for the employees selected. This phase is supported by the manager, who is the key player, with the support of HR as facilitator.
Maximize the success of your Workforce Planning with Skillup
Accessible via a simple Internet connection, Skillup is a digital solution that helps you to easily manage every stage of the workforce planning process.
Easy to use, our collaborative workforce planning tool intelligently gathers and organizes information about your employees' performance, feedback and ambitions. The data collected is then transformed to optimize your human resources management.
These visual elements facilitate peer reviews and consultation with HR, managers and executives. Better yet, this simplified view of your ecosystem enables you to build a database of skills present within your organization and strategically define the missions of each person in line with their potential.
Skillup’s HR solution doesn't just integrate the specific features of your managerial culture. It also helps you to make relevant decisions based on indicators that are precise, clear and easy to analyze. With Skillup, you can :
- measure your employees' areas of expertise
- determine the levels of employee skills needed to ensure the success of your projects
- improve the assessment process for each employee
- Identify and address skills gaps through reskilling (acquiring new skills) or upskilling (updating existing knowledge and know-how);
- propose appropriate training plans, while monitoring individual employees and their development
- manage training budgets effectively by optimizing your forecasted costs
- create a talent pool to meet the challenges and opportunities of growth
- maximize the retention of high-performance employees
- Craft a precise succession plan
- model different scenarios for your workforce
- strengthen the commitment of your employees
- encourage the personal development of every employee in your company
- anticipate potential departures and mobility needs
- adjust remuneration to strike a balance between salary increases and performance recognition.
Our software solution is modular and can be customized to suit your needs. It is also subject to regular free updates and automatic functional improvements.
To find out more about Skillup's Strategic Workforce Planning module, get in touch with one of our experts!
