Strategic planning for your workforce involves several areas. The first is workforce retention. The last thing most business owners want to is lose key employees. But hwat do we do to entice them to stay? How many more people do you need? What kind of changes should you be making in the technology, both hardware and sfotware you use to run your business. Are there HR Policies which should be updated to reflect your larger workforce? Do you have HR Policies?
If you have been running a small Mom and Pop shop, but you are now running a company with 20 or more employees, I can pretty much bet that you don’t have everything in place to keep your company running smoothly. Things that worked well when everyone could easily communicate with one another, don’t work as well as your worforce grows.
You could use our help with both HR functons and Strategic Wordforce Planning. There is agreat articl on ADP’s website about just what that entails:
“…Keeping and developing talent, and making your organization a desirable destination, requires strategy.
What Is Strategic Workforce Planning?
There’s no clear consensus on a strict definition, but strategic workforce planning should involve ensuring that you always have the right people with the right skills to meet your organization’s goals.
According to study, strategic workforce planning aims to do the following:
- Keep people from leaving
- Plan for skills requirements
- Bring in new people to close skills gaps
- Identify and source critical talent skill sets
- Create structure and processes
- Ensure HR and overall strategy aligns
How HR Plays a Role
When it comes to who should be involved, the study shows that strategic workforce planning is usually seen as the responsibility of the C-suite. Just 28 percent view it as an HR function, according to the report. But to be effective, businesses need to narrow in on strategy and people. And HR is about people — recruiting, training and retention.
Recruiting
No skills gap can be resolved without HR leading the way. HR understands how hard it is to find skilled talent — especially in areas like IT and data science — and the cost to hire. They can encourage leaders to focus on developing and engaging current talent, which can be done by improving culture, training and benefits.
Training
As short-term skills gaps arise, maybe because of a new project, HR leaders are critical in helping organizations tap into the economy of talent-on-demand, another emerging HR trend. PricewaterhouseCoopers is already on this. The business recently launched the PwC Talent Exchange to connect independent professionals with its project teams, giving the organization a global talent pool to tap into as needed.
Retention
Workforce analytics gives HR leaders important insight and is becoming a valuable retention tool. “The mass of data now available allows companies to analyze which employees are most likely to leave and the suitability of job candidates in a more scientific manner,” the study reports. By using data analytics and benchmarking, HR leaders can engage and retain key talent before they leave a company.
Strategic workforce planning for HR will be critical to future growth in today’s evolving business landscape. Talent is more important than ever, and HR leaders have both the data and capabilities to be partners in any strategic workforce planning process.”
If this all sounds a little too much for the size of your company, we understand that, and we can scale many of these things to match your company’s needs and goals. The first step is to just make an appointment to come in and talk. Once We have an understanding of your goals and your management style, we can go from there.
Jennifer Comer
Complete Employee Solutions