Feature
Issue No. 36 - August/September 2007
Workforce Planning
by Pamela Brombal
There is always disparity between what employers want and what employees can provide. It's no longer possible to call for 'six more welders' at a moment's notice - and increasingly debatable whether such skilled help can be had at all. So how can growing enterprises avoid losing ground for lack of workforce?
Workforce planning and development is a relatively new field where business forecasting meets training and recruitment - it means planning for the future as well as the development, retention and facilitation of existing staff. In the first stage, thorough analysis of business development anticipates the scale and timing of labour requirements. Then, recruitment and training experts go to work to assemble the skills and staff required well before they are needed.
Workforce planning and development is a proactive action within a company to forecast the future talent required to enable organisations to either grow, downsize, meet targets or execute their business strategy. It allows companies to identify, develop and sustain the workforce skills needed to successfully accomplish future business goals.
Wendy Perry, Managing Director of Wendy Perry and Associates and Workforce BluePrint has over ten years experience in workforce development, planning, leadership and education, and says workforce planning responds to symptoms within a business.
“When businesses experience symptoms like trouble attracting staff, ageing workforce, high growth, etc they find there are implications between their current workforces' skills and competencies that do not align with their strategic business plans,” she says
“These symptoms are connected when businesses identify a gap between current workforce and the planning of future requirements.”
The process involves:
•Building an organizational competency framework
•Developing competency based job descriptions
•Developing a workforce attraction, recr...
