In the current workforce market, employers and employees alike are faced with everyday challenges pertaining to the job environment. Some excellent high-performers don’t see their employer utilizing their skills effectively.
On a higher level, it could be that the management has not aligned its strategic objectives with its talent pool, resulting in clear skills gaps, misdirected workforce supply, and a ton of wasted potential.
This is where effective workforce planning comes into play. But what is it anyway? In this piece, I will delve deeper into what strategic workforce planning is, what benefits it has, and how you can start applying all the newly-acquired knowledge right away.
What is workforce planning?
Workforce planning (also referred to as strategic workforce planning) is basically ensuring that the company’s business strategy is well-aligned with its talent management. In other words, the company has the right number of people with the right skills to perform the roles that are needed to help the company accomplish its short-term and long-term business objectives and flourish overall.
The most basic perspective here is to make sure that no position is overstaffed or understaffed.
When too many people are available, it is by definition inefficient. The same job could be done by fewer employees, yet we spread it across multiple entities, reducing the overall efficiency. It can further lead to employee dissatisfaction and decreased morale, as they may feel as though they weren’t needed that much after all. The feeling of being dispensable is not one that we wish our employees to have to endure.
On the flip side, however, having too few people at our disposal means we’re producing or offering less than we could, minimising profit. In some companies, instead of engaging the HR leaders to take care of those staffing needs and