Strategic workforce planning consists of designing a systemic process at your organization that proactively anticipates current and future hiring needs to ensure that your organization’s resources are allocated in a manner that allows it to meet its goals. Strategic workforce planning helps you prepare for contingencies, such as the skills gap, to ensure that you are effectively identifying competencies needed in the workforce and acquiring, developing, and retaining the right people for your company’s growth. It allows for stable staffing levels in all areas of business.

With a strategic workforce plan based on a clearly articulated vision, strategic objectives, collaboration, and information sharing, organizations can better plan for their future hiring needs and avoid falling victim to the skills gap. The idea is to make hiring decisions part of the larger, strategic goals of the entire organization.

Why It’s Important

Analyzing your employees’ skills can provide insights into the gaps you currently have at your company. Taking inventory of the skills you have and the skills you need now and in the future will help you identify the gaps between your current workers’ competencies and your desired state, so you can take action.

With this information, you can recalibrate, re-align, or reprioritize resources to ensure you have the right employees on staff.  Closing the gaps is critical to your organization’s goals. Without the right personnel, you will not be able to meet your future objectives. It’s best to identify the gaps early in order to address them before they hurt your business.

If your company has no clarity around strategic workforce plans, you could continue to miss qualified candidates and talent, and suffer the consequences of low productivity and efficiency caused by not having the right skills in house. Only deliberate, careful skills analysis can bridge the skills gap at your organization.

Future Needs

The skills needed to succeed tomorrow are not the same skills needed today, and this is partly due to ongoing emergence of new technologies. The skills gap is particularly real for the IT field. Over three quarters of both IT leaders and IT professionals say the gap is real. Only a third of both leaders and professionals believe they have the necessary skills in house. Furthermore, over two thirds of leaders surveyed concluded that their organization has a level of uncertainty around strategic workforce planning initiatives.

No “One” Way to Plan

Skills needs vary from person to person, organization to organization, and industry to industry. Therefore, there is no prescribed format for workforce planning, but it must include an analysis of the current workforce, a comparison of it to future needs to identify gaps, the creation of strategies to build the necessary workforce for future growth, and an ongoing evaluation process.

Strategic workforce planning should allow business owners to avoid being surprised by workforce events. Rather, they can anticipate change and develop the strategies needed to address present and anticipated workforce issues, such as a skills gap. When such a gap between current and required workers is identified early, organizations can keep a competitive edge and hire top talent.

Pieces of a Puzzle

The skills gap is real, but there’s no doubt that solving it can feel like a complex puzzle. You need a list of required competencies for each job role, an assessment into what skills you currently have and which ones you’ll need in the future, and sound strategies to ensure you can effectively close the gap. It’s clear then that strategic workforce planning is necessary. Strategic workforce planning will enable you to overcome the gap so you can stay on track with your current and future business goals and objectives to ensure success.