4 Workforce Planning Hacks to Work Smarter, Not Harder

Posted by Tayyab Ali on January 31st, 2020

Is your business currently struggling with workforce planning? Hopefully you’ve heard this term before, but if not workforce planning is a constant process that is used to align the needs and priorities of the organization with those of its workforce to ensure it can meet all its objectives and take the proper steps to prepare for future staffing needs. Your staff is one of the most valuable assets of a business and it’s important to realize and understand this in order to plan for the future success of your company. If you aren’t a human resources expert, this can seem pretty complicated and hard to grasp, but it doesn’t have to be that way and you don’t have to do it all on your own. We are here to help! So here are four workplace planning hacks to help you work smarter, not harder:  

Look at Your Workforce Now

The first workforce planning hack that you need to do to work smarter, not harder is to look at your workforce as it exists right now. However, you shouldn’t just look inside your company at your internal workforce but also outside at the potential external workforce as well. Some things that you might want to consider during this stage are the ages of your current workers and if some of them might be retiring soon and need to be replaced in addition to other demographics; the strengths and weaknesses of your workers and how those strengths and weaknesses are affecting your operations; the ease of potentially finding additional external talent to add to your workforce if you do find gaps; and finally, the cost of acquiring that new talent and adding them to your team. Your analysis should also include attrition projections so that you can effectively plan for the future. 

Consider the Future

The second workforce planning hack that you need to do to work smarter, not harder is to consider the future of your company and what you would ideally like to accomplish based on things that you have already outlined in your company business plan. For example, if you are planning on starting new projects or efforts you should account for this within your workforce planning efforts. 

Think About What’s Missing

Based on your analysis so far of what you have already and what you would like to have in the future in order to achieve your goals, you can start planning for what exactly you need to find in order to address these differences. Whether it’s hiring someone for a new specific role that will need to be created or hiring people with a certain skill set that is necessary for a new project, you will need to consider what you have now versus what you will need in the future in order to move forward. 

Fill the Gaps

Finally, the last workforce planning hack that you need to do to work smarter, not harder is to fill in the gaps that you have identified. Some of these solutions will be found externally through new employees for specific roles or will specific skills and backgrounds. Some things you will need to think about are the number of new employees, where you will find them, what you are willing to pay them, etc. In other cases, you might be able to promote from within or introduce training programs in order to bring your existing workers into this new area of work. In any case, workforce planning is a constant process that should be utilized in order to keep your company moving forward and ready for the future.