Now more than ever, organizations face the crucial challenge of aligning their workforce with future needs. Long-term workforce planning plays a vital role in forecasting staffing requirements, bridging skill gaps and improving employee retention.
Below, 19 Forbes Human Resources Council members address essential elements of a robust long-term workforce planning strategy, examine how organizations can accurately forecast their staffing needs, address skill gaps and create a culture of stronger employee retention. By developing comprehensive strategies that adapt to changing market dynamics, businesses can ensure they have the best talent in any market.
1. Boost Pay Transparency And Performance-Based Awards
Whether an employee is paid competitively and transparently influences their decision to stay or leave their job. When planning a workforce strategy, employers should consider boosting pay transparency and performance-based rewards because compensation motivates staff to stay in their current role to reach new goals and get awarded for their accomplishments, which helps ensure stronger retention. – Tanya Jansen, beqom
2. Acknowledge Overlapping Skills
Our organization focuses on employees’ skill sets and experience over their current or previous roles, acknowledging the overlapping skills in positions like recruitment and sales. This opens possibilities for coaching and career growth in different areas. By nurturing future leaders and bridging skills gaps, we attract, engage and retain talent while fostering professional development. – Katerina Goros, Euna Solutions
3. Plan Your Operating Model And Use Skill Assessments
A workforce planning strategy starts with an operating model: analyzing business objectives, the scope of related work, expertise needed, and skills assessments. Skills assessments are the springboard to recruiting needs, upskilling and employee development. Organically this fuels by offering growth opportunities and ensures higher retention which ultimately supports staffing adequacy. – Britton Bloch, Navy Federal
4. Understand What Drives Growth
Understanding your company’s business strategy and growth drivers helps determine the skills your workforce needs to meet company goals. In areas that need enhancement, implementing skill-building exercises will empower and better prepare them to tackle future skill needs. To boost retention, a company must foster an environment that encourages internal mobility and career growth. – Jagdish Chugani, Appfire
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5. Create Clear Career Paths
Our Pulse of Talent report showed career paths are powerful drivers of retention. Of our respondents who have a clear career path, 84 percent said it makes them want to stay longer with their current employer. Through a combination of leveraging technology that uses data to help forecast needs and a strong internal mobility and training program, organizations will benefit from stronger retention. – Susan Tohyama, Ceridian
6. Work With HR Leaders To Analyze Patterns And Trends
HR leaders can help the business consider human capital strategies in their long-range planning. Connecting needed skills and capabilities to future products and services and reviewing historical staffing patterns, growth rates and industry trends will help leaders make informed predictions. Most critical is matching the organizational strategy with the unique needs and culture of the company. – Maria Leggett, AvidXchange
7. Prioritize Community Engagement
Many corporations and companies that we work with are starting to prioritize community engagement due to a tight labor market, a need to show good faith in hiring efforts for the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs/Affirmative Action reporting, as well as a desire to increase diversity, equity and inclusion. These companies don’t know where to start, or how to scale this work. – Matt Strauss, RiseKit
8. Produce A Succession Planning Model
A strong succession planning model is key. It helps to know what key areas your employees want to grow into, how that would impact their current teams’ work and what ultimately would keep employees happy, engaged and motivated. Working with employees on succession planning efforts showcases a commitment to their long-term growth and retention with the company. – Halai Shukran, Pluribus Digital
9. Foster A Culture Of Continuous Learning And Employee Feedback
Our long-term workforce planning strategy is based on employee insight and feedback, which allows us to anticipate future staffing needs, identify learning and cross-training opportunities, and strengthen employee retention. At the heart of our strategy is a culture of continuous learning, which we believe helps increase retention by giving our employees the tools they need to grow and succeed. – Laura Spawn, Virtual Vocations, Inc.
10. Focus On Upskilling And Maintain A Healthy Culture
There is no way to predict the future, but in the long term, organizations do need to consider strategies to navigate a tight labor market. Tactics for recruitment include expanding the talent pool, strengthening connections with educational programs and upskilling existing workers, which can also increase retention. As always, long-term retention will depend on a healthy corporate culture. – Niki Jorgensen, Insperity
11. Eliminate Hiring Barriers And Champion Value Proposition
Flexibility and a compelling value proposition are critical. Recruiting contingent talent, leveraging automation and eliminating hiring barriers to expand talent pools fuel flexibility. Moreover, the value proposition to candidates has evolved beyond role and compensation. People want to feel like they are making a difference in the world; we strive to understand and deliver on that. – Hugo Malan, Kelly
12. Align Staffing Needs With Company Goals
A key aspect of long-term workforce planning is forecasting staffing needs aligned with company goals. Meanwhile, strengthening retention can be achieved by fostering an inclusive work culture that offers ample opportunities for growth, effectively keeping talent engaged and committed to the organization. – Ahva Sadeghi, Symba
13. Notice “Learning Curves” And Focus On Employee Experience
With recent trends like an increase in workers partaking in the gig economy and the advent of generative AI, workforce planning will continue to evolve. During this “learning curve,” focusing on the employee experience and engagement will provide security and opportunity to your staff. – Lisa Shuster, iHire
14. Use Data And Analytics To Drive Workforce Planning
Staffing needs are driven by data and analytics. Effective workforce planning requires a clear view of existing talent and skills, forecasting future needs and defining the gap between the two. Those workforce planning components are informed by a people analytics strategy that exposes historical, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics that ensure the attraction/retention of critical skills at the time of need. – Laci Loew, XpertHR (a division of LexisNexis)
15. Watch Market Trends And Employee Ambitions
To estimate competencies we’ll need down the road we, like any heads-up company, we need to watch market and competitive trends. Retaining great employees means watching them, seeing and optimizing their skills, instilling new ones, and satisfying their ambitions. To innovate and lead, however, a business must do both, building dream teams from within via relevant, supportive upskilling programs. – Graham Glass, CYPHER Learning
16. Recognize Current And Desired Resources
To achieve the intended outcome in terms of the business’s revenue, long-term workplace planning involves recognizing current and desired resources. Since this staff planning process is the backbone of an organization, it is essential to integrate it into succession planning, effective hiring practices, annual talent and competence assessments and analysis of business trends and projections. – Dr. Nara Ringrose, Aquila Nuclear Engineering
17. Develop Human Resources Strategies
Organizational leadership’s concerns regarding talent acquisition and retention, both now and in the future, continue to increase. Having a long-term workforce planning strategy should prioritize having the right talent in the right place at the right time. A successful workforce plan also serves as input into other HR strategies, including the talent strategy, DEI strategy and learning and development and development strategy. – Jennifer Rozon, McLean & Company
18. Work Strategically With Leadership Team
HR’s strategic contribution to workforce planning starts with understanding business priorities, future direction and global implications of shifts in the talent landscape. Then, it’s about working together with the leadership team to align, plan and prioritize what skillsets are present vs. needed, how and where to fill the gaps and assess structure, culture and processes to serve the vision. – Gonca Icoren, Energy Vault Inc
19. Use AI To Support Employee Career Paths
Using AI-empowered technology, we support our employees to activate and author their own career paths using a self-serve portal. Taking this data, the internal system calibrates the skills gap, suggests learning outcomes and introduces the employee to mentors, gigs and roles they are and could be a fit for. This content empowers our company with accurate workforce planning data in real time. – Jess Elmquist, Phenom
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