Busting myths around strategic workforce planning

This article was produced in partnership with Faethm by Pearson

Dave Burrows is a Workforce Insights professional with over 25 years’ experience developing solutions and teams devoted to the delivery of data, reporting and analytics, including 15 years focused on people analytics.

He began his HR career in consultancy and banking before relocating to Australia in 2012 to join the Commonwealth Bank of Australia where he won two CEO awards for delivering innovative and value-adding solutions utilising people data.

He managed and re-engineered reporting and analytics services, delivered data governance programmes, built teams and delivered strategic workforce planning projects.

When companies think about strategic workforce planning, they usually think of a short-term rostering, or recruiting for an immediate need– but according to Faethm’s Dave Burrows, this is a common myth. In reality, strategic workforce planning should look and feel very different.

With increasing automation, digitisation and remote working, businesses need to consider what skills they’ll require from their workforce over the next few years. With the war for talent still raging, Burrows notes that developing these skills in-house will be significantly more cost effective than going on a recruitment spree.

“Skills like data science and analytics traditionally were sourced by large corporates, but now, pretty much every business needs those skills to help with digitisation,” Burrows told HRD.

“The result is that you’ll have a healthcare provider competing with a major bank for the same talent pool. That’s why we advocate building out an in-house ongoing SWP programme, and there are real cost savings to be made in re-skilling and re-deploying rather than the old ‘hiring and firing’ approach used in the past.”

Burrows notes that workforce planning is very commonly misunderstood, and has many myths circling around it. For example, many organisations think that it’s a good excuse to reduce headcount – but in reality, it can be an excellent way to drive loyalty and engagement. If you can demonstrate that you have a long term plan to re-deploy employees when their current role is no longer relevant for the business, and they see that the organisation can offer them a career path with interesting and gratifying work, they are far more likely to remain loyal.

Another common myth is that it’s just an extended recruitment plan. However, a good strategic workforce plan will be always done in the context of a wider business strategy, and will take into account the organisation’s long-term growth goals.

“It’s a chance to look at the areas of your business that you want to develop, and invest in them,” Burrows explains.

“This means you’re able to become more self sufficient, rather than having to buy skills in. It’s not another cost without any return – the return is that you’ll have a highly skilled workforce that fits completely with your business strategy.”

“It’s also a massive opportunity for collaboration,” he adds.

“There is a perception that HR needs to solve and deliver this in isolation, that is so far from the truth. HR can’t possibly know every aspect of the business strategy, or indeed the day to day business activities undertaken, so they need to collaborate with the business itself to understand what skills they’re likely to need.”

While many companies will put an ‘end date’ onto any workforce planning project, Burrows says that it really needs to be a rolling plan that continues into the future. This plan should be revisited periodically – ideally every six to twelve months. Then as new challenges or unforeseen events come along, the business will be able to build on a strong plan that’s already in existence.

“Ultimately, it’s about having a structured plan that will deliver your business strategy,” Burrows says. “It’s not just another re-organisation of your employees.”

“Once we’ve helped the organisations conduct a supply and demand analysis, and discovered a deficit or surplus in specific roles or skills, organisations can then use our platform to understand which roles are easy to transition across in terms of skills, and to find the paths of least resistance,” he concludes.