WORKFORCE PLANNING
Monday, May 31st, 2010
Workforce planning is a systematic process for identifying, acquiring, developing, and retaining employees to meet the needs of the organization.
Workforce planning is an effort to focus on developing information that can help an organization make decisions for both the short and long term, yet allow for flexibility in a changing environment. The plan is intended to help solve staffing problems related to managed position movement into, around, and out of an organization.
IMPORTANCE OF WORKFORCE PLANNING
Workforce planning has become increasingly important to organizations over the last several years, due in large part to increased retirements, as well as retention and restructuring initiatives. Global trends that illustrate the importance of workforce planning include:
- aging of the population;
- baby boomers redefining the idea of what retirement is;
- harnessing of technology to change the human resource function;
- proliferation of rules and regulations, with new legislation often competing and colliding with existing legislation; and
- the sheer number of people with advanced educational degrees is advancing human knowledge at an unprecedented rate.
The implementation of the workforce plan should result in the desired workforce the organization needs in terms of the number of employees, with the appropriate skills, at the right locations, etc. The workforce plan should be continually measured for its success in meeting both efficiency and effectiveness parameters. While efficiency will measure the time, speed, cost, and volume regarding the plan, effectiveness will measure whether the plan is achieving the desired result of “having the right people with the right skills at the right time.”
Source: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hr/pdf/workforceplanningmanual.pdf
