In most businesses, monitoring and planning for workforce planning is crucial. It helps businesses keep track of their recruitment situation and develop more effective plans. So, what exactly is workforce planning, and how can we build an effective workforce plan? Let’s explore more in this article.
What is Workforce Planning?
Workforce planning involves determining the number of employees with suitable qualities and knowledge to meet the specific workload requirements for each position. This helps reduce unnecessary costs in the company’s workforce system. It is also the closest job between the accounting and human resources departments.
Importance of Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is essential for managing and utilizing the human resources of any business. Effective workforce arrangements bring the following benefits:
- It helps create a more organized company, making it easier to solve personnel issues.
- It avoids resource waste and maximizes the efficiency of workforce.
- It enables proactive hiring and training of new employees to meet the future workforce needs of the business.
- It ensures a skilled workforce ready to adapt to unexpected changes.
- It provides optimal workforce solutions for businesses to overcome difficulties.
- It allows businesses to make long-term and short-term plans based on actual data for sustainable development.
Conditions for Workforce Planning
For Businesses
- Clear strategic development direction
- Specific business plans accompanied by budgets and change plans.
For Departments and Units
- Identify positions, tasks, and company authorities.
- Understand the frequency of tasks and effective implementation processes.
- Determine the desired level of proficiency and estimated output results for each position.
- Clarify the level of automation in task execution and data management system.
How to Conduct Effective Workforce Planning
To achieve the highest workforce planning effectiveness, businesses need to master the following principles:
Principles of Proportional Ratios
The first principle is the increase/decrease in personnel between years. This ratio depends on the increase/decrease in the company’s revenue from the previous year.
The second principle is the correlation between direct positions (production & sales) and indirect staff.
The third principle is the correlation between the amount paid to management, direct and indirect staff.
Principles of Workforce Quantification
This principle is determined by volume, spending ratio, task frequency, and target audience. Specifically:
- Volume-based quantification: Applies to production and sales units.
- Spending ratio-based quantification: Applies to the sales unit.
- Target audience-based quantification: Applies to the indirect unit.
- Task frequency-based quantification: for example, 60 transactions per day.
Principles of Frequency and Duration
These are determined based on job titles, task frequency, and task completion time. This principle applies to indirect units. You can refer to common practices across businesses.
Steps to Build Workforce Planning
To establish a comprehensive workforce plan, businesses need to follow these five basic steps:
Identify Workforce Needs
The first step is to identify the workforce needs in the company based on its goals and development plans. It is important to clarify the following information:
- The period when a large number of well-trained employees are needed.
- The exact number of personnel required for each position.
- The skills, qualities, and expertise that personnel in each position should have.
Analyze the Current Workforce Situation
Analyzing the workforce helps businesses understand the strengths and weaknesses of their workforce. From there, appropriate workforce strategies can be devised.
Make Decisions to Increase or Decrease Workforce
After evaluating and determining the situation, businesses will make decisions to increase or decrease the workforce. This is considered a talent screening process, including the leadership team. Therefore, businesses need to be careful in the implementation process to avoid mistakes and identify potential talents.
Develop an Implementation Plan
Once the above three steps are completed, businesses will plan the implementation of an appropriate workforce plan. If done correctly, the human resources department can save time, optimize workforce, and have the necessary information, including:
- Recruitment plan and schedule.
- Internal job rotation and transfer plan.
- Restructuring plan for departmental workforce and personnel numbers.
- Plan to cut the workforce by removing low-performing employees who do not create value for the company.
Evaluate the Implementation
Finally, it is important to measure the results of the plan implementation to identify shortcomings and the causes of discrepancies (if any). From there, lessons can be learned for subsequent workforce planning and appropriate adjustments can be made.
In conclusion, the above is all the information related to workforce planning. We hope this article can help businesses understand the issue better and provide the best human resources management direction.
