Workforce planning is a key workforce management step for long-term survival in a situation where workers are aging or leaving, and business environments are constantly changing.
You need to replace over aged workers and workers who leave. You also need to adapt to new business environments by getting people with needed skills.
Workforce Planning Goals
Existing workload determines current workforce levels. So the first step of workforce planning is to assess this workload, its skills set composition and location requirements. To assess this requirement, you answer the following questions:
-> What kinds of skilled workers do you need to achieve your organizational purpose?
-> How many persons with each kind of skill are needed to achieve targeted performance levels?
-> Where would these persons be needed – geographically and departmentally?
Answering the above questions is only the starting point of workforce planning. A complete plan would also identify the strategies needed to get the people required to man your workforce, and to keep the people with you.
For the longer-term, you need to estimate:
-> The...