By Leigh-Ann Athanasius
As we usher in the new year, taking stock of the progress made and set the vision for the months/years ahead, have you considered how your team and workforce in general play into that vision? Wherever you are in your business lifecycle; having the ability to assess your current team and identifying the gaps between where the business is and where it needs to go is key. While goals and strategies are often top of mind during this period, one critical element can sometimes be overlooked: the people behind the plans.
So why go through workforce planning?
With the way the business landscape changes and evolves – whether it be technological advancement, regime changes, market demands, policy updates or even unforeseen global events – proactive workforce planning allows organisations to be better prepared for these occurrences.
Workforce planning is about building a resilient business and should be taking place across organisations of all sizes. For organizations like Coca-Cola, Apple and Meta, they are seemingly ubiquitous and have the means to navigate the turbulence. However, if you’re not one of these businesses with their resources; it’s important you understand how you should go about workforce planning.
What does it entail?
Whether the format is a sixty-page guide or a few brainstorming sessions with your team, all successful workforce planning should have the following steps.
1.Assess the current state of your workforce:
Take stock of your team’s current skill set to understand the existing strengths and the opportunities that lie within them. At the same time, identify any gaps in their skills and areas that need improvement. You can use this analysis to inform your learning and development initiatives within the organisation.
For example, if you have a successful carpentry business and you have expert chair making carpenters and you plan to expand your product line to start making tables; you have a team who can make that transition. Your job as the business owner is to get your carpenters the adequate training and figuring out what type of tables will help you carve out your niche in the market.
2.Analyse your business goals:
Develop your short-term and long-term goals and identify the necessary roles and skills needed to achieve these goals. Going back to the previous example; because your carpenters won’t have the table-making skills on day one, it may be in your best interest in the short term to hire two-three carpenters who are expert table makers to help pass, not only their knowledge to the team, but get an early head start and start experimenting with different table designs that you could roll out ‘immediately’ to your client base. However, if you don’t have those resources available to you, figuring out when and how you can upskill your staff means that the goal of adding tables in your product line will take longer than expected.
3.Monitor industry trends:
Are there any changes within the industry that would require you to adjust within your workforce or are there any short-term opportunities that could have long-term benefits? Having a workforce that is adaptable is a powerful asset so ensuring that you have enough resources to attack an opportunity or pivot where needed should be considered as part of your workforce plan.
Executing your workforce plan
Planning is one thing, but execution is another. As highlighted in the above section, running an initial assessment of your team can help you leverage their strengths to take the first steps towards your vision. Objectivity is paramount during the assessment so regardless of how you assess your team; you have to be realistic about what the present reality is. The gaps you will usually observe at this stage is a deficit in skill and/or a lack of time/financial resources. The sooner you recognize the gaps, the easier it is to integrate it into your workforce plan to address these gaps. One way to do so would be through providing continuous learning and training opportunities to bridge the skill gaps without needing to increase the size of your team.
Having this information can then inform your resource management plans. It allows you to factor in training costs and how long those can be sustained, your ability to retain these employees once they have upskilled and are taking on greater responsibility, as well as managing their ambition with the level of training and development they may expect from the organisation.
Where there is a skill gap in your team that you cannot close with training, ensure you have a talent acquisition strategy in place. Going back to the resource management, your workforce plan should help you answer questions such as; is it more practical to hire a full-time employee or leverage a more flexible workforce such as hiring freelancers for certain projects? Either way, the workforce plan gives you the necessary insight to make informed decisions around this. If you dread going through the recruitment process, a good alternative is to use a recruitment partner such as ourselves at PPA. Part of workforce planning is increasing efficiency and hiring a recruitment partner can be more efficient and would be placed to find the right candidates faster. That way you can focus on the select few that you know are good candidates. If you are interested in this as an option, contact us to start your recruitment process.
Workforce planning also acts as pre-emptive damage control. If you are aware that a contract with a big client could be under review, or worse, ending, creating contingency plans and developing strategies to mitigate against this for the business and affected staff could be a business saver in the long run. There are several examples of rash decisions made in these circumstances that have devastating consequences from a legal/reputational perspective. Creating contingency plans and developing strategies to address potential disruptions, such as economic downturns or sudden talent shortages is a fundamental building block to resilience. It also allows your HR team to not just there to be put out fires when things go awry but be a part of the plan that helps build the organisation.
While going through your workforce planning, you may realise that it is more than you are willing to handle. To ease your burden, you may consider outsourcing as an option for workforce planning this year. Whether you want to keep headcount down, or alleviate the stress of the admin related to HR, or don’t want to invest in establishing your own HR department and don’t have the skill or capacity to ensure that you have robust HR practices, outsourcing your HR would be a good alternative. And this applies to both large and small businesses. Make simplifying your HR tasks a goal for 2025 and contact us to start your outsourcing journey.
Proactive workforce planning is vital for organisations aiming to thrive in 2025 and beyond. By understanding your current capabilities, anticipating future needs, and implementing strategic initiatives, your business can build a resilient and adaptable workforce ready to meet upcoming challenges.