The goal of workforce planning is to ensure that the right number of people are in the right position at the right time. This allows an organization to work more efficiently and effectively as the requisite means (people) are available to produce outcomes.

The process involves finding gaps between future organizational needs and your current workforce. The remainder of the process is centered on finding and executing on ways to minimize such gaps. Below are the steps you can take to ensure a sound workforce plan –

1. Supply Analysis: Look at how your current and future workforce will change due to trends such as attrition or market growth. Think about how well the existing workforce supports your strategy, the number of employees at each level, as well as the difficulty of filling certain positions.

2. Demand Analysis: This stage helps you understand your current and future talent requirements. Here, you think about the number of staff needed to complete tasks and any anticipated threats that would affect your organization, as well as opportunities to leverage resources and how the organization’s workload could change.

3. Gap Analysis: At this stage, you compare supply and demand to identify workforce gaps and then prioritize the most critical ones. Consider how your organization can address these gaps, what jobs have hard-to-find skills, how retirement affects employee numbers and how to improve workplace diversity.

4. Solution Analysis: This is when you implement activities and interventions to close your workforce gaps and ensure your organization meets its goals. Consider how to develop planning capabilities, how to use data to identify action steps, what metrics best monitor risks and the biggest workforce planning needs.

While workforce planning might seem like a complex process that requires a lot of time and thought, it is well worth the effort as it gives an organization a competitive advantage by being prepared for the future and not scrambling for human resource when need arises.