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Why Workforce Planning is Vital to Your Organization

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Workforce planning is a key step for long-term survival in a situation where workers are aging hor leaving, and business environments are constantly changing. Aging employees and workers who leave (whether voluntary or involuntary) must be replaced. Recruiting new team members also means that you must 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. Answer the following questions to aid you in completing your assessment:

  • What kinds of skilled workers do you need to achieve your organizational purpose?
  • How many people with each kind of skill are needed to achieve targeted performance levels?
  • Where will these people be needed – geographically and departmentally?

Answering the above questions, however, 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 most importantly, to keep the people with you.

For the longer-term, you need to estimate:

  • The number of workers who will retire or leave and thus, must be replaced
  • Additional numbers of differently skilled persons who will have to be added to meet expansion needs
  • Likely developments affecting your business and the likely changes in the number and composition of your workforce under the new environments

Keep in mind that workforce planning is a continuous process that needs to be updated as the requirements and forecasts change.

Implementing the Workforce Planning Process

The key requirement for successful workforce planning is to get your managers to understand the significance and key importance of workforce planning. Without their active involvement, you cannot expect to develop realistic plans that are affected by diverse factors. Here are some things to consider for your planning process:

  1. Create a workforce planning team consisting of employees from different departments, with required knowledge and interests. Also, define the team’s role and responsibilities.
  2. Use modern software tools and planning systems to speed up the processes of data collection, analysis and generating preliminary plans. These can then be human-reviewed for fine-tuning.
  3. Start carefully with a smaller scope, review the processes, get feedback and improve the effectiveness of workforce planning exercise.
  4. In the case of large enterprises with geographically spread operations, the workforce planning exercise should be decentralized and the unit plans should be consolidated.

Workforce Recruitment and Development Strategies

Workforce planning is not just an exercise with numbers, though numbers are important. You have to look at the labor market and competitive conditions, and develop strategies to attract and retain the kind of workforce you need. When creating your strategy, make sure you:

  • Think through the policies and practices you need to attract and retain talented people.
  • Build your brand as a good place to work in.
  • Create working conditions and a managerial culture that would make your people want to remain with you.
  • Spell the aforementioned items out and include them in your workforce plan.

For organizations to survive in the long term, they must be able to attract the right kind of talented persons and to keep them. Workforce planning helps you to assess your people needs, in both skill sets and numbers, and start developing and implementing strategies and policies to attract, develop and keep the kind of workforce you need.

Do you have a current workforce plan in place for your organization? If not, what’s preventing you from making it happen?

5 Steps to Perfecting Your Elevator Speech

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Imagine this. You finally bump into that executive you’ve been dying to meet but you only have 30 seconds to introduce yourself to your potential future boss. What would you say? How would you leave a positive, lasting impression in this person’s mind? Being prepared with your elevator speech can make or break this moment for you.

What exactly is an elevator speech? Think verbal business card. Simply put, it’s a brief introductory sound bite in which you highlight what you can bring to the table if given the opportunity. In essence, this informative snippet should last no longer than an elevator ride, and hence the name “elevator speech”.

If you’ve never written an elevator speech, fear not. I’ve got five quick tips to help you make your mark:

Brainstorm. In an effort to “sell” yourself, you need to determine your best attributes. Ask yourself the following questions and jot down the answers.

  • What are your greatest strengths?
  • What positive adjectives best describe you?
  • What have you accomplished thus far?
  • What would you be looking for from someone if you were hiring?
  • What makes you a better candidate than the next person?

When answering these questions, keep your answers position-, company-, and industry-focused. Sharing that you make amazing chocolate chip cookies may not be the best use of your limited time if you’re trying to break into the Information Technology field.

Outline. Use the information you came up with during your brainstorming session, and start placing the pieces in logical order. Create your outline by determining which details you should start with, what you should close with, and what will fall in between.

Draft. Now, that you have structure, it’s time to flesh those ideas out. Give careful consideration to how you want to convey your message. Remember you’ll only have about 30 seconds (give or take) so make your words count.

Rehearse. As they always say, “Practice make perfect.” Practice giving your speech in front of a mirror. Practice with a family member, friend, and/or a professional in the industry you’re hoping to break into, and request feedback. How can you work on your deficiencies if you don’t know what they are?

Also, evoke confidence in your delivery. If you give the impression that you don’t believe what you’re saying, why should anyone else believe in you?

Edit. As times change, your speech should do the same. Your personal commercial should reflect current information and details and must be audience-specific. What works for one person may not work for another. Again, consider the position, industry, and company when editing. The details you supply need to resonate with that given audience.

Don’t be caught off guard when opportunity knocks. Perfect your elevator speech now, and you’ll always be ready when your moment comes.

Were you prepared with your elevator speech when it counted? Do you have any other tips to share for preparing one?

Greetings from Virtual Cachet

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Hello All!  I’d like to welcome you to the Virtual Cachet blog. Since my first course in I/O Psychology, I’ve developed a great interest in organizational effectiveness, workplace behavior, and career-related topics. Armed with an extensive knowledge base and a desire to create ways to streamline and improve office processes, I took a leap of faith and launched my business in 2011. Since writing’s also a true passion of mine, it’s with extreme joy and anticipation that I embark upon this new venture of blogging specifically for Virtual Cachet. With each piece that I post, my hope is to:

  • Give you an opportunity to get to know Virtual Cachet better; and
  • Serve as a useful resource on Administrative, Human Resource, and Writing matters for individuals, small businesses, and other organizations

So, dear readers, enjoy the experience, and I look forward to our continued relationship in the blogosphere. Stop by frequently, spread the word, and here’s to a healthy, happy, prosperous 2012!

Cachet