When done well, workforce planning delivers millions of dollars to the organisation through predicting where skills and workforce costs will be in the future and how to plan for them in the right locations, while managing existing costs. However there are a number of complexities surrounding workforce planning that make it difficult to achieve the business value. In this blog, we will explore the skills needed to take on these challenges. To navigate these complexities, it is imperative for the workforce planning team to build skills in the following three areas 1. Consulting and influencing 2. Analytical skills 3. Stakeholder management.

With such rapid rates of change, successful partnership between HR and the business is imperative, to ensure that the workforce – in terms of skills, capabilities and availability – and the work – in terms of how work gets done, are in line with shifting business objectives. However, research has shown that the most important workforce planning challenge for HR is that it has difficulty getting access to relevant business executives and subsequently struggles to keep up with the internally evolving business needs. The question arises as to how you understand changing organisation activities and objectives, and what they mean for the workforce? The answer is with a data-driven approach to workforce planning.