Workforce planning can fail due to poor execution, study reveals

Poor execution is the most common cause of failure when trying to implement an effective workforce planning process, a new guide to workforce planning from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) has been able to reveal.

Whilst the pressure may be on to collect as much data as possible, the paper advises stepping back to identify the important business problems and working backwards to decide what information HR needs to plan organisational resources. Specific techniques can then be applied to highlight difficulties or offer solutions, such as career mapping or scenario planning.

Author Peter Reilly said: “HR should be close enough to the business to know the principal challenges in matching workforce supply to work demand. It should then be able to identify the means by which gaps are closed or surpluses dealt with.”

“We wrote the guide because so often HR complains that its workforce planning is ineffective and business leaders complain that HR processes are too cumbersome. Both groups have unrealistic expectations that workforce planning will solve all their resourcing problems, ignoring the benefits of identifying and thinking through the workforce challenges.”

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