Russell Klosk is a Managing Director with Accenture Strategy and a globally recognized expert on the Future of Work.
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Never has there been workforce disruption on the scale seen today. We're seeing a rise in adaptive workforces, remote workers, hybrid workplaces, mobile and global workforces, global talent supply chains, availability of external labor market data, changing worker expectations and skilled labor shortages. We're also seeing more and more organizations turning to artificial intelligence, RPA, machine learning and natural language processing to meet these challenges. Never has there been such pressure on employers to attract, retain, develop and optimally deploy workers.
By driving the future of work, making talent decisions, shifting the employer-employee relationship to quantitively understand worker behavior and adapting a workforce to ecosystem effects (e.g., the pandemic), HR has transformed from an “order taker” to an essential partner of the business.
Talent As Human Capital
The hardest thing for most employers to do is forecast future workload demand. Companies are adept at modeling sales against future earnings and forecasting predicted growth; turning that data into workload demand, and from that, into units of labor is more complicated. In project-based businesses, one can project forward with predictive analytics (e.g., growth forecast, retention, time to hire, etc.) for one to two years; however, back and middle office functions are based on variable volume that requires a different planning approach.
A good process allows each function, department and division to build out these forecasts in a way that gives them visibility to talent across the entire company. This data, combined with data from procurement, finance, marketing and elsewhere can then be turned into workable data sets, allowing modeling of optimal fulfillment. That sounds conceptual, however, these models allow for multivariable and omnichannel weighing of priorities to develop actionable workforce plans.
Models advance from predictive to prescriptive, driving talent decisioning, financial forecasts, R&D activities and operational excellence. Leading organizations more than ever before are creating solutions and optimizing existing forecasting efforts. Unique practices to note include creating a digital twin to simulate forecasting scenarios and plan for contingencies.
Additionally, the competition for critical skills and rapid shifts in skill needs has organizations conducting cross-affinity skills mapping for internal supply, identifying transferable skills within employee talent and aligning resources to open demand where there are matches, ensuring talent efficiency.
Armed with a strategy for using such models, a business can forecast talent needs transactionally (zero to nine months), operationally (nine to 24 months) and strategically (three to five years). Looking at the impacts of investments, divestitures, acquisitions, op model changes, training, location, workplace ergonomics, customer experience, employee engagement, etc. can help HR identify future needs based on business objectives. HR leaders can then make informed talent decisions to prevent future predicted talent shortages or surpluses.
The Pandemic Changed Everything And Nothing
Workforce planning has jumped to the top of employers’ priority lists due to the combination of a highly competitive labor market as the world emerges from the pandemic and the realities of hybrid and remote working. These effects have implications on a business financially and on workforce engagement, productivity, innovation and retention.
Pandemic trends may be the driver, but all these trends were occurring long before the pandemic. Employers were already working to improve the level of detail and efficacy available in their modeling forecasts.
In 2016, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published 30409:2016 to codify what workforce planning is and what the baseline of implementation looks like for a global standard. That standard is evolving to the factors mentioned above and from a top-down to a bottom-up exercise. This allows for faster execution for lower investment and puts the power of the capability in the hands of line leaders.
Workers Want More
From reskilling to latticed career models to hybrid workplaces, the expectations of the workforce have changed dramatically. The employer-employee relationship has evolved. Employers that embrace and follow how workers perform, identify what their behavior—rather than their sentiment—indicates and instead offer opportunities for personal, professional and financial growth are winning the war for talent. Workforce planning allows you to leverage that data and model tomorrow, today.
Visualize your talent strategy and see what effects various business decisions might have on the need for different jobs and segments of your workforce, as well as what effects those decisions might have on the behavior of the workforce in metrics such as attrition and talent costs. Do this before the money is spent.
The ability to see how those workforce shifts impact the business and its ability to compete and differentiate in the marketplace can be helpful in today's volatile environment.
People Analytics Is A Baseline Capability
HR is no longer an order taker. The job is not to process leave requests and aid with benefits claims. HR has become an essential partner to the business and its primary job is, simply put, to put the right workforce in the right place, at the right time, with the skills to do the job. Doing so requires new approaches to what HR does, how HR practitioners think and the skill sets they have.
The HR profession today is analytics and data-driven. It has never been more important to be truly human and create open environments where people can bring their whole selves into work in a way that allows for vulnerability, without sacrificing stability and opportunity. Those principles may seem at odds with one another; they are not. Keeping a culture of transparency across workforce planning processes allows companies and employees to jointly drive buy-in and implementation, as the organization is aligned on roles, responsibilities and activity sequencing.
Good analytics allow for programs, processes, policies and behaviors that drive talent to excel and engage. Good workforce planning uses those analytics to both meet the needs of the business and empower employees to engage and grow within an organization.
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