Strategic workforce planning: Process and best practices

Few things impact your overall business more than workforce planning. If you evaluate your workforce now, measure their strengths and skill gaps, and plan far ahead, you’ll save effort in the future.

What is strategic workforce planning?

Strategic workforce planning means analyzing your current workforce and using what you learn to prepare for future staffing. The steps you take today will impact your organization going forward. Careful analysis and planning can help you avoid scrambling to meet your staffing needs down the road.

Global workforce planning is a subset of strategic workforce planning. Each year, more HR leaders realize the benefits of hiring talent from around the world. No more scouring the local area for the most qualified employees—the world is now at your fingertips. Use global workforce planning to do the following:

• Identify high-growth countries where talent is quickly developing. 
• Determine where the best talent is located for each hiring need, such as programming, design, and marketing. 
• Implement a plan for overcoming cultural differences. 

As you do these things, you can also forecast your future business needs and how you’ll approach them. 

The benefits of workforce planning

Workforce planning is critical to the overall health of your organization for many reasons. It can help you in the following ways:

• Improve your recruitment process: Identify specific talent needs and use strategic workforce planning to recruit global talent.
• Reduce hiring costs: Make the most of the talent you have to avoid overhiring.
• Identify talent gaps: Do a skills gap analysis to pinpoint areas that need new hires.
• Improve retention: You don’t want to lose your top talent—or any talent—to other employers. Strategic workforce planning helps you identify critical steps to retain employees.
• Plan for change: Identifying key metrics and benchmarks will ensure that you’re ready for anything the future brings.

The strategic workforce planning process

The ideal approach to the strategic workforce planning process largely depends on your current situation, short- and long-term goals, and your company’s direction. These six steps will help you implement a plan that suits your company’s unique requirements:

1. The goal analysis 

For a goal to mean anything, it must be clearly defined. Just as a soccer goal has goalposts clearly separating “in” from “out,” your business’s goals need a distinct marker between “in progress” and “done.”

How do you know your goals are clearly defined? See if they pass the SMART test. Ensure that the goals you’re pursuing are:

• Specific: Can you define what you’re after, what it affects, and how you’ll know when the objective has been achieved?
• Measurable: Is it quantifiable? Can you tell how far along you are in the process?
• Attainable: Can your company achieve this business objective, or is it beyond your current capabilities? Ambition is good, but try to stay realistic.
• Relevant: Does this relate to your overall business strategy? Don’t pull resources away from essential functions if the project doesn’t fit.
• Time-sensitive: An endpoint is crucial for proper time management. If your goal has no built-in deadline, find a way to add one.

2. The supply analysis

This is an analysis of your company’s current labor supply. How many employees do you have? Are they centered in one location or distributed internationally? How do these employees fit within your company’s various departments?

The supply analysis assesses your company as it currently is. You’re not looking toward the future at this time—just the here and now.

In addition to the current number of employees, make note of details such as:

• Each employee’s skill set
• Workforce demographics
• Employees belonging to protected classes

For example, if a large portion of your workforce is nearing retirement age, you can expect the turnover rate to increase in the years to come. Neglecting succession planning could leave you with a talent shortage as employees begin to retire. 

3. The future analysis

Unlike the supply analysis, the future analysis forecasts your company’s future needs. Use it to answer the following questions:

• Does your current workforce have the necessary skills to compete in your industry going forward?
• Are there areas within the company that will require talent reinforcements?
• How will the competitive landscape change, and how will it impact your company?

Planning for demand today allows you to take immediate and effective action for the future. You’ll know what to do no matter what situation you face. 

4. The market analysis

Look beyond your company to the overall market and notice what’s happening in your industry, both locally and abroad. You should continuously monitor the market to avoid getting left behind or repeating the mistakes of others.

5. The gap analysis

A gap analysis compares the supply and demand models to determine current and future talent management needs. Some of the most important details to focus on during a gap analysis include:

• Future scenarios that are likely to occur
• How you’ll approach these scenarios
• The number of additional employees you’ll need to manage these scenarios successfully
• The required skill set of these employees

Ideally, the gap between the supply and demand models is slim. But even if this is the case, there’s always room for future-proofing. 

6. The solution analysis 

Solution analysis is useful when scenario planning for the future. It addresses current staffing plans and future needs through recruiting, training, employee development, staffing, and outsourcing.

The previous steps only lay the foundation for a strategic workforce plan. They’ll help you understand your current situation, think about the future, and identify potential challenges, but they don’t solve any problems. 

The solution analysis allows you to confidently answer questions such as:

• Do you need to grow your workforce?
• Do you need to trim your workforce?
• Is it time to restructure your organization?

The answers to these questions help you decide what actions to take. For instance, if you need to grow your workforce, turn your attention to recruiting and make efforts to reduce turnover, such as adopting more flexible working strategies. Conversely, staffing or outsourcing may make more sense if you need to restructure your organization. 

4 best practices for strategic workforce planning

Workforce management asks you to track many distinct factors. To get the most from your planning strategy and ensure success, focus on these facets:

Determine critical roles

Every team member is valuable, but to assess risks, you must know whose loss would be most catastrophic. Learn who the MVPs are—not just on paper but those who really get things done. Build redundancy so your team can stay afloat when they get sick or go on a trip.

Consider workforce trends

Find out if your competitors are hiring substantially faster or slower than you are. If your company focuses on B2B, look for signs of a decline in your customers’ industry so you can plan early and accordingly.

Engage senior roles in the process

Being a go-getter and taking initiative is wise, but bosses seldom appreciate surprises. Senior roles probably have a lot of insight to share if they’ve been in the industry longer. And senior management will ideally shed light on the priorities of multiple departments, all of which play a vital role in the long-term health of your company.

Make data-driven decisions 

No one can predict the future, but documenting and consulting the past can help us prepare for what might come next. Companies that leverage their performance data gain a clear advantage over those that don’t.

Oyster can help you build your strategy

Planning out every aspect of your workforce could be a full-time job on its own. Although its value is undeniable, it remains only one of many critical tasks for HR leaders. Fortunately, you don’t have to tackle this process alone.

If global workforce planning is on your mind, Oyster can help you with every aspect, from hiring to paying to managing your remote team. When you take care of your global team, they take care of you.

About Oyster‍

Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.

Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.