Strategic Workforce Planning

With workforce planning, don’t do a pilot, build a lighthouse!

2009-11-11T07:52:00.001-08:00

Here are four examples of the ways I’ve seen customers “pilot” workforce planning in their organizations:

“Let’s do Supply Chain – that’s a small group of people"!”
“Four business units in Asia”
“The group that volunteered”
“The critical group with the biggest shortages”

So one of them chose a group that (while small for them) is incredibly complex; one chose a group that’s complex and also huge; one a group they don’t know the advantages or challenges of; and the fourth chose to start with a group where the cost of failure is as high as possible! Such courage, but…hey, it’s possible to make life a lot easier for yourself than THAT.

At Aruspex, we recommend that you don’t look for a pilot, you look for LIGHTHOUSE, it will make an enormous difference to the success of your project. A lighthouse is designed not just to be a successful project, but to have the internal marketing qualities to ensure that other parts of the organization will be drawn to it, and will want to follow. We’ve got a pretty serious method of finding one…give me a yell if you need the details

And be really careful not to do any of the four above!

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,project management

Google workforce prediction algorithm?

2009-11-03T14:39:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Chronicle (and several other places) have featured an article on Google using an algorithm to predict the people likely to leave. I have been avoiding this post ever since the Chronicle article…because I have such mixed feelings.

Some things I like:

Google cares this much about the workforce – as we all should!
REAL predictive analytics finally gets a showing! So many people are using the term predictive analytics about things which are really just metrics and reporting…it’s a wonderful thing to see real PA at least being thought about.
This will add value…but maybe not in the obvious way

Some things I worry about:

The algorithm can only use historical data, and given layoffs, Google’s slide from the #1 Best Place to Work spot, the economy and a whole lot of other current and recent change, that might miss some key items
Google searches are great, but they don’t get everything…and if management at Google starts to think that they do, there is a serious risk of complacency and so further loss of focus on the value of human management (“oh, Jane didn’t show up on the output of the algorithm this month, so she mustn’t be about to leave”)
HR data is much more limited than internet data, so there is a serious risk that the model won’t have enough data points to be relevant. Yes, great mathematicians can overcome many shortcomings…but maybe not that one
If we predict individual human behavior, what risks do we open up? Lawsuits, even? What if we get it wrong about Sally and don’t promote her because the algorithm said she’s likely to leave? Sure, we already do that in management heads, but what’s the legal situation once it comes from an algorithm?
Then there are the people worrying about Big Brother: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/20/internet-behavior-englebart-intelligent-technology-google.html?feed=rss_news

Some lessons for us all:

It’s a good idea to focus at least a part of our organization’s innovative power on our workforce…after all, they ARE our innovative power!
We need to be more rigorous about workforce decisions
Maybe we need to keep our “predictions” to groups, not individuals
Really smart companies are focusing serious energy on doing workforce planning

There is a lot of potential in PA (Aruspex is loving it right now), but it can’t replace human decision making…or can it? What do you think?

Will falling fertility impact your global plans?

2009-10-29T15:18:00.001-07:00

The Economist reports that astonishing falls in the fertility rate are bringing with them big benefits…particularly for the economic situation in developing countries:

And falling fertility is a boon for what it makes possible, which is economic growth. Demography used to be thought of as neutral for growth. But that was because, until the 1990s, there were few developing countries with records of declining fertility and rising incomes. Now there are dozens and they show that as countries move from large families and poverty into wealth and ageing they pass through a Goldilocks period: a generation or two in which fertility is neither too high nor too low and in which there are few dependent children, few dependent grandparents—and a bulge of adults in the middle who, if conditions are right, make the factories hum. For countries in demographic transition, the fall to replacement fertility is a unique and precious opportunity.

It’s fascinating that the reduction in birthrates from 5 per woman to 2 took 150 years in Great Britain…but took only 20 years in South Korea…and has fallen even faster in Iran. What this does is increases the earning power and security of people in these countries – and quickly makes them richer, which tends to make them more educated as well as more productive. This changes the amount and kind of work which can happen in that country…which might have serious impacts on where global organizations choose to have work done, and on the global competitive scene in many industries. These things, of course, affect our workforce, and so for many organizations also impact our workforce planning.

Have you thought about how it might impact yours?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,aging workforce,demographics

Management skills as a driver of lower turnover and higher productivity

2009-10-27T15:50:00.001-07:00

Last week I was attending a round-table consultation on the development of Australia’s National Workforce Development Strategy when the topic of conversation turned to the value of good management. A number of people expressed the view that good management held the key to unlocking productive capacity for organizations, industries, and economies.

Then today I was interested to see that the people responding to this web-poll, “Why Do You Stick With Your Employer?” ranked “Good coaching from and interaction with my boss” as the leading factor in retention, rating it more than twice as important as any other factor.

It’s clear that effective and engaging managers can positively impact the productivity and turnover of their departments – but less clear how you enable best practise management.

The Peter Principle, the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence", is a humorous idea, but still has resonance 40 years after it was originally described. I wonder if this is because there is often no guidance or mentoring for new managers to acquire the types of skills that good managers need, particularly those skills that can’t be taught in a classroom.

I’d be really interested to hear back from anyone who has experience with mentoring or other programs supporting people in the transition into management roles... and any evidence or anecdotes about the resulting long-term turnover and productivity impacts for their organizations.

Research tools for workforce planners

2009-10-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve been rabbiting on about them for a while, but in case you haven’t tried them yet, two very useful research websites were quietly delivered in 2009:

Wolfram Alpha, which computes actual answers to questions instead of simply providing a list of sites that may (or may not!) have the answer – we played with unemployment in San Francisco compared to New York City and were instantly provided this:

Then we asked the meaning of life, and were instantly provided this:

Excellent!
Google Public Data gives users the ability to search and compared public data such as statistics provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau's Population Division. Asked the same NYC vs SF question, we got this:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=county:PS060900:CN360610

Google was quite a lot harder to get, and has a lot fewer data sources (so far), but it’s still worth a look

For workforce planners, this is a big deal as they make the data needed for environment scanning much more easily accessible in a standardized manner. Instead of navigating your way through complex websites, employment rates, population statistics and other information is available at the click of a button...and in the case of our workforce planning software, automatically integrated!

So, how will you be using these new tools? And what IS the meaning of life?

Scenarios: NOT “best, worst, most likely”!

2009-10-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I presented to a group last week who were a bit sceptical at my assertion that “best, worst, most likely” (BWML) is a really poor substitute for real scenarios. I accept that BWML can be interesting forecasts, but they aren’t effective scenarios Futurist Joseph Coates puts it best:

An odd number with a best case, a worst case, and a most likely case draws the user to prefer or emphasize the middle case. This best, worst, most likely model of the use of scenarios is deficient not only in regard to the tendency to drive toward accepting the middle, but it misses the point that alternative futures are real possibilities

Real scenario planning has very powerful benefits which in strategic workforce planning allow the organization to craft really effective, targeted talent strategies for competitive advantage…usually by enabling managers to suspend disbelief and explore totally different approaches in a non-threatening way. Forecasting from history does not do this. Also, forecasting from history is a lot less fun than scenario planning, and the business value it less. What’s not to love about scenario planning?

Are you developing real scenarios, or only BWML-ing?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,scenario planning,best worst most likely

Social Networking Data in Workforce Planning

2009-10-11T20:38:00.001-07:00

Steve Boese has an interesting post about some research done inside IBM on internal Social Networking, why people participate and how they behave. Essentially, users are either Caring, Climbing or Campaigning, which really starts to get at how social networking data can indicate all kinds of talent segmentation indicators – take a look at what the research says about what these different user types actually post:

Think about the cool uses for this in analytics, or in segmentation, or in all sorts of other interesting workforce planning software uses? Very, very cool…but also challenging in terms of privacy, stereotyping, etc. I think that this kind of data is essential for “predictive analytics” to be really useful in workforce applications…are you using any of it??

Technorati Tags: workforce planning,predictive analytics

Using historical data to predict the future workforce

2009-10-08T13:19:00.001-07:00

Forbes wants us to learn an important history lesson:

History cannot be used to reliably predict the future, and data-driven extrapolation from past trends or 'analysis by analogy'--practices rife in the business and financial sectors--are particularly hazardous because they can give decision makers an unjustified sense of confidence. However, history is vital to understanding present conditions; without such knowledge, strategic policy planning efforts are likely to go awry.

Unfortunately, a lot of workforce planning software does exactly that, which is dangerous.

However, the main part of the article talks about how historical data is very important in making future policy decisions (the article means government policy, but the same applies for HR strategy and policy of course – workforce planning), provided it’s done right. For me, this means mixing it with other futuring techniques and not using historical data alone…and then measuring progress so you can respond when you are inevitably incorrect in some of your assumptions…

Use historical analysis…with care. Nice article – thanks to Katherine Jones for sending it over!

Technorati Tags: workforce planning,future workforce

Business Techniques Applied to Workforce Planning

2009-10-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

With the surge of interest in Strategic Workforce Planning we are seeing, it’s not a surprise that so many models and approaches are being brought into the workforce planning sphere. So I thought it was a good time to do a few notes on how these models are being used…and what the strengths and pitfalls of using each in WFP is.

Supply Chain. A perennial…slightly bad penny. Yes, I know it’s very trendy in workforce planning to say that optimization and supply chain approaches will provide the most efficient approach to the workforce, but let’s be honest…humans aren’t quite the same as the planning units used in supply chain. David Learmond at The Conference Board said it best, some years ago: “a tonne of pig iron doesn’t tend to have a spouse and children”. Look, there are definitely aspects of supply chain planning which are relevant to workforce planning, but never EVER lose sight of the human aspects…or you will lose relevance and effectiveness. We are not machines, and we should not plan as thought we or the workforce are machines!!! Hmmm, maybe one day I should write an article on this…with David Learmond!
Prediction Algorithms. OK, I confess, this one moves me a bit (I am a serious nerd deep down), and Aruspex does do quite a lot of stochastic and other predictive modeling. BUT, there’s a limit! Maybe the key here is not to believe that the outcomes of the predictive models are the answer to your problems…rather that they can help lead you to the real question?
Kano Models. This one was mentioned at the Human Capital Institute Event, and is based on an 80’s customer satisfaction model – essentially the practitioner was using it to determine if the services (which were metrics and reporting services, not really SWP services) were valuable to the business. This model is usually used in product management, and as SWP should be thought of as an internal product (as should all change initiatives), there is some value…but don’t get lost in this model – the other models described on the wikipedia page probably provide as much value, if rather less potential to confuse! Choose the one that resonates with you.

These are just a selection – what “non traditional” approaches are you seeing in use?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,supply chain,hr planning

HR.COM research on workforce planning

2009-10-05T09:09:00.001-07:00

You can never know too much about a good thing, and so I’d like to encourage workforce planners to participate in HR.COM’s research on the state of workforce planning in 2009. Please, take the survey, share your wins and challenges, and look forward to the results of the research soon.

Talent Segmentation finally gets some press!

2009-09-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

For years we have been saying that organizations need to segment the talent market just as marketers segment the consumer market – not for organizational demand (which is critical groups), but for SUPPLY! And the latest issue of Diversity Executive magazine has someone else talking about it too! In his regular leadership column, Robert Rodriguez (the director of the Kaplan Center for Corporate Learning at Kaplan University)talks about Talent Segmentation:

I recently attended a marketing conference and was amazed by how sophisticated sales and marketing professionals are in segmenting their consumer base. By dividing their market into segments, marketers are able to better meet the distinct needs, wants and behaviors of those with similar characteristics, which ultimately influences their buying preferences.

Of course, if you’re in HR, instead of “buying preferences”, substitute “attraction and retention”, because that’s the HR equivalent. While Rodriguez’s article talks specifically about diverse segments, the principles are true for all talent, just as they are true for all consumers.

Talent Segmentation is one of the techniques which really differentiates strategic workforce planning from the operational kind – but HR are often uncomfortable with it. How about you? Ready to treat the talent market as a market, and be truly competitive in it?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,talent segmentation,talent strategy

Workforce Planning Online Resources Example – NHS UK

2009-09-29T08:16:00.001-07:00

We work with a lot of organizations who are putting “centers of excellence” for strategic workforce planning online, and they are always looking for examples. Of course, most organizations keep their CoE’s private, but the UK’s National Health Service has their Workforce Planning Development Menus online for everyone to see and leverage. It might not exactly match your framework (the SWP framework should always be tailored for your organization), but there are some good examples of “how to”, elearning, solutions and tools in there. Check it out!

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,nhs

The Challenge of “Green Talent” and why you shouldn’t limit your Workforce Plans to Organizational Strategy!

2009-09-18T06:22:00.001-07:00

Accenture have posted a very interesting article on the emergence of “green talent”, and how organizations can take lessons from the internet boom on how to integrate these new talent pools.

Companies are seeing a rise in both the supply and demand for “green talent”—employees with the mindsets and skills to drive sustainability in an organization. The authors explain how executives can draw on lessons from the Internet revolution of the late 1990s, when they also had to learn how to integrate new talent pools into their workforces. They also reveal how some leading companies are using a framework to define, discover, develop and deploy their talent to advance sustainability strategies.

We’ve been talking about “green talent” and the impact of sustainability requirements on organizations for a while. It is a great example of an external trend – beyond the organization’s control – which impacts both the supply of and demand for talent. So, it is also a great example of why your strategic workforce planning methodology and software should not be limited to determining what you need for your organization’s strategy…because some really big trends aren’t included in that. It seems counterintuitive, but your examination of strategy should be part of a wider environment scanning approach that also considers external social trends…like “green”.

How are you incorporating trends like these?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,labour planning,hr

Workforce planning on the highline

2009-08-24T11:09:00.001-07:00

I spent last week in NYC, and a highlight was having breakfast with Don Ruse and Mary Young…which we ended by a stroll down the highline, a wonderful new urban park. Wow, what a great community feature that is, and a great way of making advantage out of what you have. I’m sure somewhere in there is a good analogy for workforce planners, but the truth is I forgot to focus on that, what with the concept, the garden and the views all being so wonderful. If you haven’t been there, go!

This is one of those situations where we managed to combine some serious and not so serious discussion on workforce planning with good company and a great location…almost the perfect workforce planning networking group, if a very small one. How are you going about building your SWP networking groups? Any highlines out there?

The Conference Board Model of Strategic Workforce Planning in Action

2009-08-03T13:48:00.001-07:00

As well as releasing their recent research report Implementing Strategic Workforce Planning (in which Aruspex and our clients are featured – of course!), Mary Young has added another excellent free resource to that page – a Flash presentation of “The Conference Board Model of Strategic Workforce Planning in Action”. Mary talks through some key findings of their research, both recently and over the past several years, and discussed their illustration of the relationship between HR strategy and business strategy (left). It’s quick, impactful and well worth a look – and also well worth including in your business engagement activities. More great work from Mary.

Does anyone else use this model, or a similar one, to help others understand what strategic workforce planning actually is?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,hr strategy

Opportunism for Workforce Planners – helping with turnarounds

2009-07-17T12:59:00.001-07:00

I saw Jim Holincheck in Chicago this week, and a group of us were talking about how we do change management for initiatives like strategic workforce planning. I’m a big advocate of the lighthouse approach, but Jim also suggested that leaders who are working to turn around their own business unit or group – they are a group open to creative new approaches to challenges. I think it’s a great point, and an option that all opportunistic workforce planners should remember. Any war stories of successes with workforce planning (or other workforce/talent initiatives) as an aid to business turnaround?

Why Statistics are like a Bikini

2009-07-09T15:55:00.001-07:00

The Conference Board has recently released a Research Working Group Report “Implementing Strategic Workforce Planning”. It notes that one of the indicators that Strategic Workforce Planning is reaching maturity within an organization is that organizational boundaries disappear or become less important:

“there’s a movement to capture workforce data across lines of business and geographies so talent and skills can be utilized as a shared resource and managed more efficiently.”

Looking at averages or summaries hides opportunities and risks that can only be seen with the ability to drill-down, or to “slice and dice” data. A great example is in the share market – people often rely on the “average return”, but this does not paint the full picture. Between 1900 and 2008, the average return of the NASDAQ was 6.94%, but only 2 out of the those 108 years, 1913 and 2007, returned anything within 10% of that long-term average. And in between, there were returns ranging from –54.13% to 81.66%. Aaron Levenstein once summed up the problem of aggregation nicely:

"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

Relying on aggregation is equally problematic in Strategic Workforce Planning. If you are looking at what is happening at your workforce only within the framework of an Organizational Structure, you may miss critical insights such as:

The voluntary turnover of high performers may be higher than, and for different reasons to, the general workforce.
There may be key capabilities possessed only by a section of the workforce that is rapidly approaching retirement, even though the ageing profile of each department is sustainable.
There may be vital differences in the length of service and performance of Full-time employees, Part-time employees, and contractors.

Each of these insights would be missed if your Strategic Workforce Planning is by department only – sometimes you need to see the trees as well as the forest!

Economic Impact – Population Ageing is a lot worse than “The Crisis”

2009-06-28T22:27:00.001-07:00

We’ve been talking about it for a while, and now The Economist is discussing what impact aging populations will have on the world – what The Economist describes as “a slow burning fuse”. Even though the economic crisis has taken focus of aging as an issue, the article clearly paints the major challenge looming for countries and organizations, especially in the developed world. The image at left shows clearly just how much more economic impact this demographic change has than the current “crisis”.

During discussions at the HCI Workforce Planning conference recently, one attendee stated that the economic crisis makes things riskier from a retirement perspective – now, rather than seeing older worker retirement patterns steadily impact as though down a sloping hill, the practitioner expressed concern that many would stay until an economic uptick, and then organizations would see exits more like plunging off a cliff. This is a real threat to knowledge and skill transition, and to business continuity, especially where the potential retirees are heavily concentrated in management. But still people use the economic cycle as an excuse to not worry…yet The Economist article clearly illustrates why we should still worry:

This is a slow-moving but relentless development that in time will have vast economic, social and political consequences. As yet, only a few countries with already-old populations are starting to notice the effects. But labor forces are now beginning to shrink and numbers of pensioners are starting to rise. By about 2020 ageing will be plain for all to see. And there is no escape: barring huge natural or man-made disasters, demographic changes are much more certain than other long-term predictions (for example, of climate change). Every one of the 2 billion people who will be over 60 in 2050 has already been born.

How far away is the impact of these retirements on your workforce? Are you modeling potential impacts in your strategic workforce planning? What ARE you doing about it?

Technorati Tags: workforce planning,labour planning,hr,workforce in a downturn

HCI Workforce Planning Conference Part 2: Operational vs Strategic Workforce Planning

2009-06-19T15:25:00.001-07:00

It’s clear from the conference this week that the two schools of workforce planning are definitely diverging…

Operational workforce planning, focused on metrics, reporting and forecasting
Strategic workforce planning, focused on developing a measurable talent strategy

Sure, they aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are definitely distinct…so I thought it would be a good idea to remind ourselves what the difference between them are. Besides a pretty good answer over there on WikiAnswers, we have a paper that uses this table to describe the differences between the two. What do you think?

Item	Operational	Strategic
Need	Accurately forecast hiring and/or training needs	Develop the best talent strategies for longer term success
Timeline/Planning Horizon	Usually 12 months with a quarterly focus – matches the yearly business plan	Usually 3 years or longer – matches the organizational strategic plan
Integrated with	Annual or quarterly financial/budgeting process	Strategic planning process
Inputs	Mostly internal data, some management decisions	Wide range of internal and external information including demographics, business strategies, global trends, etc
Outputs	Staffing plans, skill gaps	Human Resource/People Strategies
Scenario Planning Approach	Uses variables to explore different models of staffing	Uses futuring techniques to question current paradigms and explore alternative futures not necessarily based on today’s approach
Forecasting	Key focus	Only part of the process – forecasting is too limited in terms of timeline and scope to be the core of the process
Segmentation Focus	Internal demand	Internal and external, demand and supply are all segmented
Skills	Competencies may be audited or gathered at an individual level	Strategic Capabilities analyzed and gathered at the group level
Performed by	HR or staffing organization with input from the business	Business, facilitated by HR
Focus	Operational Management – Line and BU Managers	Strategic Management – Executive and Board
Aligns to	Business Plan	Strategic Plan
Terms used	“Predict”, “Calculate”	“Explore”, “Design”

HCI Workforce Planning Conference Part 1: Evolving WFP landscape

2009-06-18T17:10:00.001-07:00

I went to the Human Capital Institute’s workforce planning conference this week, and of course that many case studies and practitioners in that place will stimulate a few posts…starting with this.

Wow, how workforce planning has evolved. At this event, people seriously discussed environment scanning, scenario exploration, operational vs strategic workforce planning (more on that next post) and lots of other good things. Workforce planning has evolved so that those terms and techniques have become part of the language of workforce planning, not the exotic new items they used to be. Sure, people are still talking about metrics and reporting, but more and more of the really successful case studies really understand that there are qualitative things in the mix as well.

Exciting stuff!

Workforce Planning in Challenging Economic Times – Free Aruspex Webinar

2009-05-31T12:23:00.001-07:00

I’m holding a webinar on Wednesday June 3 (3pm ET) with step by step instructions on how to model and manage workforce planning in these challenging times. It will cover the three planning horizons that all workforce planning needs to consider:

SHORT TERM – optimizing the workforce to survive the economic challenges and increase efficiency
MEDIUM TERM – ensuring the right workforce for strategic advantage and industry leadership
LONG TERM - designing and building the right workforce for new strategies and accelerated growth

Good workforce planning lets you balance and achieve all of these things…and I’ll have a webinar and whitepaper that can tell you how…in some serious detail! Looking forward to seeing you online on Wednesday!

Technorati Tags: workforce planning,economic downturn,talent strategy

Without workforce planning, “a confluence of troubles”

2009-05-19T09:33:00.001-07:00

Great article in Workforce Management magazine pointing out that many organizations are not really seeing beyond any urgent need to do layoffs…to the bigger, longer term challenges which remain in the global talent market:

Many companies are so consumed with layoffs or with just getting by now that layoffs are behind them, they haven’t begun to address the question of what comes next.

…yet the article goes on to discuss in some detail a wide range of things which are likely to come next, including the increased use of contingent workers, continuing population aging, changing skills needed, etc, etc. Regardless of the length of the recession, this larger demographic and societal changes are taking place – and unfortunately too many organizations are using the excuse of the recession to ignore them! Yet the leading organizations ARE preparing for their post-recession selves, making decisions and proactively recruiting the skills they believe will be critical to their future success. Yes, they might be wrong (nothing is certain, after all), but because they have adaptive workforce plans that have considered other options, they are able to be responsive to future changes.

Accenture recently published quite a bit of research that shows that decisions made during recessions have profound impacts on the difference between winners and losers post-recession. So why are people using the recession as an excuse NOT to make strategic decisions, especially about the workforce? Now is the most important time ever to have a strategic workforce plan in place…because ultimately a strategic workforce plan is the framework which allows you to make better workforce decisions.

How is workforce decision making tracking at your organization?

Technorati Tags: workforce planning

Strategic planning: Three tips for 2009

2009-04-28T15:36:00.001-07:00

McKinsey have recently published a brief paper offering tips for strategic planning in the current environment. The three key tips are:

Be realistic about scenario planning – “In a highly uncertain environment, the advantages of scenario planning are clear: since no one base case can be regarded as probable, it’s necessary to develop plans on the assumption that several different futures are possible and to focus attention on the underlying drivers of uncertainty”
Intensify monitoring – “The company’s strategy, in short, must account for many more contingencies than it has until recently. Since the effectiveness of such a strategy depends on an organization’s ability to adjust rapidly as the fog starts to lift, managers must identify and intensively monitor key indicators suggesting which scenario might unfold”
Look beyond the crisis - “devastating as the current downturn may be, it cannot roll back fundamental market
trends—such as the aging of consumers in Europe and North America or the continued economic development of Brazil, China, India, and Russia—which will continue to create strategic opportunities and threats”

Unfortunately, these are three things that most workforce planning approaches don’t do. All too often we see organizations looking at only one possible future scenario; building a headcount plan they don’t monitor at all; and worst of all, saying that “there’s to much change to look into the future”. As McKinsey points out, these are critical mistakes for people planning right now. And they are avoidable – including these three tips in your strategic workforce planning process is not difficult – and gives you better results. Are you following McKinsey’s strategic planning advice?

Technorati Tags: workforce planning,aruspex

Flaws in workforce decisions part 3 - TARGETS

2009-04-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

The final part of my thoughts on McKinsey’s recent “flaws in strategic decision making”, which reports some findings that those guiding strategic workforce decisions should be thinking about.

Reaching good outcomes had three themes – assessment, process and targets. I already posted on assessment and process, this one is on decision making TARGETS. McKinsey described this theme as “aligning incentives and basing the decision on a mix of financial and strategic targets as well as on a mix of short- and long-term targets.”

Individuals’ incentives were aligned with strategic objectives defined by this decision. Here’s one that’s a big deal for management – aligning goals. What’s critical in the workforce planning process, though, is ensuring that you are clear about what your strategic objectives are. These objectives are not “hire X headcount”, they are a rich picture that define how you will achieve the right workforce for future success.
Based on balanced mix of financial, strategic targets. Wow, that’s one we are seeing more and more – making sure that your decisions AREN’T just based on your workforce budget for the next year, or on short term pressures to save money. Rather, mix these financial targets with analysis and discussion on how those decisions will impact the overall ability to deliver on your strategy
Based on long- and short-term considerations. As with point 2, considering both is vital. We often hear people saying, “Oh, three years is too long, we can’t look that far into the future”, or “there’s too much change happening now”, but the reality is by making the decisions that you are making about what you’re doing today in the context of how you need to be successful in the long term, you simply make better decisions today – the two should not be separated, and planning for the future is vital…even if those plans change

it’s a great paper that can give you some really good insights into what qualities will mean you are helping your organization make better workforce planning decisions. As with all opportunities to be better at workforce planning, the idea with these is to think about which are the most important for improving your process, and tackle improving in one or more of them…taking steps in the journey! Which steps are most important to you?

Flaws in workforce decisions part 2 - PROCESS

2009-04-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Part two of my thoughts on McKinsey’s recent “flaws in strategic decision making”, which reports some findings that those guiding strategic workforce decisions should be thinking about.

Reaching good outcomes had three themes – assessment, process and targets. The last post was on assessment, this one is on decision making PROCESS. The McKinsey paper describes this as seeking contrary evidence, ensuring that
decision makers had all the critical information, giving dissenting voices the floor, reviewing the business case thoroughly even though senior executives were strongly in favor, and ensuring that truly innovative ideas reached senior managers. How are workforce decisions doing on that front?

Seeking contrary evidence. If you get the right people in the project this will happen – and if you charter yourself with structured environment scanning, playing the devil’s advocate, and of course using that famed workforce planner tool “why”, you can find contrary evidence. But it may not come naturally – strong voices can overcome dissent AND contrary evidence….unless carefully managed. Our workforce planning workshops can help you with those skills.
Ensuring that decision makers had all the critical information. This one sounds easy, and sounds like reports from our workforce dashboards are all we need – but take care! If you only use internal data, and only use numbers/metrics…you aren’t giving ALL the information – in fact you aren’t giving information at all, you’re giving data. To provide all the information you need to include interpretation, external data and opinion, and also qualitative views on the “story behind the data”. Ask us for our “hierarchy of information” if you want more tips on how to improve in this area
Giving dissenting voices the floor. Another one that’s about facilitation and project management, a lot like point 1!
Reviewing the business case thoroughly even though senior executives were strongly in favor. As well as facilitation and project management skills, think about the level of the organization at which you are working. Are the people you are talking to and working with on workforce decisions senior enough that questioning a case for which a senior executive is in favor? You need to be!
Ensuring that truly innovative ideas reached senior managers. Seems like an obvious one you can help by making sure that your project team has the best mix of resources…but it’s also a wider cultural question. How does your organization fit on this one?

That wasn’t too hard – a good workforce planning process that mixes the quantitative and qualitative, and that is led by someone focused on being a great workforce planner will solve those! Next….how to leverage better TARGETS when making good workforce decisions.