Work force planning is the process of ensuring that an organization has the talent it needs to accomplish strategic business goals when the organization needs it. Spending time on work force planning can drive the competitive advantage of an organization. A successful work force planning exercise identifies talent supply gaps for critical positions and generates strategies to develop and/or recruit talent to fill those gaps.
Tim Sackett of Fistful of Talent asserts that there will be added focus on succession planning in the coming years due to economic changes. However, Daniel Fogel at Human Capital Institute suggests that one of the biggest obstacles that HR needs to overcome is getting organizations to focus on talent planning and management three to five years out.
Indeed, recent data from APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking in creating and managing HR strategy indicates that bottom performing organizations spend less than 10 percent of their time on work force planning while top performing organizations spend over double the amount of time. This time may be spent on setting goals as well as selecting and developing work force planning programs. These results indicate that many HR functions can benefit from spending more time on making sure that organizations have the talent they need.
How much time does your HR spend on work force planning? What activities do they use this time for? Comment below or tweet me.