How can we prepare our organizations to better navigate future disruptions? How can we build more resilient organizations? Business leaders across the globe are asking these questions and at APQC, we are hard at work uncovering answers.
In this blog, I am sharing one such answer supported by the results of a recent APQC survey. This survey pointed to an approach that helped organizations navigate COVID-19 and that organizations plan to leverage more to prepare for future disruptions. Respondents to this APQC survey told us that in the face of COVID-19, this approach enabled them to:
» Keep workers safe,
» Identify roles that could be performed remotely,
» Continue business operations,
» Make workforce changes swiftly,
» Avoid layoffs, and
» Fare better than competitors.
And, these are just the benefits that this approach had in helping organizations respond to COVID-19. The survey results also show that, COVID-19 aside, this approach has helped organizations:
» Improve business performance,
» Facilitate digital transformation,
» Generate cost savings, and
» Foster organizational agility.
What is this approach?
It’s strategic workforce planning—a process that entails identifying the capabilities that an organization needs and making plans for how the organization will obtain them.
Only half of the organizations in our survey do it very well. Yet most, are looking to strategic workforce planning (SWFP) as a building block to future sustainability. As a result of the COVID-19 experience, the organizations in our study are planning to increase investments in the SWFP process. They plan to invest in technology to support SWFP, expand the use of analytics and predictive modeling in SWFP, and increase the role that scenario planning plays in their SWFP process.
But, for these investments to pay off and for organizations to reap the full benefits that SWFP can bring to organizational resilience, the process must have participation from a range of players and not just HR. While HR may govern and even facilitate the process, the C-suite, strategic planners, business unit leaders, finance, IT and line managers all have a critical role to play. Our survey results show that many organizations lack this broad level of SWFP knowledge and participation.
So, whether you are a workforce planner, an HR practitioner, a business leader or line manager, it is important that you understand how the SWFP process works and what makes it work well. You can start learning about the powers of this process from APQC's on-demand webinar: The State of Strategic Workforce Planning. The webinar covers the current state of the SWFP process, including levels of standardization, process governance and participation, the use of technology and analytics in SWFP, the most common time horizons for planning, and the top approaches that organizations are using to address skills gaps and surpluses.
Don’t let your organization overlook this powerful process. Watch the webinar today.