Strategic Workforce Planning: Adapting to Fluctuations
Balancing Costs and Time in Workforce Planning
When there is a moderate and transient shortage of people, overtime pay can be less expensive than hiring new staff.
Managing Overwork
- Reducing wages (when you reach an agreement with the company to lower wages)
- Reducing working hours
- Job sharing (two people working half-days each)
- Early retirement (giving good bonuses to encourage it)
- Untying the initiative of the contributor
- Restricted recruitment
- Untying the company’s initiative
Decisions to Make About Excess Staff
Balancing Costs and Time
If the excess is moderate, the company may be better off reducing the number of work hours instead of dismissing competent colleagues.
The People Planning Process
- The first stage (deals with the amount and quality of people)
It projects the quality and quantity of people.
At this stage, the basic raw organizational interests are considered.
- The second stage has to do with career planning.
This involves designing a possible career for people within the organization, which allows each one to get personal goals that are consistent with the requirements of the company.
Harmonizing Individual and Organizational Goals
In this second phase, the aim is to harmonize individual goals with those of the organization. (Allows one to move up to another post)
- Study the organization’s strategic plan (provides information on organizational objectives)
It should pick up the projections made in the strategic planning process, with emphasis on the medium and long term. (Target Company)
- Infer the necessary staffing for the future (to define the number and quality of people)
It means defining the number and quality of the positions. This will determine the number of people required and their quality.
There are techniques of a quantitative and qualitative nature. (To determine how many people are needed).
The choice of one or the other depends on factors such as the characteristics of the company, its structure, or the chosen time horizon.
- Design lines of race categories of posts (synonymous with career planning)
This means that people will indicate possible directions and career opportunities available within the organization.
The design assumes that career paths should be defined by:
- The skills and characteristics of the positions.
- Determining the place of each of them within the organizational hierarchy.
- Determining the competency job profile for each of them. (To minimize costs)
- Scheduling of training activities that are necessary to make the change.
And all this while minimizing the cost and time of adaptation of the person.
- Internal analysis of available expertise.
Once the number of people needed for a future stage has been defined.
It is important to take stock of the existing people inside to plan for possible movement of staff turnover in the future, bearing in mind the powers of the people.
The identification of competencies can be taken from an annual performance evaluation interview, if it is institutionalized.
The skills inventory is a useful tool because it describes the level of knowledge and skills available in the organization.
It will always be advantageous for the organization to use existing staff to meet staffing needs:
- It is less costly economically.
- Staff in which the organization has already invested in their training can be used.
The promotion of staff plays a particularly important role, because it is one of the ways that most contributes to the job satisfaction of people and a positive work environment.