Workforce Planning: 4 Strategies to Build a Resilient Company

What’s your workforce strategy? If your answer is something vague, like “hiring the right people,” then your plan needs a refresh. 

While the last few years have left executives shaking their heads, organizations that continue to take a strategic workforce planning approach – despite setbacks – come out on top. 

The reason is simple: According to SHRM, they can better navigate hiring challenges, skill gaps, and shifting market conditions. That said, executing a workforce strategy can be extremely difficult to plan when things feel constantly up in the air. 

But economic volatility, evolving technology, and changing workforce expectations aren’t going away, so it’s critical to rethink how you’re planning for talent. Luckily, a well-crafted workforce strategy helps you stay ahead and balance cost-efficiency with your organization’s long-term growth.

What is Workforce Planning?

Workforce planning is the process of aligning an organization’s talent strategy with its business objectives. It helps companies anticipate staffing needs, identify skill gaps, and prepare for future challenges.

There are two key types of workforce planning:

• Operational workforce planning: Focuses on short-term needs, such as filling open positions and adjusting staffing levels.
• Strategic workforce planning: Takes a long-term view, analyzing future skill needs, succession planning, and market trends to build a more resilient workforce.

Note: Successful workforce planning is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Businesses should continuously refine their approach based on real-time workforce data.

4 Workforce Planning Strategies

If you’re looking to build a resilient workforce (and to be honest, who isn’t?), embed the following workforce planning strategies into your business plan to ensure you make strategic decisions for your company and people.

1. Workforce Analysis: Using Data to Plan for the Future

A strong workforce strategy starts with workforce analysis, AKA using data to understand talent trends and anticipate hiring needs. 

If you think a workforce analysis sounds similar to a skills gap analysis, you’re right. The difference is minute: While a skills gap analysis helps identify the skills your workforce currently has versus the ones it needs to meet goals, a workforce analysis looks at the broader scope (think demographics, roles, performance levels, and succession planning needs). 

By integrating your workforce analysis with your company’s goals, you can proactively address talent challenges rather than reacting to them. Besides patting yourself on the back for a job well done, addressing hiring needs will help your team decide where to invest in talent and when to adjust hiring efforts. 

Key metrics to track include:

• Employee turnover rates
• Skills gaps
• Workforce demographics
• Productivity levels

Choose HR software with robust analytics and reporting functionalities to give you a birds-eye view of your workforce and help determine your hiring needs. 

2. Scenario Planning: Preparing for Multiple Outcomes and Economic Volatility

It’s no secret that responding to change is top of mind for many businesses. In fact, 64% of HR leaders say their organization experienced change last year, many of which stemmed from industry disruptions, natural disasters, shifts in remote work trends, and increasing or decreasing demands.

Economic uncertainty can make workforce planning challenging, but it also creates opportunities for agile businesses.

Therefore, you’ll want to combat reactive thinking and utilize scenario planning, a strategic methodology for analyzing trends and uncertainties that enables organizations to prepare for various potential future states. 

One aspect to consider for all scenario plans is whether you need to expand or decrease your workforce. Of course, with these types of decisions, budget always comes into play. Because your organization (and at times, people’s jobs) are at stake, your decisions must be data-driven and not just gut reactions to the economy or an impending issue.

One way to ensure you have real-time data at your fingertips is using an HCM. Suzanne Fohl, CFO of PrimePay, says: “By using our own platform daily, we benefit from its advanced integration capabilities, unifying people and financial data in a single system. This technology enables our HR and Finance teams to collaborate effectively, leveraging real-time insights to drive data-informed, strategic decisions that enhance organizational performance.”

By reflecting on past structures and planning for the future, leaders can better understand and structure their workforce for multiple outcomes.

3. Talent Acquisition and Retention: Building a Sustainable Workforce

Recruiting and retaining top talent is a core part of strategic workforce planning. 

To attract and build a thriving workforce, companies should:

• Prioritize trust. Barry Marshall of P5 encourages leaders to consider why they’re monitoring employees. He says, “Forty-one percent of organizations are monitoring their employees. You have to ask the question: Are we building trust in an environment? And if we’re monitoring employees from a position of distrust – as in I don’t trust you to do the right thing, so I’m going to monitor and make sure you are – then you are shooting the culture before it even begins.”
• Focus on improving your entire employee lifecycle. It may seem like a big task (and it is!), but focusing on your hire to retire process will solidify your retention program, no matter how seasoned your employees are. If you want to know where big holes are in your employee lifecycle, turn to your offboarding data to help guide future planning.
• Collect valuable feedback via employee surveys. Unfortunately, only 53% of HR leaders gather data at least quarterly to understand how their company’s culture compares with others. The good news? It allows you to stand out as an employer and listen to employee insights to create a superb employee experience.
• Train your managers. Do you know how many managers actually receive training? Very little, says Lillit Cholakian of NewGen Global Leaders. She explains: “Managers are often promoted to their positions because they work hard, have the required technical and professional skills, and understand the work. However, they rarely have prior training in how to lead, empower, and motivate their people.” Luckily, her advice is tactical and achievable: “Initial and ongoing training, mentoring, and coaching are critical to every manager’s effectiveness, influence, and success, and hence, the company’s success.”
• Measure flight risk. To get ahead of retention concerns, measure flight risk. Our research shows that when employees land in roles that are too challenging, aren’t challenging enough, or don’t align with their skill set or career path, they’re more likely to leave.

There are many ways to measure flight risk, including the most common strategies above.

4. Reskilling and Upskilling: Investing in Talent Development

Sure, investing in talent development is a retention strategy (that could be listed above), but advancing your people’s skills is so much more than that. 

For example, when you’re focused on learning and development, you’re: 

• Ensuring that employees are prepared for new challenges. According to the World Economic Forum, 50% of employees will need reskilling by 2025 as technology reshapes jobs. Reskilling prepares both employees and employers for the future.
• Helping your business stay competitive. You know that retaining employees reduces hiring costs, but many leaders forget that when someone walks out the door, so does their institutional knowledge. By offering continuous learning opportunities, you’re keeping employees engaged and solidifying your business strategy.
• Providing a clear view of employees’ futures. A reported 40% of employees don’t see a clear path to advance their careers, often resulting in disengagement or voluntary turnover. But “employees are eager for growth, development, and upskilling,” says Kristie Leigh, talent development manager for JK Moving Services. She notes that most of her company’s professional development programs enrollment is self-initiated, nodding to the need and desire for scaling up.

While creating a robust reskilling and upskilling program is preferable, there are other ways (read: lower budget) to support professional development. Consider holding internal workshops to help employees learn soft skills like building confidence or improving communication, hosting a book study, or building a mentorship program.

Refining Your Workforce Planning Process

HR and Finance leaders play a crucial role in shaping the future of work. The key is staying agile, using data effectively, and investing in employees to drive long-term success.

That’s why a proactive workforce strategy will help your organization avoid talent challenges and better respond to economic shifts, technological advancements, or evolving employee expectations. Ultimately, by integrating workforce analysis, strategic planning, and talent retention and development, companies can build a more resilient and adaptable workforce.