Employers are failing to implement essential strategic workforce plans that will protect their business over the crucial coming months.
A recent webinar hosted by Omni asked attendees ranging from SMEs to FTSE 100 companies to rate the level of strategic workforce planning in their business right now. It uncovered the following key learnings:
- Where workforce planning is conducted, it’s by departmental level hiring managers, with information not shared with the wider HR and resourcing teams.
- A huge challenge lies in capacity planning, with visibility of employee utilisations across a company reported as a common struggle.
- Contingent workers are often not considered in workforce plans, which comes down to a massive disconnect between HR and procurement and why so much rogue spending continues.
Additionally, when provided with a scale – 1 being zero workforce planning and 4 having a strategic workforce, demand plan and roadmap aligned to business strategy – the attendees cited their workforce planning at level 1 or 2, with no one declaring themselves 3 or above.
Missing elements of an effective workforce plan include:
- Workforce analytics that inform a recruitment-specific strategy
- Actions and procedures in place to address shortages, surpluses and mismatches
- Strategy owned by specialist workforce and resourcing function
- Detailed plan to deliver against business objectives
- Strategy in line with the HR strategy and business buy-in secured.
Having a strategic workforce plan is no longer just a nice thing to have; it’s a critical factor to organisational survival and success. The events of 2020 reinforced the need for businesses to be more flexible and agile, which means increasing workforce mobility. Getting workforce planning right delivers numerous benefits, including increased employee retention, talent identification, the ability to spot skill gaps, as well as significant time and cost savings. As such, an effective workforce plan is a guiding force across all areas of your business.
Help is at hand…
Omni’s Resourcing Effectiveness Assessment (REA) provides the ultimate health check for an organisation’s talent acquisition strategy, underpinning the development of next-step improvement plans or transformation projects that build a high-performing specialist resourcing function.
From identifying strengths and gaps to your organisation’s existing talent acquisition practice and highlighting any trends or barriers to growth, we analyse and benchmark all resourcing activities, providing a clear snapshot of current maturity. Take our mini REA assessment today to identify your current strengths and development areas and receive a report on how to improve.
