Workforce planning: Get your data right

Press Releases

5 Aug 2015

Press release: Institute for Employment Studies
Wednesday, 5 August, 2015

Workforce planning: Get your data right

A new guide to workforce planning from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) claims that the process too often fails because of poor execution. The remedy, according to the author, Peter Reilly, is to keep it as simple and focused as possible. In particular, HR should be sparing in data gathering, but ensure that those data are consistently defined and accurate.

Whilst the pressure may be on to collect as much data as possible, the paper advises stepping back to identify the important business problems and working backwards to decide what information HR needs to plan organisational resources. Specific techniques can then be applied to highlight difficulties or offer solutions, such as career mapping or scenario planning.

The author draws on IES's 45 years of research, training and consultancy experience in workforce planning to offer guidance to HR practitioners for improving the process, and gives ten practical tips to guide them through it. The paper aims to help those who are starting out on workforce planning and those with more experience who would benefit from some advice, to review current workforce planning processes and identify pinch points.

Author Peter Reilly described how important it was to demonstrate the value of workforce planning to sceptical audiences, saying, "HR should be close enough to the business to know the principal challenges in matching workforce supply to work demand. It should then be able to identify the means by which gaps are closed or surpluses dealt with."

"We wrote the guide because so often HR complains that its workforce planning is ineffective and business leaders complain that HR processes are too cumbersome. Both groups have unrealistic expectations that workforce planning will solve all their resourcing problems, ignoring the benefits of identifying and thinking through the workforce challenges."

'Workforce planning: a framework for thinking about your own approach' is the second in a new series of concise papers for busy HR professionals and line managers. The HR Essentials series offers concise, accessible advice based on in-depth research, extensive consulting experience and ongoing conversations with leading practitioners.

The guide is available to download

An embeddable infographic summary has also been published.

ENDS

About the Institute for Employment Studies

The Institute for Employment Studies is the UK's leading independent, not-for-profit centre for research and evidence-based consultancy on employment, the labour market, and HR policy and practice.

IES tweets from @EmploymtStudies

About the author

Peter Reilly is a Principal Associate of the Institute for Employment Studies. He was, until 2014, Director of HR Research and Consultancy at the Institute.

Peter was previously an HR practitioner with Shell, working in the UK and abroad in both specialist and generalist positions. He still leads IES's work on the HR function and contributes to consultancy projects on workforce planning and labour market analysis. Peter has worked with clients of all sizes on the design and execution of workforce planning in both the private and public sectors.

• Read Peter's full profile

The HR Essentials series

Other titles in the HR Essentials series, include:

• Effective talent and workforce planning, by Wendy Hirsh

• Organisation Design, by Sharon Varney (currently under embargo to HR Network members)

Forthcoming:

• Employee engagement