Workforce planning for Plan International

Following on from work IES carried out looking at the people management content of the strategic plans developed by Plan's country offices, IES was asked to support a workforce planning pilot. The aims were to:

develop a distinctive Plan workforce planning guide fitting the organisation's culture and needs
help People and Culture professionals and managers work through the workforce planning process, including definition of roles and responsibilities
select the appropriate workforce planning tools that would be useful to these staff
identify what skills and knowledge required to perform effective workforce planning.

An initial event was run in Woking with representative country directors and People and Culture managers to build the workforce planning model. Subsequent sessions were then held to train more HR staff in workforce planning techniques and how to apply them in a Plan context.

Using the newly created Plan guide to workforce planning, HR managers were asked to develop their own country workforce plans against a set format.

Remote support was given to HR teams around the world to complete the plans both through group working and individual advice sessions. Draft plans were also critiqued by IES to ensure the appropriate standards were met. The best examples of the use of workforce planning tools were added to the online workforce planning guide.