Workforce Planning & Controlling Strategy and Change: Essentials of Human Resource Planning and Controlling

Abstract

The reality of organizations becomes more and more complex, especially for organizations that operate in different businesses and parts of the world. Combined with a rapidly changing environment and the rising importance of the human capital, a good understanding of the required and available human resources now and in future years is essential. Workforce planning and controlling is the core process of human resource management that determines in a systematic way the needed workforce today and tomorrow regarding different dimensions, identifies the gaps to the available workforce, and defines measures how to close the gap.

The relevant workforce dimensions are the headcount number, job types, competencies, location, demographics, and people costs. Workforce planning and controlling is driven by the business strategy and aligns strategic planning, human capital planning, and budgeting to meet the organization’s strategic and operational goals. It takes place at different levels of aggregation and time horizons, from executional, near-term manpower planning to long-term strategic workforce planning. The process of workforce planning and controlling encompasses the following steps:

• Strategy decode: Determine requirements of the business strategy for the workforce.

• Workforce modeling: Prepare a job family framework and workforce model.

• Workforce data gathering: Provide the workforce supply and demand data including workforce driver quantification.

• Workforce analysis and simulation: Analyze current and forecast future workforce demand and supply. Identify the gaps between workforce demand and supply.

• Develop workforce plans: Develop and implement plans to close the identified workforce gaps.

• Workforce controlling: Monitor, report, and assess the workforce plans’ effectiveness and efficiency and adjust, if needed.