People. Without People, you have no business. You can’t provide or make your services or products. Planning for your people is more than just saying, “I need people, workers, employees.” Making people part of your Simple Business Plan is a significant step in ensuring you have the right people.
Who or what are the right people?
In the Fourth Article in the Workforce Planning Series; Developing an Action Plan for your Workforce Planning involves considering its purpose. Workforce Planning is significantly more than just filling open vacancies and keeping warm bodies in positions. It involves this simple formula:
High Performing Workforce = Employees’ Knowledge + Skills + Experience + Initiative
You didn’t think you had to do math, did you? In reality, it is less math than it is understanding the relationship between different elements of Workforce Planning. The goal when Developing an Action Plan for your Workforce Planning is to achieve high performance from the workforce. Not “meets expectations” but HIGH PERFORMANCE.
How can your action plan develop HIGH PERFORMANCE from your Workforce?
In our Third Article in the Workforce Planning Series we discuss how all plans have a beginning, and certainly Developing a Workforce Plan does. How You Develop A Workforce Plan is not as simple as waking up one day and deciding. “We are going to have a workforce plan.” It requires careful thought and yes, planning to plan. Previously I shared that there were but 6 steps in the process. The first of those steps was “Develop a Business Strategic Plan.” Hopefully, your business has one, for, without a Strategic Plan, your Workforce Plan has limited value. Once you have your strategic plan we get to our actual question, How Do You Develop a Workforce Plan?
It starts with an understanding…
It seems everyone is having a Recruiting and Retention problem. The solution, almost universally is higher pay, more benefits at less cost and perks; we can’t forget the perks. When you add all of this together, you find that everyone is doing the same thing, no one is different, and workers are moving from employer to employer. As we struggle with Recruiting and Retention, we may forget that simple solutions, that aren’t the same as everyone else, are the best. In other words, Fix your Recruiting and Retention Problem with simple solutions.
Here’s how…
Recruiting today’s workforce has challenges few have experienced before. Businesses claim they are doing all they can to recruit in these very competitive times. All of them are doing the same. Those who dare to be different can not only win the battle for talent today but also win the long term battle for talent. It requires business leaders to get outside their comfort zones, open their minds and consider other methods with lasting effect. In short, it requires new ways of thinking. Recruiting is hard because you are doing the same thing as everyone else.
What more can you do?