Today’s business world is fast-paced: globalization, multiple uncertainties, disruptive competitors, the war for talent…
To respond to so many challenges, we must take action to ensure a solid present. Monitoring short-term results gives us a pulse on our corporate health.
However, the best companies don’t stop there. They strive to foresee and anticipate their future, becoming active protagonists of their destiny rather than passive spectators.
Today, excellent organizations complement the traditional 2-, 3-, or 5-year business strategic plans with robust strategic workforce planning. While this may seem like a novel concept, it has a long history. The term was originally defined in 1880 by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
This practice broadens our perspective by prompting us to ask critical and powerful questions, such as:
- What will be the expected evolution of the business, and how will it impact people management?
- How will the external context (risks and opportunities) evolve?
- What mindset and professional skills (hard and soft) will I need in the medium term to succeed?
- How do we address these gaps, with internal development or external recruitment?
- What is the best organizational structure for our future strategy?
- What strengths does our human team have that we should enhance in the medium term?
- What roles will emerge or fade away?
- How can we maximize growth opportunities for people beyond the obvious promotions?
- How will my internal population pyramid evolve (including retirements, voluntary turnover…)?
- What challenges and opportunities will I face regarding total labor costs?
- What impact does this medium-term (3-5 years) vision have on key people management policies?
Benefits of Strategic Workforce Planning
Some of the most relevant advantages offered by this type of planning include:
- Better alignment of people management with business strategy and challenges
- Anticipating opportunities and risks, leveraging the new capabilities of people analytics
- Making higher-quality, data-driven decisions, rather than relying solely on historical data or intuition
- Greater proactivity in people management and improved execution quality
- Clarifying the key metrics that allow us to monitor the progress of our people strategy and its impact on the business
- Better predicting the future to actively manage it with more time, avoiding constant firefighting
- Communicating the people management vision more effectively, both internally and externally, with a clearer roadmap
- Continuously evolving our human capital management with a rigorous approach
- Improving key people management factors: engagement, team growth, productivity…
In the daily whirlwind, we must periodically pause to gain clarity and shape our future, at least to some extent. No one is immune to potential ‘black swans,’ but strategic planning helps us manage risks better and seize opportunities.
This is a dynamic exercise, always open to improvement and agile integration of new internal and external data that refine our roadmap. As Alan Lakein said, “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
I believe excellence is a blend of data and intuition, artificial and human intelligence, planning and purpose, present and future. Let’s leverage the power of technology and data to elevate the talent and human touch of each person to the next level.
This article has also been published in Do Better by ESADE, September 24, 2024
David Reyero Trapiello – Senior HR Business Partner – Sanofi Iberia
e-mail: David.reyero@sanofi.com / Twitter: @davidreyero73 / Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/davidreyerotrapiello/
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