The Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des skills is the central approach, it takes place every 3 years and lays the foundations for the adequacy of resources to the company's challenges.
Consisting of multiple human resources management systems, it has become crucial in a constantly changing professional world. The Strategic Workforce Planning not only allows to anticipate possible economic, sociological and organizational changes, it also evaluates the resources and needs necessary to contribute to theplanning of the company's strategy.
To help you to serenely feed this provision we answer, in this article, the question"Which tools to adopt to carry out the Strategic Workforce Planning ? These tools are divided according to the life cycle of your approach: from the preliminary analysis to its orchestration through the crucial implementation phase.
We will also outline a framework you can adopt to optimize your investments.
Thetools for analysis prior to the Strategic Workforce Planning
Before embarking on the process, the project team must establish an overview of the situation, which includes skills . At this stage of your reflection you must gather basic information such as the distribution of the workforce by age, their qualifications, gender, status, levels of training.
What are the tools of the preliminary analysis of the Strategic Workforce Planning ?
The job description
The job description includes the main activities, responsibilities and interactions with the rest of the company's businesses. As we will see later, the employee probably already has skills that can be used in other jobs. This will be the origin of the gateways to other roles.
The organization chart
The organization chart offers a visualization of the workforce according to the different Business Units. You can also see, for example, the distribution of skills in the major business lines as well as their proximity to other departments. Difficult to update, the organization chart can be fed from the "HR Core" of an HR solution.
The repository of skills
It is a library of qualifications, divided according to several criteria:
- Their 'example' categories
- weighted according to their importance, and the levels expected for each benchmark job or business line in the organization. This repository is fed by exchanges between the business experts, the HR team and ideally involves the employees. The hybrid model of collecting all of the company's assets is the most suitable: it allows for the feedback of skills from the stakeholders while benefiting from a framework initiated by the management.
The mapping of skills
The repository is a guide that feeds a "mapping" whose protagonists are the employees and the managers. Indeed, the latter will continuously evaluate their skills in order to reveal the faculties that can be mobilized and the skills that are at risk. The HR teams will thus have the tools to analyze the main areas of mastery and the skills at risk in order to make rational decisions.
Here are our additional resources on these analysis tools:
- Good management practices for skills
- Everything you need to know about skills
- The Guide to Mapping skills
We will also outline a framework you can adopt to optimize your investments.
Thetools for implementing the Strategic Workforce Planning
Exchanges with partners take place between the diagnosis and the implementation of the approach. This iterative procedure goes back down to the support of each individual. In parallel with the negotiation of the agreement Jobs & Skills Management, 4 tools are deployed:
The method agreement
Even if it is optional, the aim of the method agreement is to align the terms and conditions of the negotiations: the frequency, the content of the subjects addressed, the terms and conditions for monitoring the commitments, etc. Its objective is to establish a framework so that each party concerned can benefit from the decisions and action plans following the discussions.
The annual evaluation interview
During this meeting, managers and employees determine the assets and areas of progress: performance and acquisition objectives of skills. A good practice would be to have this information already agreed upon thanks to the continuous feedback between these two actors. The data from skills , which has been mastered and is being developed, enriches the mapping and is the basis for individual and collective development plans.
The professional interview
The professional interview is mandatory and takes place every two years. Its purpose is to manage opportunities for internal career development. The manager and the employee prepare for the future. This delicate exercise requires the manager to have a clear view of possible mobility and priority jobs within the company. This will enable him/her to provide sound advice and adapt to his/her team member's expectations.
The Development Plan
The company's objective of employability for its employees is reflected in its support for the development of its skills. The current empowerment of employees with regard to their professional career path contributes to the fact that they themselves propose training courses. Today, we are witnessing an inflation in the supply of content. The wealth of materials has never been so great, which means that the HR development manager has a lot of work to do in selecting the courses and solutions offered.
We will also outline a framework you can adopt to optimize your investments.
For an in-depth understanding, here are our resources:
- The 7 steps to ensure employee employability
- 6 steps to detect the needs of skills
- Annual maintenance and continuous feedback
- Adapting the developmentplan
The tools for monitoring the Strategic Workforce Planning
All of the actions taken and optimized tools lead to an improvement in employability and the adaptation of the company to its market: let's follow these developments with the appropriate tools.
HR indicators
A reporting based on indicators will validate the relevance of the actions and their communication to the partners. Let's go back to the objectives of the approach Strategic Workforce Planning Is it a necessity linked to a transformation of a branch of the organization, to identify the emerging skills in order to improve training investments? We recommend several simple indicators to be defined according to the objective of your Strategic Workforce Planning :
- Which indicators should be considered in the framework of age management? Choose 2 indicators: the evolution of qualifications at risk, the number of employees in reskilling situation
- What indicators should be chosen to evaluate the quality of the career offer? Highlight the evolution of the number of positions filled internally versus the number of external hires.
The governance of skills
The rapid evolution of the skills required by teams leads to the creation of a team in charge of updating the skills in the repository. The recommendations of this team, made up of business experts, a business sponsor, etc., are the guarantee of the good adequacy of the approach Strategic Workforce Planning.
Here are the articles that allow you to go further on these subjects:
- The 7 steps to develop employability of talent
- The 5 most important HR indicators
- The governance of skills
Conclude on the instruments of the Strategic Workforce Planning
Based on a foundation consisting of the skills repository, the Strategic Workforce Planning This may seem like a simple matter, but we have found that HR data is not always available. This may seem easy, but we note that these HR data are not always available.
What are the obstacles to overcome in order to carry out a Strategic Workforce Planning a successful project?
We note 3 main obstacles in the success of a Strategic Workforce Planning :
- The sensitivity of HR data makes its analysis complex.
- Fragmentation of data in several software programs that undermines their reliability.
- The inadequacy of current tools: too dependent on Excel or indigestible Business Intelligence software.
We give you the keys in a Guide realized in collaboration with Reflect:"Unleash the potential of your HR Data".
The original gaps between the company's needs and resources must be measured in order to feed the HR strategy: recruitment, recourse to services, mobility, are all alternatives to be considered.
The Strategic Workforce Planning has become Job and Career Management, we explain the evolutions : Jobs & Skills Management the new modalities.
We will also outline a framework you can adopt to optimize your investments.
