Job and career planning skills is above all a strategic approach to managing the company’s human resources. It provides management with the tools to measure and plan quantitative and qualitative variations in human resources.
What is workforce redeployment agreement?
Gestion prévisionnelle des emplois et des skills (Strategic Workforce Planning) is an HR management approach which involves gathering quantitative and qualitative data on resources in order to assess the organization’s needs. This ensures that any discrepancies are prevented, and that organizational assets are efficiently allocated to serve strategic orientations.
- From a qualitative point of view, the approach consists of taking stock of the skills currently available within the organization. This data will be put into perspective with the company’s present and future needs.
- From a quantitative point of view, a set of analyses of a company’s current workforce to assess it against its strategy. In most cases, discrepancies can be identified for a variety of reasons:
- Natural attrition, leading to a risk of losing skills
- Structural changes in the business or external factors (automation, changes in regulations, etc.)
IMPORTANT: the Strategic Workforce Planning is replaced by the Jobs & Skills Management since 2018, learn more about the new provisions in our reference document: the Jobs & Skills Management replaces the Strategic Workforce Planning.
Is the Strategic Workforce Planning mandatory?
The Strategic Workforce Planning is mandatory. Since the conclusions of the process often involve profound changes to the company’s human resources, the employer is obliged to negotiate an agreement with its social partners. This requirement stems from the French law on social cohesion of January 18, 2005.
Who is concerned by the negotiation of an agreement? Strategic Workforce Planning ?
The conditions for such an agreement depend on the size of the structure:
- All companies with at least 300 employees
- Any community-based organization with more than 150 employees.
This obligation leads to the conclusion of negotiations to formalize an agreement every three years, known as triennial negotiations.
The decisions taken during the agreement Strategic Workforce Planning :
- Updatingthe training plan: the prior identification of missing skills must above all lead to an upgrade. Ensuring the employability of employees is, in principle, the 1st challenge of this HR tool.
- Recruitment: In the event of foreseeable attrition, or if it takes too long to reach the required level of expertise, external recruitment will be carried out. Although this is the most immediate measure, it does have certain drawbacks.
- Internal mobility: a quantitative analysis of the workforce may reveal the need for redeployment to compensate for an inefficient division of labor. Based on an analysis of skills employees’ cross-functional skills, the company can reinforce certain departments.
- Redundancies: when certain positions have to be eliminated and it is not possible to reallocate the employees occupying these positions.
The terms of an agreement Strategic Workforce Planning
The legislator provides for mandatory and optional topics for these negotiations. The mandatory topics are intended to readjust the skills and the number of employees. The optional topics are intended to resolve questions of overstaffing, with the result that there are plans to cut jobs, dismissals or internal mobility.
What are the mandatory themes of an agreement? Strategic Workforce Planning ?
- Conditions for professional and geographical mobility
- The main 3-year orientations of continuing education
- Prospects for the use of different employment contract formats
What are the optional topics of an agreement Strategic Workforce Planning ?
- The implementation of mobility leave
- Qualification of job categories threatened by economic or technological changes
- The conditions for the company's participation in specific actions at the level of the territories where it is located
- Specific measures for senior citizens (part-time work, transmission of skills)
Finally, for negotiations to be successful, they must take into account all the strategies being developed by the company, which are likely to influence employment (headcount or skills) over the next three years. If the analysis is not exhaustive, these projects may later become a source of tension and discontent within the company.
Negotiating the Strategic Workforce Planninga participatory approach
Negotiations are conducted with the employee representatives and should therefore not only involve the members of the works council. The agreement on the system Strategic Workforce Planning is to be considered within the framework of collective bargaining and social dialogue in general. Consequently, it is up to the trade union delegates to discuss with you the system that you wish to put in place, particularly with regard to the action plan resulting from the discussions.
During the discussions, it is vital that each party clearly expresses what is at stake. As HR Director, you’ll need to assess the strategic, human and financial impact of each measure to be taken. The unions, in turn, will be able to raise the issues they see at stake in the decisions to be taken as part of this formality. It’s a good idea for both sides to open up to debate, and not just try to get the other to bend. And since you represent the employer, it’s vital that you set an example of openness to dialogue. You’ll need to be open-minded, and agree to work in full transparency with the union delegates, who should feel no desire to force the issue.
What are the tools for implementing an agreement Strategic Workforce Planning ?
As you can see, the key challenge is to understand the heritage of skills. Here's what we recommend you look for in your tool Strategic Workforce Planning :
- A structured repository of skills .
- an open business architecture
- A catalog of training courses to match the skills developed
- A powerful semantic matching tool.
- Interconnection with your existing HRIS
- An intuitive interface to involve employees in the evaluation of their skills
If you enjoyed this article, please check out our article on the essential tools of the Strategic Workforce Planning!
