Engage managers in workforce planning

Collecting meaningless data is no way to get buy-in

For workforce planning efforts to be successful, line managers must fully embrace, support and participate willingly in the process. Yet many organizations try to implement workforce planning processes in which managers participate reluctantly or perhaps not at all. What can an organization do to ensure managers are active players in workforce planning? How can it get managers to value the process and enthusiastically implement the staffing strategies and resulting plans?

Understanding the problem

Managers will always support processes they find valuable — those processes where results outweigh the time and effort required. Usually, managers who are not engaged in the workforce planning process don’t feel it helps them to manage and meet their day-to-day objectives. They probably recognize that workforce planning yields some greater good or macro-level benefit to the organization as a whole, but they often feel there is nothing in it for them as individual managers. If it really did help these people to manage better, they would participate in the process willingly. Instead, workforce planning processes often waste managers’ time by asking them to do things and provide data that are not valuable or required. Here are a few examples:

•Unrealistic forecasting: Workforce planning processes routinely require managers to forecast staffing requirements too far into the future, beyond any time frame where those estimates are realistic or useful. This forces managers to guess just to fill in the blanks on a form. Ask an IT manager (or any manager in a unit where technology is changing rapidly) how confident she is about estimates of staffing requirements three to five years in the future and just how valuable staffing plans based on those estimates might be. The time spent on these meaningless forecasts is wasted and any workforce or staffing plans based on them is worthless.

•Long-term plans for short-term staff: Managers are often asked to include all positions in the process, including those for which longer term staffing strategies and workforce plans are not needed. Creating long-term staffing strategies for positions where short-term staffing plans are adequate represents time lost and effort wasted. In other words, just another reason for managers to shun the process.

Organizations try to sell managers on workforce planning by telling them the process will be helpful to the organization in the long term. Yet these same organizations usually hold managers primarily accountable for achieving short-term objectives for their specific units. This causes some managers to perceive workforce planning as a “corporate” responsibility that does not affect their ability to manage their units in any appreciable way. Consequently, they see no direct, personal benefit in participating.

Organizations must do something to convince managers the process is indeed valuable — that each of them will see something from the process that exceeds the time and effort they must expend to take part. But gaining this co-operation and support is not about making an inappropriate workforce planning process more efficient. It is not a matter of reducing the work or the time needed to fill out the forms, nor of finding a system or software that will greatly facilitate the gathering of meaningless data. Instead, organizations must increase the effectiveness of the workforce planning processes they implement so managers see and realize tangible benefits.

Workforce planning at 30,000 feet

In many cases, companies want to develop a common process that is implemented consistently throughout the organization. Often, however, managers resist these one-size-fits-all processes because they are not all that helpful — especially since planning parameters cannot be tailored to what those managers perceive to be their own unique situations. Yet allowing managers to develop and implement their own approaches to workforce planning makes it nearly impossible to create the consistent, organization-wide workforce plans that many HR professionals desire.

More micro approaches almost always yield specific results that can actually be implemented to address those critical staffing issues. But such a targeted approach may allow inconsistencies to crop up and may even leave some critical corporate staffing issues unaddressed. What is a company to do?

The answer is to mandate workforce planning processes that have common approaches and parameters up to a point (the 30,000-foot level), but allow managers flexibility in how they develop, implement and apply workforce planning below that level. This hybrid approach ensures workforce plans are developed in a consistent way across the organization, yet allow managers to tailor the process so the workforce plans address what they perceive to be their most critical staffing needs.

Implementing the following four solutions, within the context of the 30,000-foot approach, will ensure workforce planning is effective and managers will value the process and its output.

Redefining the objective

Instead of defining the objective of workforce planning as avoiding future problems, define it in terms of creating a longer term context within which more effective short-term staffing decisions can be made. When done effectively, the workforce planning process provides two deliverables:

•staffing strategies, which are longer term plans that describe how staffing needs are best met across planning periods; and

•staffing plans, which are shorter term plans that describe specifically what should be done to meet staffing needs in any given planning period.

Thus, specific near-term staffing plans are implemented within the context of longer-term staffing strategies. If organizations define the objective of workforce planning to be “avoiding future staffing problems,” it is asking managers to spend time and resources helping their successors. On the other hand, if the process allows an organization to make effective decisions “right now,” managers will realize at least some direct, immediate benefits from participating in the process.

Define an overall direction, but not a detailed approach

Some, but not necessarily all, of the components of the workforce planning process should be common and applied consistently across all units. Here are some examples of what should be consistent across the organization:

•A definition of the process: Define from an overall perspective what the workforce planning process is (defining and addressing the staffing implications of business plans and strategies) and what it should accomplish (developing long-term staffing strategies and short-term staffing plans). However, do not define the process in detail or specify exactly how it must be implemented.

•Management accountability: Make sure all managers understand they are expected to identify and address the staffing implications of their strategies and plans in both the long and short terms. Also, make sure managers have the skills and understanding needed to do this effectively.

•Mandated output, not mandated process: While holding managers accountable for identifying and addressing their most critical staffing issues, don’t force them to use a one-size-fits-all process. Instead, make sure they develop the staffing strategies and plans that best address their most critical staffing issues. If managers can create effective staffing strategies and plans using a workforce planning process that is different from the one developed corporately, let them.

•Corporate staffing strategies only where absolutely necessary: Strategic approaches to staffing are absolutely required for some, but not all, staffing issues. Create co-ordinated staffing strategies where needed but don’t assume there needs to be one co-ordinated, integrated plan that addresses all the staffing issues a company is facing.

Allow managers to tailor the process

At the detail level, don’t try to implement a single approach to workforce planning. Don’t force consistency for consistency’s sake. Instead, allow managers the flexibility they need to develop and implement the staffing strategies and plans they think most effectively address their most critical staffing issues. Here are some examples where such flexibility should be allowed:

•Allow managers to define what staffing issues are critical: Let them identify the staffing issues that are most critical, and thus warrant the time and effort required to apply the workforce planning process. Don’t force them to apply the process everywhere.

•Let managers select the jobs to be included in the process: Not all jobs are so critical that they should be included in a strategic workforce planning process. When done correctly, workforce planning requires a lot of time and effort. Allow managers to select those positions that require such a high level of scrutiny and for which comprehensive workforce planning is warranted.

•Develop separate strategies where necessary: Develop staffing strategies on an issue-by-issue basis, not mandating they be created for an organization unit as a whole.

•Allow managers to define critical planning parameters: Different units will be facing staffing issues that have different rates of change and levels of detail. While mandating a long-term view, don’t define how long term that view needs to be. For some units facing rapidly changing conditions, long term might only be 18 months while in other areas facing less change it might be three to five years. Similarly, don’t try to set one level of detail to be used by all units. In IT, for example, a small number of technical skills may adequately define staffing requirements, whereas a longer list of more generic management competencies might be appropriate at senior levels in another part of the organization. Allow for this flexibility.

Provide resources, tools and support

•Clearly show what the organization thinks the workforce planning process should look like: While not holding them to a particular approach, provide managers with a fully developed version of a workforce planning process they can choose to implement if they wish to identify critical staffing issues and develop the staffing strategies and plans that best address those issues.

•Provide tools and support that are consistent with the approach: Develop and distribute tools, templates, forms and other resources managers may use to support their workforce planning efforts. Provide process outlines and diagrams, spreadsheets that can be used to define staffing gaps and surpluses, completed examples of staffing strategies and plans, workbooks and resource guides and easy access to workforce planning websites. However, don’t mandate that managers must use these resources. Let managers use these resources as they feel necessary. Provide ongoing, tailored help that directly supports workforce planning process development and implementation.

•Involve managers in staffing strategy development: Don’t expect HR to be solely accountable for developing staffing strategies and plans across the organization. Involving managers in the process allows for solutions that are appropriate for each unit and increases the chances those managers will support and implement those solutions.

•Provide customized support: Where feasible, work with individual managers to provide the particular help they need. Some may need help identifying critical issues but require no help in developing staffing strategies and plans for addressing those issues. Others will be able to identify the issues, but may need help in implementing workforce planning to address those issues. Still others might need assistance in the more quantitative aspects of workforce planning such as calculating staffing gaps and surpluses. Whatever assistance is needed, keep the focus on addressing critical staffing issues, not in following a given process by rote.

Thomas Bechet is principal of Bechet Consulting LLC, a Wayne, Ill.-based consulting firm specializing in strategic staffing and workforce planning. He may be reached at [email protected].

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