features of a strategic workforce plan

Workforce Planning

Ivan Andreev

Demand Generation & Capture Strategist

ivan.andreev@valamis.com

January 17, 2022 · updated April 5, 2024

11 minute read

Taking the time to plan and make decisions as part of a broader strategy improves every aspect of your business, including your workforce. Despite the size or type of company, workforce planning is a valuable HR process that ensures you have the staff to execute your business strategy.

Learn what workforce planning is, how it helps with goals and produces positive outcomes, the benefits it can offer, five key steps in workforce planning, and what it looks like in practice.

What is workforce planning?

Primary workforce planning criteria, the goal of workforce planning, how workforce planning affects hr processes, the benefits of workforce planning.

• The five core workforce planning steps

Workforce planning is the process of analyzing existing employees and planning for future staffing requirements through talent gap assessment, developing employee management procedures, and setting recruitment strategies.

With effective workforce planning, your business is always staffed with the necessary talent, knowledge, and experience to produce positive business results.

Workforce planning requires developing an appropriate and cost-effective strategy for retaining, recruiting, and training your workforce while also continually assessing employee performance.

A survey by the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) shows 89% of 236 organizations integrated workforce planning into their business operations.

The plan for your workforce, what it will look like moving forward, and how to strategize for specific goals are unique to your business and depend on many factors. Typical components that affect workforce planning include:

• Talent availability
• Business growth
• Age of the existing workforce
• Current knowledge/skill gaps
• And much more

Strategic workforce planning

Strategic workforce planning is a proactive approach to managing staffing needs and aligns HR processes to business-wide goals. It guides future employee plans and decisions, ensuring they adhere to the company’s long-term vision.

Strategic workforce planning tends to take place at the senior leadership level and focuses on big picture goals such as:

• Structural organization
• Employee redeployment
• Succession planning
• Staffing budgets
• Maintaining capacity
• Reducing risk

Operational workforce planning

In contrast to strategic workforce planning, operational workforce planning focuses on the business’s immediate priorities. For example, which staff level can efficiently meet the current deadlines and objectives?

How to conduct a skills gap analysis and what to do next

Start building your foundation for strategic workforce development.

Criteria to consider when planning for your company’s future workforce include:

• Employee numbers : getting the correct workforce size so the business is not overstaffed and inefficient but not too small to hinder growth and fail to match demand.
• Skillset : having the right mix of skills, capabilities, knowledge, and experience to perform effectively and achieve your goals.
• Budget : finding the optimal staffing expenditure to achieve a high return on investment from employees and maximize profits.
• Flexibility : developing your workforce to be agile and adapt quickly when changes in the market occur.

The primary goal of workforce planning is to create a strategy for your staffing needs that ensures you can meet strategic objectives both now and in the future.

To achieve this goal, workforce planning requires an in-depth understanding of your existing workforce, employee skills, experience, load capability, and potential talent gaps.

Through performance tracking and employee assessment, you can take a birds-eye view of your entire workforce and create actionable plans for the future.

Workforce planning allows companies to understand and design their workforce effectively and efficiently with long-term objectives in mind. It prevents problems from developing and allows management to spot issues early, creating plans to remedy them. Examples could include:

• Identifying understaffed departments and potential bottlenecks
• Staffing requirement to scale operations
• Excess employees for redeployment or termination

Recruitment and employee development

Workforce planning provides the game plan for your company’s recruitment and employee development .

With a clear understanding of your existing workforce and your future goals, you can profile the skills, experience, and knowledge required to meet your needs and develop hiring and training processes to match.

Companies are constantly competing for the same high-end talent. With appropriate workforce planning in place, you can better identify future top employees for your business and develop talent acquisition strategies to attract them to your company.

Plus, workforce planning analysis can help companies formulate proper training and employee development to fill talent gaps while also finding individuals capable of excelling with the correct professional development in place.

This leads us to succession planning and ensuring you maintain successful leadership across your company.

By recognizing the leadership positions currently open or soon to be available, companies can begin assessing existing employees for promotion or targeting outside hires with the right mix of skill and experience.

Workforce planning together with succession planning creates a smooth transition for the critical roles in your company so you can provide an uninterrupted, seamless service or product for your customers.

Performance management

A significant outcome of workforce planning is managing the performance of your employees to increase productivity and efficiency.

With workforce planning, you can understand and develop strategies that get the most out of your employees to increase output and get a higher return on investment from your staffing expenditure.

1. Preparing for the future

With workforce planning, you have a roadmap for your staffing requirements to prepare for the future.

This could mean increasing the number of employees to match growth forecasts or pivoting to a different business model and finding the staff you need to accomplish this.

2. Discovering workforce gaps

Understanding the gaps of your current workforce informs your future personnel strategy in terms of recruitment, redeployment, and training.

Read: Skills gap and skills gap analysis

3. Effective succession planning

By identifying and developing employees with the potential for future leadership roles, you can effectively plan for staff leaving with minimal disruption.

Succession planning can also have a positive effect on employee engagement:

• 62% of employees would be “significantly more engaged” if they had a succession plan at their company.
• 94% of employers said having succession plans in place positively impacted employee engagement .

Succession planning template

It can help you navigate crises and leadership transitions with ease.

4. Improved retention strategies

Effective workforce planning gives you a clear understanding of employee skills and where they can be the most successful in the business.

So rather than terminating employees, you can retain valuable staff through well-planned redeployment.

5. Flexibility

A clear workforce plan with recruitment and training structures in place can make your business more agile, with the ability to efficiently anticipate and react to change.

You can reduce your overall staffing costs by developing plans to:

• Increase your productivity and workforce ROI
• Retain talent and reduce costs associated with employee turnover
• Develop a flexible workforce that can meet customer demand in different circumstances

Labor costs can account for up 70% of total business costs . Workforce planning allows you to map talent to value and ensure you are getting the best results for the costs .

The 5 core workforce planning steps

Successfully implementing new workforce planning strategies is an extensive procedure. However, businesses can break down workforce planning into five core steps to simplify the process.

1. Deciding strategic direction and goals

Workforce planning is a top-down process requiring clear organizational direction and defined strategic goals to inform and guide future decisions.

• What direction do you see your business going in?
• What are you hoping to achieve through workforce planning?
• What are the primary goals/milestones you are targeting?
• Why does your business need new workforce planning structures?

These are vital questions to ask yourself before analyzing your workforce and implementing new employee management strategies.

It is also important to remember that every process in your business affects another. Therefore, your workforce planning must be an organization-wide endeavor and include effective communication between HR and other departments.

Your new workforce plan must be produced with a collaborative approach that generates a consensus amongst all invested parties. Without organizational buy-in and a rationale for new strategies, you cannot reap the benefits of workforce planning.

Consider this step setting the “soft” workforce planning framework that will define the overall strategy to assess future information rather than the plan’s specific details.

2. Analyze existing workforce

The next step is to properly assess your existing workforce.

Common strategies used in this step include:

• Demand planning – Determining the number of employees needed for each role required to reach your goal. Demand planning requires accurate business forecasts to determine your workforce’s future number, structure, and composition.
• Internal supply – Internal supply planning needs accurate talent evaluations, an understanding of the expected employee turnover rate (retirements, resignations, etc.), and the design of training and professional development programs.
• Gap analysis – Identifying the gaps in your workforce and making plans to close them through recruitment, redeployment, and training.

These strategies help to answer the following questions:

• Do you have the right-sized workforce?
• What skills, knowledge, and experience do your current employees have?
• Do your employees need additional training?
• What new resources can improve workforce performance?
• Is your workforce correctly structured? (This includes organizational design, departments, communication channels, etc.)
• What is your current employee turnover rate?

What you have now is the starting point for future workforce plans. You can begin developing workforce planning strategies when you know what you have (step 2) and where you want to be (step 1).

A common pitfall of workforce planning is ensuring it is based on high-quality information from within the organization and external sources. Workforce planning defined by inaccurate forecasts and undeliverable future goals cannot be successful.

3. Develop your plan

This is where companies must take their overall goal, input the assessment of their existing workforce and produce a concrete plan for the future.

Businesses must plan their workforce to reflect the value and revenue it produces. A simple example of workforce planning in action could be:

A company is manufacturing two models of cars. Model A is the business’ flagship car, selling the most and bringing in the most revenue. However, model B is showing significant growth, and the income from model A is beginning to stagnate.

The car company can produce a simple revenue table based on 2023 figures and 2024’s forecasts.

The revenue per employee for model A is $250,000, and the revenue per employee for model B is $300,000.

Based on growth forecasts, you can estimate that staff working on model B will need to increase by 57 to match increased demand. This process assumes the forecasts are accurate and there are no sudden changes in sales or production. At the same time, model A will likely begin to have a surplus of staff in 2024 and need a reduction of 8 employees.

With workforce planning structures in place, you can develop plans to retrain and redeploy staff from Model A to Model B during 2023. This kind of planning minimizes disruption and reduces employee turnover.

Of course, this is just a plan based on forecasts and does not mean you should immediately move eight employees from model A to model B and hire 49 more. Instead, the business should put redeployment, hiring, and training plans in place to execute when key revenue indicators are met and take a gradual approach that matches the shift in focus of their business.

4. Implement workforce planning

Successfully implementing workforce planning requires:

• HR personnel to clearly understand their new roles and responsibilities.
• Strategies and processes for recording all relevant data and information.
• Effective communication channels between all invested parties to support the plan.
• Defined measurement and evaluation criteria to assess the plan’s success.

While the future HR plans for managing your workforce are specific to your business, they will involve some or all of the following:

• Recruitment
• Redeployment
• Outsourcing
• Deploying new technology

With many new processes to implement, workforce planning does not transform your company overnight. Instead, it is a gradual endeavor that optimizes each procedure for the given circumstances to get your business closer to your long-term goals.

5. Monitor results

It is crucial to remember workforce planning is an iterative process whereby progress is monitored and measured against specific milestones and long-term goals.

Post-implementation, your workforce planning processes may need adjusting due to unexpected factors within your business or to meet new realities of your industry.

You might be interested in

Enterprise Learning Platform

Discover what an enterprise learning platform is and why you need a new learning solution. Discover the main features every enterprise LMS should have.

Learning Record Store (LRS)

Learn what Learning Record (LRS) is and what it enables. Discover 4 key steps on how to implement it and how to choose the right vendor.

Skills-based talent management 

Discover what a skills-based approach in talent hiring and management is. Learn the key 5 steps on how to implement it in your organization.

📈 How much does it cost to pay and manage global teams in 2024? Download our FREE guide here 🔗

Hire full-time talent anywhere with EOR

Easily manage and pay your contractors

Run payroll with or without a subsidiary

Global Benefits

Benefits & insurances for your workforce

Global Immigration

Relocation and visa made easy

Talent Acquisition

Find the best candidates for your team

• Discover More

Hire from $49, scalable & transparent

Data protection & Security

About Horizons

Our borderless team and our global purpose

Success Stories

How businesses accelarate hiring with Horizons

Partner Program

Become a partner and benefit from unique offerings

Global Hubs

Discover our international offices

Join our mission to shaping the New World of Work

Shape your strategy with key insights

Inside Horizons

A behind-the-scenes look at the best EOR

Help Center

Learn about the Horizons platform

Contact our support team

Global Payroll Calculator

Calculate employment cost

Employee Misclassification Calculator

Calculate employee misclassification risk

• For HR , Strategy

The Complete Guide to Strategic Workforce Planning

• Nadia Ponomareva Head of Recruitment
• April 12, 2022

Key Takeaways

1.  Strategic workforce planning is a tool for business and HR leaders to scope and plan for the capabilities which their companies are likely to need in order to meet future business goals.

2. A strategic workforce plan aims to shape staffing in line with future business needs and challenges. Robust planning should enable companies to operate more effectively and meet key goals in a future environment with evolving demographics, economic trends and commercial opportunities.

3.  The continued normalization of remote working, use of a  contingent workforce , and integration of collaborative online working platforms, could all have significant potential impact for future workforce shape, size and skill requirements.

4.  Strategic workforce planning can help companies to operate more smoothly, with more predictable staffing costs and greater productivity and profit. Without a strategic workforce plan, fluctuating staff costs, unforeseen trends, and gaps or performance failures affecting critical business, could all waste time, energy and money.

Introduction 

2022 may be a good year to look towards the future and make decisions on the long-term direction of your company and the workforce needed to power your business ambitions.  International HR  leads in particular should be reviewing and revising the longterm strategic workforce plans for their companies in the light of the COVID pandemic and related shifts in labor markets and working patterns.

In larger and/or multinational companies, it’s important that changes to staffing are made intelligently and in a coordinated way which supports business objectives and minimizes business disruption. Strategic workforce planning is often the answer to this need.

Definition of strategic workforce planning 

Strategic workforce planning is the art of creating a workforce which can operate effectively in the future environment in order to meet your company’s goals. It sets out the numbers, skills and nature of workers likely to be required by the company, while considering relevant trends, challenges and opportunities at play in the external environment. 

A strategic workforce plan should be developed and updated in alignment with core business planning. Business leaders should consider their strategic workforce plans regularly as one of the fundamental delivery mechanisms for their company’s vision and objectives.

What is the purpose of strategic workforce planning? 

The ultimate goal of strategic workforce planning is to make sure that you have the right staff in the right positions at the right time to realize your company’s strategic vision and meet the objectives in your long-term business plan.

It should act as a guide and reference point for managers, HR leads and anyone making decisions around recruitment, training, promotion or other staffing issues. Business leaders should refer to the strategic workforce plan when monitoring business performance data and looking for ways to improve productivity, engagement and cost effectiveness.

In terms of scope, the strategic workforce plan should include information around:

• Businesses must plan to have neither too many staff nor too few, balancing recruitment levels against retirement, redundancy and other exits.
• Staff must be deployed in the right regions, countries or cities to fit business needs.
• Recruitment and internal appointment systems must be managed to ensure that critical business areas do not carry long staffing gaps. Succession planning is required for senior roles.
• A strategic workforce plan should include a budget and demonstrate the financial value added to the company by the shape and size of any proposed future workforce.
• Worker type
• The nature of the proposed workforce should reflect business needs for permanent, temporary, casual, part-time, contractor, or any other types of staffing. Where the work is to be remote, the strategic workforce plan should cohere with a  remote work policy . 
• Skills, knowledge and competences
• The workforce must maintain the key skills, knowledge and competences required for business (e.g. languages, project management, economics).

Hire globally in 24 hours with Horizons EOR services.

Benefits of strategic workforce planning.

With a strategic workforce plan in place, your HR leads should have a superior vantage point to inform staffing policies and decisions. This can help to get the right staff in the right positions at the right time, with advantages including:

• Better business performance
• A well-designed and competently-delivered strategic workforce plan is a powerful tool for realizing a company’s core business goals. If you get it right, your plan could open a door to greater productivity, access to new markets and support your broader  international expansion strategy.  
• More predictable staff costs
• Better strategic workforce planning should mean less budget surprises around staff payroll and wider costs. Finance leads should be better placed to estimate future workforce costs. 
• Efficient use of line-manager and HR time
• With an effective plan guiding recruitment, staff development, monitoring of levels of skills, competences and learning etc.. there should be less time and energy spent by managers and HR leads on planning and support around individual roles. 

What does a Strategic Workforce Plan look like? 

Strategic workforce plans will look different from one business to another, depending on sector, size and company goals. At the same time, a  strong strategic workforce plan  is likely to have certain key features, or background research and evidence components:

1. Mission and vision

The strategic workforce plan should have clear scope, timescale and links to the company’s top-level  vision, aims and business plans .

2. Current workforce snapshot

HR leaders should conduct or commission a full review of the shape, size and fitness of the current workforce. This would typically include information on demographics, locations, contract types, costs, skills, competences etc..

3. Business intelligence and foresight reports

For a robust long-term view, a strategic workforce plan requires an assessment of current business intelligence in relevant sectors, as well as an investigation of trends, opportunities and challenges likely to matter for the company along the time horizon of their business and workforce planning.

4. Staff engagement and public opinion data

Information around internal staff engagement and public perceptions of a company can help establish how they are seen as an employer and give insights into potential issues around staff retention or recruitment. 

5. Future workforce snapshot

Drawing on key inputs, HR leads or external experts will need to set out the shape of the future workforce that would be needed to deliver business goals, considering the wider environment, affordability and feasibility of recruitment. This should include estimated staffing costs and long-term liabilities.

NB Depending on the importance and predictability of wider trends beyond company control, planning for 2-3 different future workforce scenarios can make a plan more robust. 

6. Transformation roadmap

A strategic workforce plan needs a roadmap and/or action plan showing how the current workforce can be transformed into the future workforce. HR leads should be ready and able to monitor the transformation and report progress to business leaders. Recruitment, promotion and redundancy needs should be made clear and communicated appropriately to existing staff to maintain engagement.

How to introduce strategic workforce planning 

1. senior ownership.

Introducing strategic workforce planning requires board-level leadership, explicit buy-in and active support alongside the work of the HR leaders and managers who will usually carry out or oversee the necessary scoping, reviewing and drafting.

2. Staff involvement

If this kind of thinking is new to your company, or your strategic workforce plan has not been refreshed in some time, you should pay particular attention to how you communicate this work stream to your current staff. Be clear on what the plans will cover and how they will be used.

Some staff may fear that strategic workforce planning will precede a forced redundancy program or pay cuts, while others will feel more positive, potentially being interested in opportunities for promotions, acquiring new skills or transferring location.

3. Expert advice and support

This is an area where it can be helpful to involve external experts. From horizon scanning the economic and social trends which could affect future recruitment and retention, through identifying new markets and opportunities for  overseas expansion , to on-the-ground delivery of your strategic workforce plan in a key country, sometimes there is no substitute for local expertise and insight.

Foresight advisors, business intelligence consultants and Global Employment Organizations (GEOs) may all have a role to play.  

How Horizons supports strategic workforce planning

For international companies, external expert advice around strategic workforce planning can save time, identify gaps and opportunities, and add wider value, especially around international HR. Horizons has extensive experience in providing employment solutions to support strategic workforce planning around the world.

  Call us today  to discuss your company’s strategic needs. 

Frequently asked questions

Workforce planning is a proactive business approach to staffing where recruitment, staff development, redundancy, retirement etc.. are considered together as part of an overall strategy. Without any workforce planning, they might be dealt with individually for each job or team or handled as separate workstreams in HR. This would make it harder to evaluate the current workforce or create a workforce which meets future business needs.

A strategic workforce plan should be developed by HR and business leaders and guided by core business objectives. It should incorporate external trends, insights and expert advice as relevant for the sector and operations.

The exact shape of the plan will depend on the individual company but in general, it would need to include the broad vision and goals of the future workforce, an assessment of the current workforce, and a roadmap for transforming one into the other.

Hire and pay talents with Horizons in 180+ countries

Related posts

Guide to marketing in china: advice, strategies, rules [2024], 11 advantages & disadvantages of globalization in 2024, breathe hr review [2024], the complete guide to ir35 and off-payroll working.

• Nadia Ponomareva
• Mar 29, 2023

Hire Anywhere. Today.

Join 1,500+ companies already hiring with Horizons

Headquarters 71 Robinson Road #13-153 Singapore 068895 +65 3158 1382

Europe Skalitzer Str. 85/86 10997, Berlin +49 30 3119 9653

Americas 1700 S. Lamar Blvd Suite 338 Austin, Texas 78704 +1 (737) 265-6065

See more locations

Horizons © 2024   –  Privacy     Imprint & Terms    Third-Party Processor    GDPR Policy

Privacy Preference Centre

What Is Strategic Workforce Planning? Examples + Best Practices

To ensure sustainability in today’s evolving business environment, companies must incorporate strategic workforce planning into their overall business strategy for healthy growth and success.

Strategic workforce planning helps you assess talent and skills gaps, forecast workforce supply and demand, and ensure you have the right people to meet your long-term business goals.

The following guide explores strategic workforce planning, its purpose, importance, and best practices for maintaining an agile, compliant, and globally competitive workforce. 

What is strategic workforce planning?

Strategic workforce planning is the process of analyzing your workforce supply and demand data and making necessary adjustments to support your business’s future needs and goals.

Workforce planning strategies ensure that businesses have the right people in the right jobs at the right time, with the skills and knowledge needed to meet current and future business goals.

Workforce plans set a team up to scale by addressing all internal needs and ensuring seamless growth. Companies anticipate future hiring needs and work to ensure the right people enter the business at the right time. They do this by identifying skill gaps within the workforce that may arise as the company grows.

After assessing its needs and strategic plans, a business uses strategic workforce planning to look at possible solutions to meet future growth goals and maintain a solid competitive advantage in the market.

The 7 Rs of strategic workforce planning

During strategic workforce planning, a company must assess where it stands as a business today, understand its current workforce, and be aware of what’s happening in the market. This knowledge helps a company create a strategy to achieve its long-term talent goals.

The goal of a workforce planning strategy is to have a workforce with the right people, skills, shape, size, time, place, and cost:

• Right people. New hires that are beneficial to the company and work well with the company’s culture, values, and needs.
• Right skills. New hires that have the right work experience and skill set to do their job correctly.
• Right shape. New hires help make up the right workforce configuration and competencies needed within the company in the short and long term. 
• Right size. New hires fit the correct number of people and job roles so that a company’s workforce is not too small, unproductive, overstaffed, or inefficient. 
• Right time. New hires or promoted employees can immediately produce work that furthers the company.
• Right place. New hires live and work in strategic locations to fulfill current and future operational needs and growth.
• Right cost. New hires are fairly and competitively compensated for their work and within budget.

The best way to find the right people with the right skills at the right time is to hire across borders. Incorporating global hiring into your strategic workforce plan empowers you to find candidates who check every box while maximizing your hiring budget.

Learn how to easily hire talent across borders, quickly expand your business into new markets, and ensure compliance for global talent in our guide:

Strategic workforce planning examples

A few examples of what strategic workforce planning might look like include:

• Putting together a talent acquisition strategy
• Planning for talent retention 
• Developing new positions for future needs
• Developing leadership training
• Establishing global expansion initiatives
• Expanding operations, services, or products
• Creating career path development
• Forecasting market demands 
• Initiating succession planning
• Maintaining global compliance with employment laws

What are the benefits of strategic workforce planning?

In today's dynamic business landscape, strategic workforce planning is critical for businesses looking to stay agile, resilient, and competitive. Strategic workforce planning has many significant benefits to organizations, including the following:

Alignment with business goals

When you understand your business needs and objectives, you can develop a roadmap and workforce plan that provides a path to achieving your desired growth. Strategic workforce planning ensures you align your workforce decisions and planning with your business goals.  

Addressing current workforce gaps

A workforce gap is a mismatch between what skills you need from your workforce as you scale and what skills your employees possess.

Looking toward the future can help you identify critical skill gaps in your current roster. This keeps your organization on track to grow by focusing on recruiting, training, and retaining employees with those desired skills. Workforce planning can also help you ensure your current roster doesn’t become overloaded when expansion starts.

Cost reduction

Effective strategic workforce planning helps you hire the correct number of employees with the right skills at any given time, leading to financial savings. You can avoid costly overstaffing or understaffing situations by optimizing workforce utilization and minimizing unnecessary expenses.

Diversity and inclusion

You can use workforce planning to meet your diversity initiatives and create a more inclusive work culture. Strategic workforce planning enables you to promote diversity and inclusion by identifying opportunities to broaden the workforce with unique perspectives, backgrounds, and skills.

Risk mitigation

Strategic workforce planning helps you mitigate risks and proactively address potential challenges before they become critical issues. As you expand globally , you can utilize strategic workforce planning to ensure compliance with labor laws and regulations. Forecasting future workforce needs can mitigate potential challenges associated with talent shortages or skill gaps.

Preparation for the future

Workforce planning allows you to create a long-term strategy for the company well into the future of technological advancements, market fluctuations, or regulatory changes. Though unforeseen, you can better adapt and respond effectively to changes and challenges with a solid strategy. Once implemented, you can return to focusing on day-to-day tasks, knowing that your organization is ready to grow when the time comes.

How to build a strategic workforce planning framework

While the specific strategic workforce planning process will vary depending on the size of your business, industry, and market, consider the following strategic workforce planning best practices for building a framework and execution.  

1. Determine your long-term business goals

Setting direct, actionable goals can help you determine how and who to hire as you work toward them. Your goals should focus on your most crucial business needs and help set a trajectory for your business's growth.

Most businesses follow a S.M.A.R.T. framework for goal-setting. That means the goals will be:

• Specific. Each goal should focus on one aspect of your business to make the objective direct and meaningful.
• Measurable. Tie a tangible way of measuring success to each goal so you can prove you’re making progress.
• Attainable. Shooting for the moon isn’t always the best option—your goals should be within the scope of your organization and within the designated timeframe.
• Relevant. Goals should align with your company’s business model, needs, and objectives to ensure you stay on track.
• Time-sensitive. Set goals within a specific time frame to keep moving forward and setting new objectives.

Leverage data analytics based on trends and business growth to help forecast your future workforce needs and enable you to set informed and effective goals.

Tip: Setting long- and short-term goals can help keep morale up by creating more opportunities to celebrate company wins.

2. Assess your current workforce

An early step to workforce planning should include assessing what you already have. Look at your current roster and identify strengths and weaknesses. Determine what is going well within your organization and how you can become even more vital.

Three central workforce issues should drive workforce planning: your strategic plan, outside factors changing your workforce, and maintenance of your current workforce.

• Strategic plan. Figure out how your workforce is meeting or not meeting your current goals and the steps to get to a point of satisfaction.
• Outside factors. Determine which external factors—like new competition, diversity initiatives, adopting remote work, or other factors—will affect your workplace.
• Workforce maintenance. Decide how to strengthen your workforce with better training, a new focus on employee well-being, or initiatives to boost employee engagement before you start looking to grow.

Keep a skills inventory to help you understand your current workforce’s experiences, skills, competencies, and qualifications. Determine the most critical roles that drive the most value and analyze the skills, knowledge, and qualifications that make employees successful in them. This will help you determine if there are current employees who can train for these roles or whether they are roles to hire externally.

Tip: Internal surveys can help you gauge your employees’ satisfaction while you work to pinpoint issues affecting your organization.

3. Anticipate roadblocks or future needs 

The key to an effective workforce plan is doing guesswork to anticipate future needs or potential roadblocks. By planning for these in advance, you can be ready to meet them head-on.

Consider where you are now vs. where you want to be. How many staff members are needed to execute a project or meet a deadline? And if your business grows at the rate you anticipate, how many will you need in six months? If the projected number is more significant, you must ensure you have the staff to meet deadlines.

Tip: You can also gauge your current roster’s bandwidth and burnout levels to determine how many new staff members will keep the team productive while prioritizing their well-being.

4. Conduct market analysis

In addition to assessing your current workforce, it’s important to analyze the current market when creating a strategic workforce plan. Understanding the market and its labor trends will offer key insights into where your industry is heading and help you assess potential staffing needs.

Keeping an eye on emerging market trends on a global scale, especially in your industry, will help you understand what your business needs and how to prepare for it. Research international markets to determine where to hire foreign employees to help you fill gaps and scale as needed.

Tip: Consider engaging international contractors in your desired markets to test new countries and gain local insights before expanding and committing to a particular market. 

5. Fill in the gaps 

Once you know where you are, where you want to be, and any obstacles that might hinder getting there, you can fill in the gaps and finalize your workforce plan.

Identifying these gaps can help you fill roles with people who will support your growth. Consider engaging with skilled candidates and creating a talent pipeline of pre-qualified individuals you can consider for future open roles when needed.

Also, filling in the gaps can help determine whether you can fill the needs with more employees serving your current roles or if you'll need to develop new roles altogether.

For example, if you’ve been working as the boss with all of your employees as your direct reports, you may need to hire managers to act as middlemen so you can focus on other tasks and let them handle project management.

Tip: Once you feel like you’re never logging off, you should consider promoting employees to management positions.

6. Seek help from experts 

Developing a relevant, efficient, and actionable workforce plan may not come naturally to some business leaders. Establish partnerships with key stakeholders that can help collaborate and assist you with rolling out a strategic workforce plan. Third-party organizations specializing in workforce optimization can also help you nail down your business plan as you scale.

Consulting an agency to help identify your workforce needs and assist in hiring for those needs can help you make sure you’re not only preparing yourself for the future but also setting yourself up for a successful one.

Tip: A third party is even more critical for those growing globally. Global employment organizations can ensure you comply with labor laws while selecting suitable candidates to support your growth.

7. Implement and adapt as needed

Just like an adaptable workforce is essential, so is a flexible workforce plan. Your plan might give you a solid trajectory for your growth, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need to make adjustments as you scale.

You’ll likely be confronted with situations and needs you didn’t foresee. While your plan will address the bulk of these needs, some needs that weren’t accounted for may arise. You may need to revisit and restructure your hiring plan in these scenarios.

Tip: Keeping track of your growth within your goals can help you pinpoint when you’re getting off track as early as possible.

Strategic workforce planning FAQs

The following information discusses common questions surrounding strategic workforce planning. 

What is the purpose of strategic workforce planning?

Strategic workforce planning helps organizations ensure they have the right employees with the right skills, knowledge, and experience to meet current and future business goals. Workforce planning helps keep businesses on track to meet client and customer needs, effectively manage talent while optimizing labor costs, and accommodate future changes and trends.

What are the major objectives of strategic workforce planning?

The primary objectives of strategic workforce planning ultimately enable companies to successfully plan for the future and maintain a competitive advantage in the market. Some of these objectives include:

• Assessing talent and skill gaps
• Forecasting talent supply/demand
• Ensuring the business has the right people in place at the right time
• Preparing the business for unexpected events and changes
• Improving agility and adaptability in the workplace
• Mitigating risk while optimizing labor costs
• Adapting to new technology solutions and resources
• Exploring new untapped markets to meet future demands and expansion

Read more: How to Build and Manage a Remote Global Workforce

Simplify and scale workforce planning with Velocity Global

Strategic workforce planning is critical to meeting future growth goals and maintaining a solid competitive advantage in the market. Whether creating new revenue streams, hiring international employees, or entering new markets, a global workforce partner like an employer of record (EOR) can help you identify your needs and implement a long-term strategy for success.

Velocity Global’s personalized expertise and unmatched scale in over 185 countries can help you effectively plan for the future. Our industry-leading EOR solution , in-house capabilities, and in-country knowledge provide a quick, cost-effective, and globally compliant way to scale your teams.

Navigate new markets and facilitate swift global expansion with tenured HR and legal experts by your side. We’ll help you seamlessly hire and pay your distributed workforce and maintain compliance at every step—from onboarding to ongoing management and support.

Simplify your strategic workforce planning with Velocity Global. Contact us today.   

Related resources

Upskilling Employees: A Complete Guide

Onboarding International Employees: Best Practices for Global Employers

Adaptability in the Workplace: How to Navigate Change at Work

Find out how Siemens has benefited from our services

of the DAX 30 companies work with us​​

• Solutions Use cases Answer to your HR questions. smartData Market Intelligence Access to the world’s largest labor market database to tune your business and HR. smartPlan Future Workforce Planning Design your future workforce & uncover skills risks and gaps. smartPeople Skills Fulfillment Discover your internal skills and build a future-fit workforce.
• Podcasts & interviews
• ROI calculator
• HR Glossary

See why 100+ companies choose HRForecast​.

• Book a demo

Workforce planning

What are the steps in workforce planning.

Speaking of workforce planning strategy, we can draw an analogy with the lighthouse: the strategy tells us the direction. It can show the stones and rocks that are on the coast, but only the ship’s captain decides how to guide his boat past the rocks to his destination. In this blog post, we’d like to deep dive into workforce planning and its planning stages.

What to start with

Workforce planning has a straightforward purpose and reasoning behind it. It must ensure that your company has the right people and those people have the right skills. It’s an integral part of HR management and provides the context for other HR activities like talent acquisition and employee development.

The planning process must be enterprise-wide. It requires effective communication between the HR team and top management as well as input from key stakeholders.

We agree with  CIPD : Workforce planning processes, when done right, can reduce labor costs, respond to changing customer needs, improve employee retention, and their work-life balance.

Unfortunately, despite its importance, the workforce planning asset is often not carefully planned, measured, or optimized,  SHRM  states. Many organizations are not sufficiently aware of the current or future workforce gaps that will limit business strategy execution.

Where this process starts and ends or what to consider when workforce planning

Consider the following factors during the workforce planning process:

• Right size: how many people you need to hire
• Right form: the critical competencies/skills you need
• Right budget: how much it costs to hire
• Technical feasibility

Workforce planning encompasses such processes as analyzing the current workforce and determining future needs, identifying gaps between status-quo and destination point, designing and implementing solutions to accomplish the goals, and finally, fulfilling the strategic plan through the proper use of talent.

Step-by-step guide

Step 1: supply analysis.

At this step, analyze the current company’s state and the external factors like market and economic situation to understand the business’ environment.

Internal factors  determine how the workforce is structured at the current moment in terms of gender and age rates, specialization, and location. Another internal factor is labor costs that incur wages and other workforce-related costs. Internal factors include organizational structure, i.e., how the recruitment process works.

A vital internal issue is attrition rate, i.e., how many people leave you and for what reasons. Flow analysis also belongs to internal structure – how the workforce moves within the company and how positions change.

External factors  are best estimated via PESTLE analysis:

• P stands for politics (any preconditions for changing the legislation, taxation, labor remuneration, etc).
• E for economics (inflation rates, labor outflow rates, etc).
• S for social (number of students and graduates in the area, social changes like lockdowns and social distancing, etc).
• T for technology (for example, digital transformation and automation of HR processes).
• L for legal (changes in legal norms or requirements).
• E for environment (like ecology, ethical norms, etc).

Step 2: Demand analysis

At this stage, you forecast the future HR needs: workforce skills a company needs to cope with market challenges, number of employees, their roles, and possible HR scenarios.

Earlier, to define the HR strategy and the employee skills gaps, you had to talk to line managers.

Even now, when asked, “What skills should your employees learn to be more effective a year from now?” the top managers often answer generically, e.g., “Communication” or “Time management.” But in reality, they need a particular skill on a more senior basis. What does a person have to do to make you assess a “good level of communication” for that particular function? English proficiency/customer relationship building/sales skills/non-conflict communication skills?

Step 3: Gap analysis

In this step, you analyze the competencies a business needs and what skills are at your hand. A recent  Future of Jobs report  states that by 2022, almost 54% of all employees will require considerable re- and upskilling.

Here are a few gaps you can analyze:

• Skill gap. Vital for the company’s future growth as you assess your current competencies and skills you’ll need to succeed in the future. Also, knowing new skills and upskilling will help the employees perform more functions. It also helps to make all skills visible.
• Opportunities gap. It includes opportunities, style of interaction with both clients and colleagues, and behaviors that boost efficiency. It empowers internal talent mobility, opens new possibilities for your employees, and motivates them to learn.
• Distribution gap. Talents may be focused at one department, while other departments may lack A-Players. Look at how talents are distributed in the company and where the gap may be.
• Diversity gap. For example, all key employees are in the same location or age group. What happens when the time to retire comes? Think about how you can allocate talent.
• Deployment gap. Imagine you need to develop company departments in the regions. You must know precisely how you will move the talent there and whether you will be able to hire locally.
• Time. Time-to-hire of a rare specialist can take up to 9 months, or even longer. If you decide to close the need for certain specialists through training and retraining, you must know how long it will take to get the top talent and preselect the candidates.
• Cost gap. Besides, there is also cost-to-hire for the right talent and the costs for developing, retraining, or upskilling the workforce.

You may be working with only one of these gaps. But this list helps you look at the question from different perspectives and double-check yourself. Understand what is valid for your company and what is not.

Step 4: Solution analysis

Well, the information has been gathered and analyzed. Now it’s time to think about strategies for overcoming difficulties:

• Time and money you’ll allocate to work with detected gaps.
• The way you’ll organize and implement training.
• Locations you’ll consider.
• Resources and mentors you’ll involve.
• Hiring strategy: to attract experts or hire entry-level staff and train them; to hire internally or externally.

You should look at the organization holistically. Let’s give an example. A company X needs to rewrite an existing codebase into another programming language. They decide to actively hire a dozen of developers of a certain specialization. Six months later, it turns out that the strategic plan hasn’t been thought through, and the company hasn’t suitable positions for these people.

The mistake was that the company switched to hiring without thinking that there’s a large layer of developers inside the company whose specialization is losing its popularity and customer demand. They  could have been retrained instead . At least, it would allow the company to reduce the recruiting costs, to save the existing employees, and, thus, to prevent the reputational risks.

Workforce planning isn’t just about recruiting.  Mercer  explains: “It can’t just be about employee capacity and business unit alignment, workforce planning must recognize employees’ potential and engagement and be intertwined with the company’s technology roadmap.”

The current state of workforce planning technologies

Earlier, the HR departments worked with Performance and Potential Matrix — the nine-box matrix or HR3P matrix, that displayed employee performance and potential in a single model. Today it is a doubtful approach since it evaluates the people too judgmentally. But can you imagine that… ( Global Talent Trends Report 2020 )

Sadly, not all companies have the HR process fully automated. Many still do not have an automated data warehouse and have to extract, process, and manually put together the data. That is much slower and risks losing important information.

It demonstrates, to assess the performance, potential, and future-orientation of your employees, you have better start using a smart workforce planning tool — HR dashboard. It is the most real, applicable, and effective tool for reflecting the existing skills, revealing the hidden talents, and forecasting your employees’ future needs.

On a conceptual level, an HR dashboard is filled with data from various sources, such as the payroll system, candidate tracking system, and other information systems used in HR. Based on this information, HR metrics are calculated and displayed. This data is then extracted; information is transferred and uploaded to a data lake or data warehouse. Finally, a  specially designed software   uses this information for reporting.

A quick test, let’s say you are a CEO. Can you answer three questions in 17 seconds as clearly and concisely as possible? — What percent of your workforce work for your long-term business goals? What amount of employees need to be up-skilled? How many people do you need to hire in 5 years? We tell you.

Workforce planning is the process of analyzing an organization’s workforce and identifying the steps to be taken to prepare for future needs. This process helps you understand where to go and how to move, so you don’t have to spend your recruiting and HR team’s resources on something that the company doesn’t need.

As you see, knowledge of hot skills, market demand, and own skill gaps help people to be ready for the new challenges. To achieve a smooth working structure that functions like a swiss clock, you have to conduct workforce risk analysis, i.e., demographics, retention, career bottlenecks. Then, you must identify and prioritize the workforce gaps, e.g., locations, job roles, skills. Finally, via visualization of insights, you will drive the strategic, data- and AI-based decisions.

Stay up to date with our newsletter

Every month, we’ll send you a curated newsletter with our updates and the latest industry news.

More stories we think you will like

The right decision-making strategy for leaders: Do nothing or take action?

Interview with Kevin M. Yates, known in the global talent development community as the “L&D detective”

What motivates your employees to be Superman or Clark Kent?

Not a customer yet? Contact us

Career at HRForecast

Why hrforecast.

• Customer Stories
• Trust and Security
• Data Analytics Approach
• IT Skills Analytics
• smartPeople

2023 © Copyright - HRForecast | Imprint | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions (MSA)

What Is Workforce Planning?

Workforce planning is critical for the health and growth of any organization. As an HR professional, you know how much of an undertaking it is to hire the right people with the right skill set at the right time. Then add on the responsibilities of budgeting for new hires and internal promotions, keeping current employees engaged and retention rates high, all while growing a business — it's overwhelming. 

To help you keep calm and workforce plan on, we created a brief guide that covers the basics of workforce planning. Feel free to click on the links below to jump ahead.

Use our template to seamlessly calculate your own employee retention rate.

Table of Contents

What is Workforce Planning?

Benefits of strategic workforce planning, stages of strategic workforce planning.

Workforce planning is the process of auditing, predicting and managing the employment needs of your company in relation to its greater strategic business goals.

Think about it this way, your product team is constantly evaluating the product —  what customers like and want more of — while at the same time predicting what’s going to be the next big thing. Similarly, your company needs to continuously evaluate its people — what they like and don’t like in their roles — as well as how the company is projected to grow and who will need to be hired, promoted or reorganized to meet those needs.

When it comes down to it, the goal of workforce planning is to help your workforce meet  the following criteria as closely as possible:

Workforce planning is a massive undertaking, especially the first time you do it. It can be difficult to know where and how to start as well as what resources are required to build a strategic workforce plan. Before we delve into the details, check out a few benefits of creating a workforce plan that make the effort worthwhile.

Help teams justify additional hires

Save time and money by anticipating growth and change 

Prepare for organizational changes proactively

Support finance team in budgeting for future workforce needs

Collaborate with the strategic business planning process

Recognize gaps in the workforce that need filling

Identify critical roles and teams to expand for growth

Balance business goals alongside hiring

Prioritize employee retention and engagement to reduce hiring needs

Analyze Strategic Direction

In order to plan for future workforce needs, you first need to analyze the current state of your workforce. Start by answering these questions:

What departments are running lean and could use additional support?

What is the manager-to-direct report ratio?

What individual contributors are ready for a promotion?

Do current employees need additional training to advance their careers at the company?

Is there a skills gap among current employees that needs to be filled by an external hire?

How long do employees typically stay at your company?

Why do employees leave your company?

To answer the majority of these questions, you need to take a deep dive into your overall employee lifecycle , which  will also help you better understand why people apply for roles at your company and why they leave.

Additionally, look carefully at your recruitment metrics so you can better optimize your strategy. 

Forecast Workforce Supply & Demand

Now that you've analyzed the current state of your workforce, look more closely at the employees you currently have, otherwise referred to as your workforce supply, and predict how their roles will change over time. These factors play a significant role in how, who and when you should hire candidates. Key areas to consider are: 

Employee retention: Determine roles that can be filled by internal candidates through promotion or professional development 

Turnover: Anticipate turnover by knowing individual employee goals and career paths.

Departmental attrition: Are certain departments or roles becoming obsolete or less valuable to the company, and if so, will you need to downsize or reorganize.

Physical office space: Is there enough physical office space and equipment to sufficiently support more employees?

Recruiting resources: Identify which roles need to be filled by external candidates what resources your team will need to recruit them — professional recruiters, money for job boards and advertisements, etc.

Communications resources: Recruiting and building an employer brand consumes a significant amount of time and resources. Check to see if anyone on your marketing team has the bandwidth to help out.

Once you’ve estimated your current workforce supply, you’ll want to consider the demand of each area. Understanding the difference between supply and demand in your workforce will help you identify gaps between what resources are readily available and what resources your organization needs to grow on track. In terms of workforce demand, you’ll want to look at:

Employment market: Take a look at the recruitment market to see which roles are in high demand and will be difficult to hire. 

Upcoming funding: What roles are critical right now and which ones can wait until you raise more capital?

Skills training: Will you need to train new or current employees skills to ensure they will keep up with change, or will you need to hire already skilled candidates for the roles.

Keep in mind the supply and demand of workforce planning will change over time so it's important to include your team in the workforce supply planning process because the decisions made will ultimately affect their jobs and careers.

Create a Workforce Planning Budget

At this stage, you should have a fairly detailed blueprint of who you have employed today, who you will need in the future and any gaps between the two. Now, you need to start prioritizing your roles by the most difficult to fill, highest priority and cost-per-hire.

How you prioritize roles will also depend on your external hiring and internal retention budgets. To hire talented candidates — and pay them what they’re worth — you need to determine a budget through workforce planning.

Figure out how long it takes to hire someone and how much it will cost by comparing your external hiring budget to your current recruitment metrics. By looking at the metrics, you should also be able to pinpoint areas of the recruitment strategy that need improvement.

Set a Hiring Timeframe 

From here, build out a timeline that prioritizes certain roles and takes into account how long it will take to hire each role. This timeline can span between one year to 10 years depending on your strategy. Regardless of how far out your strategy spans, include intermittent short term goals throughout the plan to ensure you're always pacing on track.

Also, keep in mind this plan is not set in stone, it will fluctuate over time and require adjustments along the way.

Reevaluate Workforce Plan

Once you’ve created a workforce plan, you’re not done. In fact, you will constantly be monitoring the workforce needs of your company as business goals change and your internal workforce evolves. It's important to frequently get feedback and buy-in from employees, especially as the company grows.

If you create a culture that is open to having tough conversations with employees about their roles, performance and future career, you will be significantly better equipped to anticipate and adjust your workforce plan as changes occur. Employees will also be more keen to stay at your company and refer cohorts to open roles, thus further simplifying your recruiting and retention process. Even as the plan you create changes over time, it will always be a guideline for your teams to assess the effectiveness of their strategies and keep them on track over the course of several years.

You will have access to 50+ pages of data, tips, and advice.

Great Companies Need Great People. That's Where We Come In.

Blog · Leadership

October 8, 2020

10 Steps for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning

Strategic workforce planning can help sustain organizational growth in challenging times. We've put together 10 steps to help you kick off the process.

by Sophie Smith-Watkins

Sustaining organizational growth in challenging times

Business leaders are currently facing some serious challenges in regard to their future talent acquisition and human capital strategy . The unprecedented impact of the pandemic and ensuing recession means that a fundamental rethink of business strategy is needed. The way people work, where they work and who they work for is rapidly changing, and business leaders need to plan ahead in order to maintain growth. Strategic workforce planning could be the answer to sustaining organizational growth in difficult times.

63% of CEOs are concerned about availability of key skills

One of the biggest concerns for leaders at the moment is the shortage of skilled talent and the ageing workforce. CEOs are increasingly worried about finding talent with the right skills. 79% of CEOs perceive retaining existing talent as the top management challenge, while another 67% cited attracting qualified talent as the top concern.

Many leaders are well aware of the exceptional challenges that lie ahead, but many seem less certain about how they are going to tackle them. Read on to find out how to implement an effective workforce planning strategy in 10 steps.

What is strategic workforce planning?

Strategic workforce planning is the systematic identification and analysis of an organization's future talent needs associated with its long-term goals and objectives , establishing a clear strategy that ensures that it will achieve these goals.

Workforce planning aims to align an organization's people strategy with its evolving needs . It is a continual process due to the constantly evolving nature of organizational change.

It is essential that HR leaders develop a strategic workforce plan that will help their organization to meet its strategic goals by identifying critical talent needs, assessing potential talent risks and developing strategies to mitigate those risks.

What is the goal of workforce planning?

The main goal of workforce planning is having the right talent in the right roles at the right time . The organization will never be over or understaffed, and will be ready to react quickly to changes in the business landscape.

Effective strategic planning will shape the future of HR, enabling People teams to demonstrate their capabilities and influence in managing people processes and in driving overall business success.

The 4 key elements of workforce planning

All workforce strategic planning processes should consider the following essential components:

• Key business priorities must be translated into talent strategy
• HR initiatives must be prioritized based on both current capabilities and projected needs
• Strategic plans must be communicated to key business stakeholders to get leadership buy-in and investment
• Plans must be able to evolve to reflect ongoing changes in business conditions

Common barriers to strategic workforce planning

According to a recent study , only 8% of senior HR leaders believe they are getting a suitable return on investment from strategic workforce planning and talent management. So before you kick off your planning efforts, it is useful to be aware of some of the obstacles that organizations face when they are focusing on workforce planning.

Common barriers that organizations face during workforce planning:

• Lack of the necessary tools and resources
• Failure to align planning with wider businesses goals
• Little to no support from leadership
• Lack of collaboration during the planning process
• Talent and skill gaps not identified correctly
• No reliance on employee data

Although there are some barriers, being aware of the challenges going forward will help you to implement a roadblock free planning process.

Benefits of strategic workforce planning

Effective strategic workforce planning improves HR’s strategic contribution to the organization by 13% and, in turn, drives talent outcomes and revenue.

Investing time and resources in your workforce planning process will set up your organization for success. If you are still on the fence, the following benefits will convince you that it is worth your time.

Benefits of strategic workforce planning:

• Reduce labor costs
• Identify future customer needs
• Devise appropriate strategies for people development
• Identify and improve target areas
• Improve employee retention
• Boost productivity
• Improve work-life balance
• Improve KPIs

Where to begin with your workforce planning strategy

There is no set way to implement a strategic workforce plan. Whilst that might seem contradictory given the title of this article, it actually reflects the unique nature and culture of every organization. The important thing is that each plan must be designed with your organization's specific workforce in mind in order to identify gaps and anticipate future needs. Strategic workforce planning is no mean feat, but when executed correctly it will have a positive impact on your businesses bottom-line.

10 steps for effective strategic workforce planning

1. Keep in mind the organization's long term objectives

Strategic workforce planning is about making sure people within your organization are able to deliver the wider business goals. It would therefore be logical to start with those key business goals. Think about where the company is headed in the short and long term, what does it want to achieve, and what human capital can do to help it achieve it. By aligning talent management strategy with the organization's business strategy, you will start to see real benefits to the organization as a whole.

2. Engage key stakeholders from the outset

It is really important to get leadership and key stakeholders on board before you begin with strategic workforce planning if you want to see real results. You will need to buy-in not only from the HR department, but also from finance, operations and the C-suite.

3. Create a dedicated team

High-performing organizations might already have a dedicated workforce planning team in place, but if your business cannot accommodate this there are ways around it. Establish a project team, where members are able to continue in their normal role and can also join the new workforce planning team. Build your team wisely, with input from senior leadership, finance and HR stakeholders. Establish clear communication channels and segment specific roles within the team.

4. Analyze the current workforce

In this stage of workforce planning, your organization needs to evaluate its gaps and work out what actions it can take to close them. It is essential to carry out some analysis of the current state of the workforce.

What does your workforce look like at the moment? What skills shortage is already apparent? What could be improved on to increase efficiency and enhance employee employee experience?

Reviewing your current talent situation and recognizing the gaps is the first step to better understanding the changes that need to be made to drive improvement. Once the gaps have been identified, create appropriate action plans.

5. Use people analytics

People analytics are a very useful way to get insights about the workforce. What are the current capabilities, skills and size? Collect data on workforce demographics and leverage this information to make smarter , data-driven decisions regarding your workforce.

6. Collaborate

One of the biggest barriers that organizations face during workforce planning is the failure to communicate across the company and gather internal feedback before decision making. It is essential to collaborate with department leaders and managers, as they work closely with employees and will therefore have a better understanding of areas that need improvement.

7. Use innovative technology

An effective planning process requires continual interaction, something that can be improved by using a strategic workforce planning tool. Cloud-based, data driven workforce planning tools encourage collaboration and flexibility, and turn planning into a more agile, collaborative and data-driven process. Using planning technology will allow you to free up budget, model different scenarios, create better alignment between finance and HR and better track workforce plans.

8. Outsource an expert

The complexity of creating an effective workforce planning strategy must not be understated. Don't be afraid to seek external help. Experts are able to provide your organization with invaluable help and support to make the process more effective. Bringing in some external help will save your organization both time and resources, and will represent a significant return on investment.

9. Anticipate the future

To be ready for the future, you need to have some idea of what is on the horizon. Whilst no one can predict the future, what you can do is create potential future scenarios and plan accordingly. These can be used to create action plans in advance. Then when something unexpected happens, there will already be some contingency measures in place.

10. Evaluate, revise and modify

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, workforce planning needs to be adapted in line with the evolving needs of an organization. It is important to continuously track the progress of your workforce planning strategy in order to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and modify it accordingly. The process needs to incorporate a regular review process in order to gather feedback needed to evaluate the process. The current business environment is constantly changing and evolving, and your workforce planning should too.

Whilst there is no one size fits all solution for today's talent management issues, strategic workforce planning is an excellent place to start. If your organization hires hundreds of roles a year, it is particularly important to think strategically about how your future workforce can achieve maximum productivity at any given moment.

A clear plan will help to reduce employee turnover, prepare for demographic change and create a long-term talent management strategy that will undoubtably improve your bottom-line.

Check out our top tips for effective workforce planning here .

Build any HR process on PeopleGoal.

Create an account and start building on the PeopleGoal platform. All accounts start with a 7-day free trial and can be cancelled at any time.

Further Reading

Related articles from our blog, read on

Strategic workforce planning is a complex process, but when executed effectively it can help sustain organizational growth in challenging times. We've put together 10 easy to follow steps to help you kickstart the process.

Sophie Smith-Watkins

SMART Goals for Managers and Leaders

Setting SMART goals for managers and for your team is an easy exercise to promote strategic alignment and motivation.

Kylie Strickland

Boost Employee Motivation: Five Activities To Focus On

Engaged employees are more aligned with strategic objectives. We have put together five engagement activities to help increase employee motivation.

Nikolaos Lygkonis

Ready to see PeopleGoal in action? Start your free trial today.

• Local Markets
• Development
• Performance
• How it Works
• Case studies
• Whitepapers
• Landing Pages

Subscribe to our newsletter

The latest news, articles, and resources, sent to your inbox weekly.

© 2024 PeopleGoal, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Gartner client? Log in for personalized search results.

Strategic Workforce Planning

Translate business strategy into workforce strategy, strategic workforce planning insights.

Today’s environment of rapid change and uncertainty increases pressure on HR to ensure the organisation has the required talent to support changing business priorities. Strategic workforce planning sets HR up to identify talent needs associated with the organisation’s future goals and establish a strategy to ensure the organisation has the right mix of talent, technologies and employment models to reach these goals.

Download Strategic Workforce Planning Case Studies

Understand the new talent landscape with strategic workforce planning and labour market data.

By clicking the "Continue" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Contact Information

All fields are required.

Step 2 of 3

Company/Organization Information

Step 3 of 3

Please provide the consent below

I have read, understood and accepted Gartner Separate Consent Letter , whereby I agree (1) to provide Gartner with my personal information, and understand that information will be transferred outside of mainland China and processed by Gartner group companies and other legitimate processing parties and (2) to be contacted by Gartner group companies via internet, mobile/telephone and email, for the purposes of sales, marketing and research.

By clicking the "Submit" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

By clicking the "Begin Download" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Strategic workforce planning begins with business strategy

The first step in building an effective workforce plan is understanding the organisation's business strategy and goals. HR leaders should partner with business leaders to understand strategic objectives and build a business case for the investment in a strategic workforce plan. Tip: Business leaders are under tremendous pressure to hit short-term targets and focus on immediate staffing needs. HR leaders should leverage data to illustrate how strategic workforce planning can mitigate those pressures and set leaders up for future success.

Insights You Can Use

Gartner offers insights, advice and tools, like Gartner TalentNeuron, that help HR practice effective workforce planning, thinking ahead to address tomorrow's talent and business needs today.

Sources of Workforce Planning Intelligence

To develop a successful workforce planning strategy, organisations must gather intelligence to understand business strategy, identify talent risks associated with successfully executing that strategy and develop a plan to address those risks. In this Gartner research, we detail 13 internal and external labour market sources HR can leverage during the workforce planning process.

Build a Business Case for Workforce Planning

Based on extensive research on strategic workforce planning, this Gartner presentation template is designed to help HR leaders build a business case for workforce planning. The template includes guidance on building a proposal, explaining the importance of workforce planning and how to address potential challenges.

How to Leverage Data for More Influential Workforce Planning

Effectively use data in workforce planning to ensure business leaders consider talent implications when making strategic business decisions. Data will help identify future needs and communicate the top talent risks to executing business objectives.

Questions about becoming a Gartner client?

How Gartner Helps CHROs with Strategic Workforce Planning

Reengineer Workforce Planning for Transformation and Cost Savings

Business disruption increased 260% in the past five years, and COVID-19 further turbocharged this disruption. This webinar addresses the necessity to know where you need to reassign roles by skill and build internal skill sets for future workforce needs.

View Webinar

The Unbounded Workforce: Decode the Future of Business

This complimentary webinar spotlights how trends like remote work, increased reliance on a contingent workforce, and the decoupling of critical skills and critical roles bring new challenges and opportunities to the forefront for human resource leaders.

3 Workforce Planning Imperatives That Drive Business Outcomes

Understand the top challenges HR leaders face while workforce planning at their organisations, the implications of those challenges and how insight into the external talent market allows the HR team to best address each challenge.

Find Out More

Strategic Workforce Planning Case Studies

How does gartner support your future workforce strategy.

Ram Vadivelu, Senior Director, Talent and Workforce Analysis, Qualcomm, shares how Gartner TalentNeuron helped his team accurately identify emerging skills to solidify their talent strategy and how they rely on TalentNeuron's robust analytics and tools to support strategic planning and drive decisions.

Gartner TalentNeuron helps with both strategic and operational workforce planning. TalentNeuron figured out a way to synthesize over 60,000 data points that you can pull, leverage and then present to your senior leadership.

Gartner ReimagineHR Conference

Join your peer CHROs and HR leaders from leading organizations to discuss specific HR challenges and learn about top HR trends, insights and priorities.

Workforce planning questions Gartner can help answer

What is workforce planning.

In strategic workforce planning, HR evaluates workforce supply and demand, assesses skill gaps and determines what talent management initiatives are required for the workforce to drive business objectives now and into the future. 

To successfully implement a future-proof workforce planning model, HR leaders need to gather the right information to inform them of the existing skills gaps in the organisation and identify pathways to filling those gaps as the business grows and develops. 

The workforce planning model is the road map of where HR’s hiring practices are currently and where they need to be to develop and acquire the strategic skills needed for the future.

Why do you need strategic workforce planning?

Organisations rely on workforce planning to map existing and future talent needs. Without strategically analysing the skills gaps within the business, and projecting what skills will be required as the business evolves, the organisation will lack the critical talent and knowledge needed to deliver on strategic goals.

What is the role of HR in workforce planning?

HR needs to drive the future-proofing of the workforce. If HR fails to fill skills gaps strategically, the workforce will continue to lack the necessary talent to develop and deliver on business strategy. 

Additionally, HR needs to educate and influence business leaders on the importance of upskilling employees and developing leaders to thrive in the digital workplace.

What are the key focusses of a workforce plan?

Keys to executing a successful workforce plan include:

• Develop productive partnerships with business leaders and educate yourself about the future of the business. 
• Integrate workforce planning into business planning so it is not a stand-alone process and cannot be easily dismissed by business leaders.
• How key roles are evolving in the industry
• How talent is flowing in and out of key competitors
• How specific trends are affected by location 
• How available diverse talent is in the labour market
• Build HR’s ability to use and interpret talent data: Leveraging data is not only important for identifying talent; it can help determine the best strategy to close talent gaps. Data can drive your decision to build, buy, retain, outsource or automate. To improve HR’s ability to understand future organisational talent needs and the external labor environment, data skills are vital. 

Gartner is a trusted advisor and an objective resource for more than { }

Put the power of 65,000 global talent data points to work for you

Discover how TalentNeuron™ combines big data and statistical insights to provide global talent market, location and competitive intelligence for any industry or function.

Try Onboard Interactive Demo

Click through it yourself with an interactive demo.

The Best ROI Calculator

In just a few clicks, you'll see how the HR Cloud Onboardig Solution delivers...

Onboard by HR Cloud Demo Video

Employee Communication Platform

Recognition and Rewards Platfrom

The Leading Employee Engagement Platform

The Digital Heart of Your Organization

Like what you hear, your ultimate guide to strategic workforce planning.

What Is Strategic Workforce Planning?

• 5 Key Steps To Strategic Workforce Planning

Let Us Help You Engage Your Employees!

Onboard new hires safely, efficiently, and effectively., are you interested in improving your hr organization.

If you run a business, you know that your workforce is a valuable resource. Planning your workforce effectively can turn your business into a well-oiled machine. Each employee will know what they need to do and when. And they can carry out their tasks confidently because they have the necessary skill sets. 

As with every aspect of business, you must take a strategic approach to plan your workforce. This is your ultimate guide to strategic workforce planning.

Strategic workforce planning ensures you have the staff and resources you need exactly when you need them. It helps to eliminate the pitfalls of being under or overstaffed. By planning your workforce in advance, you can avoid recruitment challenges down the line. 

Strategic workforce planning involves analyzing productivity, budget, skills, and workload. You will identify and fill any skill gaps within the business. These factors combined can help you predict your company's current and future workforce needs. 

Strategic workforce planning enables you to optimize your costs and resources. The image below illustrates the components of a successful workforce plan: 

Image Source

A strategic workforce planning process can ensure you meet your business goals and continue to grow. It helps you maintain employees with the right skill sets to maximize productivity while minimizing unnecessary expenditure. 

5 Key Steps To Strategic Workforce Planning 

So how exactly does strategic workforce planning work? Here are five key steps to take for effective strategic workforce planning:

1. Define The Business Strategy

First and foremost, you need to define your business strategy. Leaders within your business should work together to hone in on the strategic objectives of the company. 

Consider taking a SMART approach to goal planning. That is:

Each department will have unique insight into your company’s current state of affairs. Therefore, it makes sense to request input from leaders from all departments when defining your business strategy. Include HR managers, leaders of your finance team, your tech experts, and other employees within your company that will play a key part in reaching your business goals. 

Your business strategy should be closely integrated with your strategic workforce plan and your business activities. Consider how your workforce will help you meet your long-term and short-term goals. 

Meeting strategic goals may mean hiring new employees to fill workforce gaps. Alternatively, it may be necessary to retrain existing ones. You may even wish to outsource some tasks to individuals or companies that offer particular services.

A New Way to Manage Frontline Workers and Remote Teams

For instance, working with a marketing agency to develop and implement your eCommerce or SaaS marketing strategy could make more sense to your business strategy than hiring your own marketing team. 

2. Analyze The Current Workforce

Your next step is to analyze your current workforce. Use workforce analytics and data to identify strengths and weaknesses within your team. 

During a survey, Gartner discovered that 67% of employees did not think their organization used data effectively for workforce planning. Therefore, learning how to harness your company’s data to optimize workforce plans could give you a significant edge over your competitors.  

Image source

Look at things such as:

Age demographics - you may have a number of key employees near retirement age, for example. In this case, you need to plan how to fill these gaps. Additionally, your young employees could be trained for more skillful jobs within the company. Providing employees with chances to progress could boost employee retention. This will save you money in the long run. 

High performers vs low performers - your low performers may either benefit from extra training, or you may need to replace them. High performers may appreciate the challenge of further training. Providing more training can help them perform even better and generate more revenue. 

Number of workers - ensure there are enough workers with the right critical skills in each department. For example, some of your talent may be of better use somewhere else within the company. Could any gaps be filled by assigning employees to different roles or departments? 

Employee turnover - Zippia claims that it costs an average of $4,700 to find and hire a new employee. And it takes 12 weeks for a new employee to become a fully productive member of the team. Therefore, retaining your best workers should be a top priority. Weigh up the cost and time benefits of letting someone go versus providing training and promoting them. 

Training costs - analyze the costs involved in training employees to their current skill level. Compare this with the benefits doing so has brought the company. If you have spent the same amount of money on training a low performer as you have a high performer, training the low performer may not have been a great investment. Identify anything you could have done differently or how you can avoid this in the future. 

HR mistakes impact your entire organization. Learn how to avoid the 12 most common mistakes with our free ebook.

Your current workforce will be the foundation of your future workforce needs. It’s about weeding out aspects that are not serving your company while harnessing and propelling aspects that do. Once you have a clear idea of where you are, you can set the stage to meet future hiring needs. 

3. Forecast Future Workforce Needs

Forecasting future workforce needs will ensure you are well-prepared for all contingencies. Use your analysis of your current workforce and business goals to determine what you will need in the future. This will help to ensure future success.

You can use various systems and software to assist with workforce forecasting. Below, you will see the results of a study conducted by Call Center Helper . They found that 40% of call centers solely use Excel for their workforce forecasting. 

Let’s pretend that next year’s goal is to sell 20% more products than the previous year. How will your current workforce help you achieve this and meet future demand? Perhaps further training will suffice. Or, perhaps you need to bring employees with more experience and specific skills on board. If that is the case, what will happen to existing employees?

If it takes 12 weeks for new employees to fall comfortably into their new work tasks, knowing when to hire new employees will assist in avoiding lapses in productivity. Likewise, upskilling some current employees might mean you need to let others go. 

Another important consideration for future goals is how your company may advance technologically. There is a lot of fantastic software and hardware available that can make life considerably easier for the workforce. HR technology to help businesses manage onboarding processes is one example. 

The 40 Best Thank You Messages for Colleagues

4. Develop A Plan

With all your information and business objectives in place, work with your team leaders and business leaders to develop a plan of action. Your workforce plan will differ from your business strategy in that it will be specific to your workforce. 

Your strategic workforce plan will include your goals and what resources you will use to meet them. If you don’t currently have the resources you need, determine how you will obtain them. Your plan will ensure your resources, workforce, and budget all align. 

Develop workforce strategies, such as hiring, training, outsourcing, and implementing new technologies, to meet your goals. 

The table below is a good example of a workforce planning template. It illustrates what the company needs from a new hire. It includes essential details such as budget, training requirements, and education level. 

Let’s look at a specific example of a plan:

Pretend you are a paraquat lawyer with a specific short-term goal to obtain more clients. Once you hit a short-term target, your budget will allow you to invest in technology, such as productivity software, that will save you money over time. This technology will be a key driver toward your long-term goals. 

To reach that initial target though, you might need to train employees to learn social media marketing, for example. You will purchase appropriate training materials to teach employees how to use social media to market your business effectively. 

However, your budget will only allow you to train a few employees. Therefore, you must carefully select the best employees from your current list of high performers. 

All of these aspects combined will form part of your plan. 

Another aspect of developing your plan is preparing for unexpected situations. This could be things completely beyond your control, such as global financial difficulties. 

5. Implement And Monitor The Plan

Part of implementing your strategic workforce plan is ensuring everyone is up to date with your new arrangements. Hold a meeting where business leaders not only explain any changes to employees but also give them a chance to ask questions. 

Each department should have its own mini-plan developed from the overall plan. For example, an IT department will have different tasks than a Human Resource department. 

The image below highlights the lack of plan monitoring amongst businesses. Without monitoring, you cannot measure the success of your plan.

Image source  

Monitor your plan to identify strengths and weaknesses. When the time comes to develop a new plan, you will have key information with which you can maximize your plan’s effectiveness. 

Although a plan is important, you must also be prepared to adjust it when necessary. Monitor the overall plan and individual plans. Use data to analyze successes and see if you can improve them. 

The steps you have put in place to scale employee collaboration , for instance, may not be as effective as you thought. Therefore, your business may benefit from a different approach. In short, be flexible. 

Strategic workforce planning requires you to be detail-oriented. It also requires you to look at each area of your business with a critical eye.  Your data will be incredibly useful for developing your workforce planning strategies.

Start by defining your business strategy and analyzing your current workforce. Then forecast your future workforce needs and create an appropriate plan. Finally, implement your plan and monitor it closely. Don’t be afraid to adjust the plan based on new data.

Find Out How Much You Can Save by Switching to Workmates.

Author Bio:

Jacquelyn Dameron worked at Real Media for an year before applying for a Juris Doctor, so she'll be spending another couple of years at college before qualifying as a lawyer.

She is starting out at the moment to begin contributing articles.

Keep Reading

Workforce management through tech-based tools: streamlining construction and roofing operations.

As industries evolve, adopting innovative approaches to workforce management is essential

Skills vs Abilities in the Workplace

Modern-day workplaces are facing many challenges that were not foreseeable a few years

Write for the HR Cloud Blog!

Eight Key Steps to Strategic Workforce Planning

What can companies do to ensure they take the right approach to implement Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP)? HCI recommends that companies follow a proven framework tailored to meet the needs of each organization.

Learn the eight key steps for SWP in this paper. 

Login or create an account to register for the live streaming of this webcast

Returning members, not a member.

Join now - it's free!

The Federal Register

The daily journal of the united states government, request access.

Due to aggressive automated scraping of FederalRegister.gov and eCFR.gov, programmatic access to these sites is limited to access to our extensive developer APIs.

If you are human user receiving this message, we can add your IP address to a set of IPs that can access FederalRegister.gov & eCFR.gov; complete the CAPTCHA (bot test) below and click "Request Access". This process will be necessary for each IP address you wish to access the site from, requests are valid for approximately one quarter (three months) after which the process may need to be repeated.

An official website of the United States government.

If you want to request a wider IP range, first request access for your current IP, and then use the "Site Feedback" button found in the lower left-hand side to make the request.

Trending News

Related Practices & Jurisdictions

• Biotech, Food, Drug
• Consumer Protection
• Administrative & Regulatory
• All Federal

On December 18, 2023, Dr. Brian King, the Director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products  announced  the Center’s new  five-year strategic plan  which outlines the Center’s programmatic and workforce initiatives and includes five goals, ten outcomes, and several corresponding objectives.

The new strategic plan incorporates recommendations from the  Reagan-Udall Foundation report  published in December 2022. The Reagan-Udall Foundation report provided fifteen recommendations for CTP which included improving transparency regarding the Center’s approach to Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA) reviews and compliance and enforcement. The report highlighted industry concerns with the CTP’s framework for approaching PMTA reviews, particularly after  FDA issued  Refuse To Accept (RTA) letters, Refuse to File (RTF) Letters, or Marketing Denial Orders (MDOs) for millions of deemed tobacco products. The five-year plan seeks to address the issues of transparency, enforcement, and education.

The five goals are:

• Develop, advance, and communicate comprehensive and impactful tobacco regulations and guidance;
• Ensure timely, clear, and consistent product application review;
• Strengthen compliance of regulated industry utilizing all available tools, including robust enforcement actions;
• Enhance knowledge and understanding of the risks associated with tobacco product use; and
• Advance operational excellence.

To achieve these goals, CTP plans to develop and implement several guidance documents to ensure that regulations are clear and accessible. Furthermore, CTP will develop new processes to review PMTA efficiently and to communicate the review process and marketing decisions transparently. CTP also plans to pursue more robust enforcement actions by collaborating with other federal and state agencies.

CTP highlighted the importance of promoting education surrounding the risks of tobacco product use, particularly for preventing youth initiation, and educating adults on the benefits of cessation, including the relative risks of different tobacco products. The fifth and last goal regards CTP’s operational goals by supporting its workforce and operating efficiently.

In conjunction with this strategic plan, CTP also published the Center’s  policy agenda  of rules and guidance documents. The policy agenda provides guidance documents in development, including current and long-term priorities for the Center. 

The Center’s current priorities include:

• Tobacco Product Standard for Menthol in Cigarettes ;
• Tobacco Product Standard for Characterizing Flavors in Cigars ;
• Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products ;
• Prohibition of Sale of Tobacco Products to Persons Younger Than 21 Years of Age ;
• Administrative Detention of Tobacco Products ; and
• Requirements for Tobacco Product Manufacturing Practice .

The ultimate goal of the strategic plan is to reduce harm caused by tobacco product use and to work with regulated industries in a manner that demonstrates a commitment to science, health equity, stakeholder engagement, and transparency.

Current Legal Analysis

More from keller and heckman llp, upcoming legal education events.

Sign Up for e-NewsBulletins

• Skip to main menu
• Skip to user menu

EXECUTIVE DEAN, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Implement the goals in support of the mission and strategic plan of the College with a focus on strategic partnerships and workforce development that support innovation. Provide administrative and managerial support to the Vice President of Academic Affairs in the leadership, development, direction, supervision and evaluation of career education, non-credit workplace courses, credit programs, military credential and tuition assistance, customized contract training, apprenticeship, entrepreneurship, makerspace and employment of students.

Reporting to the Superintendent-President and in consultation with the Vice President of Academic Affairs, the holder of this position will be assigned the following responsibilities: 1. Administer the District's Career Technical Education and contract training programs. 2. Develop and cultivate partnerships with community organizations, employers, government agencies for the creation of an operational network of stakeholders. 3. Review, write, and complete grant applications through collaborations and in-sight from departments across the college. 4. Develop grant budgets and action plans for successful meeting outcomes. 5. Coordinate curriculum planning with the Vice President of Academic Affairs and the Curriculum Committee to update CTE programs to meet industry standards. 6. Participates in and supports the accreditation process. 7. Maintain a high profile with the industrial, business, labor, education, defense and governmental constituencies of the District for the purposes of providing credit and non- credit programs, classes and services. 8. Represent the College in a public setting with an attention to the goals and resource allocations to administer and execute opportunities for innovation. Participate in community, state, and national organizations and meetings as appropriate and approved by the Superintendent-President. 9. Collaborate with other departments with strategic guidance for institutional research and institutional assessment. 10. Work with the managers of Student Services, Business Services, and Human Resources as needed. 11. Conduct program reviews to determine the demand for new credit and non-credit programs, classes and services. Review existing offerings to insure relevance and currency. 12. Supervise assigned faculty and staff and coordinate the delivery of programs, curriculum, classes and service. 13. Establish and chair advisory groups for programs and services. 14. Lead the development of grant proposals to provide unique funding to the college from outside governmental and private agencies. 15. Develop goals and strategies for accomplishing assigned responsibility; actively participate in college strategic and annual planning processes; develop personal professional development goals. 16. Exhibit fiscal responsibility in the development and management of budgets; monitor spending and approve expenditures according to annual spending plans, perform budget revisions and prepare budget reports as needed. 17. Make recommendations to the Vice President regarding all personnel decision. 18. Plan and implement systematic evaluations of all personnel, programs and projects assigned; actively participate in program reviews, regional and professional accreditation activities, and other college evaluation processes. Prepare applicable federal and state reports. 19. Perform other work-related duties as assigned. Knowledge and Skills : • Successful organizational leadership, team building, staff development and communication techniques. • California Community College system and mission. • Relationship building and maintenance with business and industry. • Vocational, occupational, military or community based educational management. • Budget development and implementation at a division level. • Employment and facility contract implementation and management. • Federal and state codes, laws and regulations relating to the functions of this position. Physical Demands and Work Environment: • The conditions herein are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential job functions. • Work is performed primarily in a standard office setting. Travel to other locations to conduct college business may be required. This position is subject to evening and weekend work. • Physical: Primary functions require sufficient physical ability and mobility to work in an office setting; to stand or sit for prolonged periods of time; to occasionally stoop, bend, kneel, crouch, reach, and twist; to lift, carry, push, and/or pull light to moderate amounts of weight; to operate office equipment requiring repetitive hand movement and fine coordination including use of a computer keyboard; and to verbally communicate to exchange information. • Vision: See in the normal visual range with or without correction; vision sufficient to read computer screens and printed documents; and to operate assigned equipment. • Hearing: Hear in the normal audio range with or without correction.

1. Earned Master's degree from an accredited institution in an area appropriate to the responsibilities of the position OR the equivalent. 2. Minimum of one (4) years of successful management experience with either career education, occupational, military, or on-line educational programs. Alternatively, two (2) years of experience as a full-time vocational or occupational instructor may substitute for one year of management experience. 3. Successful community college teaching or other related work experience.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY: The Barstow Community College District is an equal opportunity employer. The District encourages applications from all qualified individuals without regard to age, ancestry, color, religious creed, disability, marital status, medical condition, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, Vietnam-era veteran status.

Share this job

Get job alerts

Create a job alert and receive personalized job recommendations straight to your inbox.

Similar jobs

Chemistry adjunct assistant professor pool.

• Sacramento, California, United States

Inside a G.O.P. Plan to Encourage Early Voting Despite Trump’s Attacks

Donald Trump’s falsehoods about mail voting have created a strategic disadvantage for Republicans, who must rely on Election Day turnout. The group Turning Point Action has a $100 million plan to change voters’ habits.

Tyler Bowyer, right, the chief operating officer of the conservative group Turning Point Action, training new staff members in Phoenix as part of a Chase the Vote program to persuade Republican-leaning voters to cast ballots early and by mail this fall. Credit...

Supported by

• Share full article

By Nick Corasaniti

Photographs by Caitlin O’Hara

Nick Corasaniti spent two days at the Turning Point Action headquarters in Phoenix, observing training programs and interviewing officials at the group.

• Published April 4, 2024 Updated April 7, 2024

Inside a sprawling compound in Phoenix, leaders of the influential conservative group Turning Point Action were hatching plans to fix what they see as a mortal threat to the Republican Party: its voters’ avoidance of early voting, especially by mail, since the 2020 election.

The group’s officials, and many national Republicans, worry that Democrats have built a major strategic advantage by marshaling their voters to cast ballots early while G.O.P. voters wait until Election Day. That phenomenon stems largely from former President Donald J. Trump’s persistent falsehoods about mail voting — amplified at times by Turning Point Action officials — and the deep skepticism they have created among conservative voters.

Now an urgent search for a solution is underway, with Turning Point Action at the forefront.

The group, which began as an insurgent organization for young Republicans and has become a powerful player in right-wing politics, is aiming to raise and spend more than $108 million on a Chase the Vote program with hundreds of staff members in Arizona and Wisconsin. They will follow a few simple steps: Identify Republican-leaning voters who have not turned out in the past two elections. Make a personal connection with them over the next seven months. Then, in the group’s words, “chase the ballots.”

Political diplomacy will be required.

“You’re each going to have assignments of hundreds of people,” Tyler Bowyer, the group’s chief operating officer, explained to about 20 trainees last week. “Do you think wearing a MAGA hat attracts 50 percent of those people?”

The Chase the Vote program is one of the largest and most expensive efforts on the right to persuade Republicans to vote early. Their widespread abandonment of the practice, which was popular in both parties before 2020, means that Republican candidates are now far more at the mercy of Election Day problems like bad weather, long lines or voting machine hiccups.

At the same time, Turning Point Action’s program is still bound by strongly held conservative opinions on early voting and casting ballots by mail. The group’s officials are quick to express skepticism of the security of those practices, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud, and to call for tightening of election laws.

Mr. Bowyer has said publicly that his group is not trying to turn current Election Day voters into early voters. Its main focus, he says, is showing low-propensity voters — those who have not turned out in recent elections — all of the ways they can cast their ballot.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of the Turning Point empire, said in an interview: “It’s better to participate, even in that way” — early voting — “than not participate at all. That’s our argument.”

Party-wide mistrust, fueled by Trump

But improving Republicans’ early-voting turnout will be a challenge. Mr. Trump and his allies continue to argue that mail voting is rife with fraud.

During a Fox News town-hall event last month, Mr. Trump told the host Laura Ingraham, “If you have mail-in voting, you automatically have fraud.” At a rally in Wisconsin this week, he promised to “secure” elections with “one-day voting.”

The damage for Republicans in the Trump era has been clear.

In the 2020 election, when many Americans voted by mail because of the pandemic, seven million more Democrats than Republicans voted early in the 20 states that track party data, according to the United States Elections Project . In the 2022 midterms, two million more Democrats than Republicans voted early in 24 states, according to the project , an advantage built almost exclusively off mail ballots. Each of those years, Republican candidates in crucial races lost narrowly.

Just 28 percent of Republicans support allowing any voter to cast a ballot by mail if they want to, compared with 84 percent of Democrats, according to a February study by the Pew Research Center .

Mindful of this trend, the Republican National Committee this year began a Bank Your Vote program encouraging early voting. In an interview with NBC News last month , Lara Trump, the new co-chair of the committee and Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, said, “We have to start encouraging Republican voters to do things like voting early, trust mail-in voting.”

Still, Mr. Trump has put the party in a difficult position. The new leadership at the R.N.C., handpicked by Mr. Trump and his allies, initially signaled that it would abandon Bank Your Vote before reversing course. Top officials at Turning Point continue to criticize voting by mail, even as they lead their new Chase the Vote effort.

“The threading the needle for us, the game that we have to play, that we have to figure out: How do we get a bunch of people who are deeply concerned about these processes that are being changed and manipulated to participate in those same processes?” Mr. Bowyer said in an interview, referring darkly to the unproven conservative theory that Democrats are deliberately changing election rules to benefit themselves. (Mr. Bowyer was one of Arizona’s fake electors in the 2020 election, a scheme that the state’s attorney general is now investigating, according to The Washington Post .)

‘Soul searching’ over a Republican disadvantage

Election Day in 2022 was when Mr. Kirk realized things needed to change.

Walking into a polling place at a Phoenix church to proudly vote for Kari Lake and other Republicans, Mr. Kirk said, he was greeted by a two-and-a-half-hour line caused mainly by malfunctioning machines. Other polling sites in the area had similar problems .

Ms. Lake ended up losing the race for governor to Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, by about 17,000 votes . Roughly 19,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail.

“That kind of started a lot of soul searching between our team,” Mr. Kirk said in an interview. “I asked the question, I said, ‘What could we have done better?’”

He added, referring to the weekslong period of early balloting, “We could have played better in Voting Month.”

That would seem to be a significant public shift from Mr. Kirk, who wrote an essay for Fox News in July 2020 calling mail voting a Democratic power grab and who repeatedly questioned the security of mail voting in social media posts around the 2020 election.

In the interview, Mr. Kirk stood by those sentiments. “There is understandable skepticism about filling in a precious ballot, which we take very seriously, and putting it into the mail,” he said, adding that conservatives were not fans of the Postal Service.

Still, Mr. Kirk says, Republicans should be aware that they have a “buffet line of voting options.”

In a memo sent to donors last year, Turning Point Action said it hoped to hire more than 500 full-time “ballot chasers” in Arizona and 350 in Wisconsin. If the group raises its entire goal of $108 million — officials said they had raised “tens of millions” but still had a ways to go — it plans to expand into Georgia and possibly Michigan.

A mission to change Republican voting habits

Powering the Turning Point effort is a vast data operation led by Matthew Martinez, the data director for Chase the Vote and a former field director for Ms. Lake’s campaign.

Mr. Martinez has set up shop in one of Turning Point’s cavernous rooms at its Phoenix headquarters, with 4-foot-by-6-foot whiteboards with maps of states, counties and cities speckled with handwritten numbers. He methodically carved up Arizona and Wisconsin by hand into his own precincts, wards and districts, identifying 400 to 600 low-propensity Republican voters in each precinct.

The voters who could flip those states red, Mr. Martinez argues, are not in traditional battleground areas, but rather in safely red districts like that of Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona.

“The mind-set right now for the past four years, or even more, is flip, flip, flip,” Mr. Martinez said in an interview, referring to the party’s focus on highly competitive areas. “What I’m saying is, we need to turn out our base.”

The group also plans to use its Chase the Vote infrastructure for what it calls its election integrity efforts. Mr. Bowyer said on a recent Turning Point podcast, “If you have bodies on the ground that are becoming aware of the voting habits,” then “you’re going to be able to clean the voter rolls easier.”

Chase the Vote is still in its early stages, having trained only 20 of its ballot chasers so far. And while the new hires will encounter mistrustful voters, top Turning Point officials have also faced skeptical donors, who tend to be more comfortable with writing big checks and seeing immediate returns in the form of splashy ads rather than funding the grunt work of a new and untested field operation.

Even as trainees broke for a catered lunch of In-N-Out Burger, Mr. Kirk was down the hall, meeting with four major donors.

“It’s kind of challenging the muscle memory that we can keep on just trying to flood the zone on Election Day, and keep on expecting to win, and we’re losing on the margins,” he said in the interview. “And so, if you are falling short on the margins, and you want to get to victory, and there is this massive 30-to-40-day window where the opposition is dominating and you’re not even playing, it is rational to do something in that 30-to-40-day window to then try to be conclusive and successful.”

Mr. Kirk said he planned to vote early in-person this fall, and would capture it on video.

‘We need to be Ned Flanders’

Connecting with these low-propensity voters is part of what political operatives call “relational organizing,” a trendy political term that means using personal, one-on-one connections rather than mass messaging like ads.

During the training, Mr. Bowyer repeatedly showed an image of Ned Flanders, the relentlessly genial character from “The Simpsons” who greets neighbors with a “hi-diddily-ho.”

“We need to be Ned Flanders,” he said.

Mr. Bowyer has emphasized the importance of coming across as “human” — not always an easy task within a movement fueled by Trumpian grievance.

On a recent Turning Point podcast, he urged listeners not to “be mean and angry and aggressive and tell people they’re stupid.”

He added: “Look, if we walked up to people and were like: ‘Oh, you’re on the early voting list? You’re an idiot.’ Do you think they’re more motivated to vote? Do you think they’re more motivated to become an Election Day voter? And that’s effectively what’s happening right now.”

Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections. More about Nick Corasaniti

Our Coverage of the 2024 Presidential Election

News and Analysis

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., expressing sympathy for Jan. 6 rioters, vowed to appoint a special counsel  to investigate the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute them. A vaccine skeptic running as an independent , he has emerged as a wild card in the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump has privately floated the idea of choosing him as a running mate , but those close to the former president don’t consider it a serious possibility.

Melania Trump, who has been mostly absent from public view while her husband campaigns for president, will appear at a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago , marking a return of sorts to the political arena.

The centrist group No Labels has abandoned its plans to run a presidential ticket in the 2024 election, having failed to recruit a candidate. The group had suffered a string of rejections recently  as prominent Republicans and Democrats declined to run on its ticket.

Trump’s falsehoods about mail voting have created a strategic disadvantage for Republicans, who must rely on Election Day turnout . The group Turning Point Action has a $100 million plan to change voters’ habits to encourage early voting.

The focus of Trump’s hotel business is shifting from big cities to his golf resorts,  after a deal to host tournaments for LIV Golf , the upstart league sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, another example of the ties between the Saudis and the Trump family.

Biden and Trump are the oldest people ever to seek the presidency , challenging norms about what the public should know about candidates’ health.

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and consultant, has spent the past two years telling Democrats they need to calm down. His Biden-will-win prediction is his next big test .

Advertisement