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Last updated: 22 June 2006

Building business capability through workforce planning

Workforce planning–planning for performance

Workforce planning is about achieving sustained organisational performance and accountability through the development of a capable workforce. This guide is intended to enable you to make the critical decisions and identify the key strategies that will assist your agency to deliver business outcomes now and into the future.

Workforce planning in a nutshell

This diagram shows the central elements commonly found in most workforce planning models. It may be substituted with your agency specific model or refer to the ANAO Better Practice Guide Planning for the Workforce of the Future.

Workforce planning is not a stand alone process or system. An effective approach must be integrated with business practices; incorporate an analysis of the agency’s current and possible future operating contexts; and include ongoing monitoring of the environment, workforce issues and organisational strategies.

ExamineDecideDeliver
A practical approach to workforce planning

What factors might you examine in order to make sound workforce planning decisions? How do you identify the most useful information? How do you prioritise areas for action? How do you best establish the workforce to be ‘future ready’?

Regardless of the approach taken, Examine—Decide—Deliver will assist you to address these critical questions by focusing on the strategic outcomes of workforce planning.

There is no single approach or common model when it comes to workforce planning. While one agency may have the need and capacity to undertake complex planning, it may be suffi cient for another to simply ‘look around the room’ to identify key workforce risks both now and in the future.

	Examine	Decide	Deliver
Where are we heading? Understanding the strategic context	External and internal operating environments - consider using SWOT analysis Possible, probable and most likely future scenarios (e.g. growth/reassignment of priorities, change in work requirements) Planned organisational change Agency performance and customer feedback Organisational culture APSC’s Thinking About Planning checklist	Agency workforce planning objectives Workforce planning approach (e.g. top down, bottom up, planning horizons, all or some business units) Goals and critical success factors to aid in evaluation The organisational and business unit specific skill requirements emerging from the most likely scenarios	Persuasive business case which reflects the agency’s key priorities and indicates how workforce planning will tackle strategic workforce challenges Workforce planning framework Change management, communication and evaluation strategies Shared understanding of the required workforce profile for pivotal roles and job categories (e.g. positions, classifications, skills and professions)
Where are we now? Knowing the current workforce and work programme	Current roles and job categories, workflow and workload patterns Critical workforce data for your agency (could include HRMIS, annual reports, performance ratings, staff interviews, skills audits, recruitment trends, and labour market data from relevant government agencies and industry bodies) Effectiveness of organisational structure	Pivotal roles and job categories for business success—now and future (focus your efforts) Peaks and troughs in workloads and availability of required skills Specific challenges to be dealt with through the workforce planning strategy	Clear picture of the current state of the workforce Analysis of how workforce issues impact on the delivery of business outcomes
How are we going to get there? Staffing for and enhancing performance	Gaps/deviation in current and future workforce capability for pivotal roles and job categories Strategy options to build organisational and workforce capability Agency effectiveness in making flexible use of its workforce and HR strategies Opportunities for cross-agency collaboration Current better practice	Risk and priority of identified workforce challenges Integrated strategies to address each priority issue (adjustment of current/introduction of new practices) Resources required to implement the strategy Strategy review and evaluation mechanisms	Comprehensive plans tailored to specific areas of the agency (e.g. divisional, work group) Implementation plan and review strategy Integration and alignment of business policies and HR strategies Ongoing dialogue with line managers on emerging business and workforce issues

Prioritising the most-likely and highest-impact risks will help you to focus workforce planning action where it will have the most advantageous effect. Consider using a 3x3 risk analysis matrix which plots future capability gaps according to their importance and availability, or critical events according to their likelihood and impact.

Maintain a clear focus on the business

Establish the levels of partnership between the line and HR—involve your stakeholders early in the process

Build flexibility into the workforce planning process to lead to more effective and tailored solutions

Focus on critical data and emerging trends—you do not need to assess with complete certainty

Do the most you can with the information that you have—you can’t risk doing nothing

Solve problems, don’t just build a process

A workforce plan is not an end product—planning must be ongoing

Strategies

The strategy table identifies particular areas where you may need to focus your efforts to achieve effective workforce planning outcomes—developing the organisation, developing the current workforce or developing the future workforce.

Consider your agency’s current context, it’s future requirements and the impact of lead times—then drawing from one or more sectors of the table, identify your immediate and longer-term workforce planning strategies.

Integrated strategies to build organisational capability

A high priority

Managing workforce planning effectively has become a high priority for agencies. A future supply of capable and effective staff is essential to deliver against Government expectations.

The MAC report Managing and Sustaining the APS Workforce reinforces this message, stressing the need for agencies to implement systematic workforce planning processes.

Keys to successful implementation

• Work with your managers throughout the process
• Identify short and long term strategies to address the most critical issues
• Align workforce planning to existing organisational processes (e.g. business planning, budgeting)
• Address anticipated and unforeseen challenges/difficulties
• Plan the review process
• Workforce planning is a continuous process - periodically provide updated data, progress reports and manager coaching

Other resources

This guide provides a range of decision-making tools to support workforce planning efforts and contribute to wider organisational performance. It is further supported by the Thinking About Planning checklist available on the APSC website and the APSED Internet Interface (APSEDII), which enables agencies to extract benchmark data for similar-sized agencies.

Get it Right–A Recruitment Kit for Managers, the Managing Succession within the APS information guide, the Integrated Leadership System and the Human Resources Capability Model also focus on workforce capability development.

All resources available on this website, or call the APSC Hotline 02 6202 3859