Organizations grapple with many challenges, underscoring the heightened importance of strategic workforce planning. The COVID-19 pandemic, a catalyst for remote work and digital transformation, has compelled companies to recalibrate their workforce strategies swiftly. The advent of artificial intelligence and automation is reshaping the very fabric of work, necessitating employees to cultivate novel skills and proficiencies. Demographic transitions, including an aging workforce and plummeting birth rates in several nations, pose fresh hurdles for organizations.
The division of labor between humans and machines is changing, the median age of the labor force is increasing, the composition of the workforce is becoming more diverse, and the place where work happens is fanning out.
Organizations must embrace strategic workforce planning to navigate these complex challenges and ensure long-term success. By analyzing current workforce capabilities, forecasting future needs, and developing strategies to bridge the gap, companies can ensure they have the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time. Strategic workforce planning empowers organizations to proactively manage their talent pipeline, optimize their workforce composition, and adapt to changing business needs.
Given the complexity of strategic workforce planning, organizations must leverage technology to address these challenges effectively. In this blog post, we’ll delve into what to look for in technology solutions. To cover the fundamentals, read our articles about the basics of strategic workforce planning and strategic workforce planning frameworks.
The Role of Technology in Strategic Workforce Planning
Technology plays an essential role in enabling effective strategic workforce planning. By automating and streamlining key processes, providing real-time data and insights, and enabling scenario planning and modeling, technology can help organizations make more informed decisions about their workforce. The key areas where technology supports workforce planning are:
- Data collection and integration from multiple HR systems
- Workforce analytics and insights generation
- Scenario planning and modeling
- Talent management and development
This will help organizations improve the efficiency of their planning process, get up-to-date insights, decrease their reaction time to changing business needs, improve collaboration between HR and business units, and increase the quality of decisions overall.
Key Capabilities to Look for in Workforce Planning Technology
When evaluating strategic workforce planning software, several key capabilities should be considered to ensure the solution effectively supports your organization’s needs.
Data Integration and Management: The ability to connect and consolidate data from disparate HR systems, such as HRIS, ATS, and LMS, and ensure data quality, consistency, and governance.
Workforce Analytics: Providing descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics to enable data-driven decision-making.
Scenario Planning and Modeling: Allowing “what-if” analysis to test different workforce scenarios and strategies and model the impact of internal and external changes on workforce needs.
User Experience and Adoption: Providing an intuitive and user-friendly interface for HR and business users, offering self-service capabilities and personalized insights, and ensuring data privacy, security, and compliance.
Considerations for Selecting and Implementing Workforce Planning Technology
When selecting and implementing workforce planning technology, there are several key considerations to keep in mind to ensure success:
- Defining clear goals and requirements for what the technology should achieve for you
- Evaluating vendors based on capabilities, integration, scalability, and support
- Ensuring alignment with overall HR technology strategy and roadmap
- Establishing a strong data foundation and governance framework
- Implementing by prioritizing high-impact use cases
- Continuously monitoring and optimizing workforce planning processes and technology
Key Providers of Strategic Workforce Planning Technology
There are many providers of strategic workforce planning software in the market. Each has strengths and weaknesses compared to your objectives and HR software stack. It’s beneficial to evaluate the largest key players in the market to understand which solution might be the best fit for your needs. Here’s an overview of the most important providers:
SAP SuccessFactors– Target audience: Large enterprises across various industries
– Biggest upside: Comprehensive HR suite with strong integration capabilities and robust analytics
– Potential flaw: Complex implementation and high costs[
Workday– Target audience: Medium to large enterprises, particularly in finance and healthcare
– Biggest upside: User-friendly interface, strong financial planning integration, and continuous updates
– Potential flaw: Limited customization options and potentially high costs
Anaplan– Target audience: Medium to large enterprises across various industries
– Biggest upside: Flexible and scalable platform, strong scenario planning capabilities, and integration with other business planning processes
– Potential flaw: Requires dedicated resources for implementation and maintenance
– Target audience: Medium to large enterprises looking for advanced workforce analytics
– Biggest upside: Powerful analytics and data visualization capabilities, predictive modeling, and benchmarking
– Potential flaw: Limited integration with other HR systems, some reports about potential data quality issues
– Target audience: Medium to large enterprises across various industries
– Biggest upside: Integrated business planning platform, strong financial planning capabilities, and customizable dashboards
– Potential flaw: Complex user interface and limited pre-built workforce planning content
– Target audience: Small to medium enterprises, particularly in finance and accounting
– Biggest upside: Ease of use, fast implementation, and strong financial planning capabilities
– Potential flaw: Limited workforce planning functionality compared to other providers
– Target audience: Industries with hourly workers, such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare
– Biggest upside: Automated scheduling, time and attendance tracking, and labor forecasting
– Potential flaw: Limited long-term strategic workforce planning capabilities
– Target audience: Small to medium enterprises looking for org chart and headcount planning
– Biggest upside: User-friendly interface, real-time org chart visualization, and collaboration features
– Potential flaw: Limited advanced analytics and scenario planning capabilities compared to other providers
When evaluating these providers, consider your organization’s specific needs, budget, and existing technology stack. Look for a solution that aligns with your workforce planning maturity level and can scale with your organization over time. It’s also important to consider factors such as ease of use, integration capabilities, and customer support.
Conclusion
All these tools are powerful enablers of strategic workforce planning and business transformation. By providing real-time data and insights, enabling scenario planning and modeling, and supporting key talent management processes, these technologies can help organizations make more informed decisions about their workforce.
However, organizations need to feed any software with high-quality data to realize its benefits fully. It’s not enough to have a headcount for each role. You need an accurate description of each role, aligned with each other and with your value chain. You should also know which skills are needed for each role today and which will be needed in the future. Only then will you get the deep insights you need to prepare your talent management for future requirements. Otherwise, your organization will risk making sub-optimal decisions based on incomplete data.
Our job architecture software guarantees the high-quality data you need for your strategic workforce planning software. It’s easy to use and comes with standard catalogs, AI to quickly create job profiles, and our experience and support to align your job architecture with your value chain. Check out more details here or schedule a conversation with one of our specialists. They are happy to discuss how to design a job architecture for your organization.