Strategic Workforce Planning

G U I D E L I N E S F O R I N D U S T R Y A N D E M P L O Y E R S 2 0 0 7

We live in an increasingly global labour market where borders are fading and individuals can
move more freely to find work. This has forced organizations to take a more strategic view of
managing their workforce. Alberta’s strong economic growth has lead to unprecedented
demand for workers at a time when global competition for workers at all skill levels has
intensified. To respond to growing skill and labour shortages, the government of Alberta has
released Building and Educating Tomorrow’s Workforce: Alberta’s 10 Year Strategy (BETW).

Co-led by the departments of Employment, Immigration and Industry (EII) and Advanced
Education and Technology, BETW aims to improve the supply of appropriately skilled and
motivated workers in Alberta, develop highly skilled, educated and innovative people and foster
high performance work environments that maximize the use of innovation and technology.
These outcomes will be met through a strategic framework with four broad themes: Inform,
Attract, Develop and Retain. This same framework can be applied at a micro level by an
employer or industry sector in developing a strategic workforce plan. This guide will take you
through the steps of strategic workforce planning and illustrate how the BETW four-part
framework can apply to your organization or company.
What is Strategic Workforce Planning?
Strategic Workforce Planning is a management process that is being increasingly used to plan for
future labour needs, changes and challenges. It examines the current workforce and takes a
strategic look at what the future workforce demands will be to develop a human resources plan
of action.

Strategic Workforce Planning involves identifying, assessing, developing and sustaining employee
workforce skills required to successfully accomplish business goals and priorities while balancing
the needs and expectations of employees. Through this process, organizations gain insight into
their workforce capacity and labour needs so they can make strategic human resources decisions
and take purposeful, timely action towards developing their people. Essentially, strategic
workforce planning is identifying gaps between the labour demand of an organization and the
available workforce supply, leading to strategies used to close those gaps.
Developing a Strategic Workforce Plan
Although there is no universally accepted method for developing a strategic workforce plan, most
workforce planning models include the following elements:
‒  Current Workforce Profile
‒  Environmental Scan TIP: Some helpful resources can be found in the
.
Inform section of the Industry and Employer Toolkit
‒  Future Workforce Demands
located at www.employment.alberta.ca/eToolkit.
‒  Workforce Gap Analysis
‒  Strategy Development
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Step 1: Understanding Your Workforce — Current Workforce Profile

This step gives you an understanding of your current workforce and the existing pressures placed
on the organization to maintain this workforce. Some key questions to consider are:
What is the current employee demand?
‒  Number of full-time, part-time and casual positions
‒  Number of permanent and contracted positions
‒  Number of positions and employees in key occupational groups
‒  Geographical location of positions (i.e. rural, urban)
‒  Average, median, minimum and maximum wage rates for key occupational groups
‒  Average age of retirement for key occupational groups and organization as a whole

What are the current demographics of your existing workforce?

‒  Percentage of employees broken down by age group, gender, ethnic group, and
tenure categories
What is the turnover rate within the organization?
‒  Turnover rates: voluntary (retention) and involuntary (recruitment/development)
‒  Proportion of employees eligible for retirement by occupational group
‒  Actual average age of retirement for occupational groups

What is your vacancy rate?

‒  Time required to fill job vacancies by occupational group

Step 2: Understanding Your Industry — Environmental Scan

The environment scan identifies emerging trends, issues and the business environment within
which your organization operates. This information can be found by consulting labour force
research reports and forecasts available from industry associations, business and trade
publications, and government resources. Some key items to consider when conducting an
environmental scan include:
What are the workforce trends and challenges specific to your industry?
‒  What are your competitors’ attraction and retention strategies?

What are the general labour force trends and challenges?

‒  What other industries compete for the same pools of labour?
‒  What similar occupations are experiencing shortages/surpluses?

TOOLS TO HELP: Publications available from Alberta

Employment, Immigration and Industry (AEII):
− Employer ToolKit: www.employment.alberta.ca/eToolkit
− Industry Profiles
− Industry Economic Dashboards
− Labour Supply/Demand Model
− Wage and Salary Survey

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING

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Step 3: Understanding Future Workforce Demands

One of the main objectives of workforce planning is to ensure that an organization has enough
workers to meet current and future demand as required by the business of the organization.
This step involves determining the future needs of the organization, considering the emerging
trends and issues identified in the environmental scan. Information for this step can usually be
found in the organization’s business plan and annual report. Some key considerations are:
What is the organization’s current vision, mission, business goals and objectives?
‒  Is this direction changing for the future?
‒  How many and what types of jobs will be needed to meet the new workforce
demand?
Are there any planned technology changes that will impact the workforce?
‒  If yes, how does this impact the workforce?
‒  Will current workforce need training or will you need to hire new occupational
groups?

Step 4: Workforce Gap Analysis

Now that the current workforce profile (Step 1) and the future workforce outlook (Step 3) have
been developed, we can move on to Step 4, creating a workforce gap analysis. This involves
analyzing this data and identifying gaps between workforce supply and demand, and identifying
how the external environment will impact meeting your future workforce demands.
Are shortages or surpluses forecast for your occupational groups?
‒  Which labour pools can you target to fill expected shortages?
‒  What are your options for dealing with potential surpluses?

Will your organization require new occupations or skills sets?

‒  Will these be recruited externally or developed in-house?

Will a significant part of the workforce be leaving through retirement?

‒  How will this be addressed?

Step 5: Strategy Development

The final step is to develop strategies and complementary activities
to address workforce gaps and potential surpluses. The next page
describes four strategic themes around which you can build
priority actions for closing workforce gaps. The four strategic
pillars are: Inform, Attract, Develop, and Retain. Activities,
projects, programs and policies will need to be identified to
support the implementation of the priority actions in the
workforce plan.

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING

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Inform
Identify priority actions to provide workforce information and tools for strategic decision making.
Consider what additional information is required by Human Resources (HR) consultants,
supervisors, managers and the executive team to address and manage workforce challenges and
support the strategic workforce plan. This step is critical as it supports all the other activities in
the attraction, development, retention and management of your organization’s workforce.
Sample activities under the Inform theme include:
‒  Developing or revamping an HR Information System
‒  Workforce Management reports
‒  Employee satisfaction or engagement surveys

Attract
Identify priority actions to attract potential employees to your organization. Consider the
following while developing your organization’s priority actions and corresponding activities:
‒  What target labour force groups do you want to attract to your workforce? Are they
new groups you haven’t targeted before?
‒  What attraction policies, programs and recruitment strategies are necessary to compete
within and outside of your industry?
‒  What makes you an employer of choice? What is your branding strategy?

HR Program Linkages:
‒  Compensation and Benefits
‒  Succession Planning
‒  Recruitment Programs

Develop
Identify priority actions to develop a high performance workforce and workplace.
HR Program Linkages:
High Performance Workforce High Performance Workplace
‒  Employee Orientation ‒   Job Re-design
‒  Learning, Development and Training ‒   Technology Adoption
‒  Health and Safety Programs       ‒   Process Improvement Programs

Retain
Identify priority actions to make work attractive, engage employees and retain your workforce.
Research shows that engaged employees are more productive and less likely to leave.
HR Program Linkages:
‒  Knowledge Management
‒  Talent Management and Succession Planning
‒  Phased Retirement
‒  Performance Management and Evaluation
‒  Rewards and Recognition System
‒  Employee Engagement

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING