Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is about achieving continued organisational performance and accountability through the development of a capable workforce.  It focuses on forecasting the enterprise's needs for labour.  Workforce planning should be a key part of every enterprise's business strategy.

A major challenge for employers is to get the right balance of high quality staff into the right area of their business - at the right time.  With an increasingly reduced pool of suitably qualified staff, good workforce planning practices are even more important if enterprises wish to stay ahead of potential skills shortages.

A major issue in this area relates to the problem of measuring the competencies held by workers.  Competency profiling can be used to create a measure of an enterprise's human and intellectual capital.  The process involves unpacking Training Packages, and allowing industry to add additional skill sets to meet current and future needs.  This allows units of competency to be used to integrate and align workers with the enterprise goals.

The tools below will assist employers within the property services industry to plan worker resources according to competencies required, and to develop an appropriate skills mix according to the workforce plan.  While the tools will not be capable of doing the complete cycle of workforce planning, they can assist enterprises through part of the process for example, using Security Sector units and qualifications to complete a competency profile which lists the skills an enterprise will need over a 3-5 year period.

Profiles can be saved and used to match against current and anticipated workers.  Units which are common across work areas can also be identified, as well as those that are unique to individuals.  In additional, enterprises will be able to identify any gaps or shortfalls in worker competencies and then assist them to develop appropriate training plans.

In its simplest form, workforce planning involves four main steps: