I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Federated Press 3rd Annual Workforce Planning conference this past week in Toronto. The course leader was Pierre Lebel of Epiphane and other speakers of note included Peter Louch of Vemo Inc and some last minute additions like Al Doran of Phenix Management International Inc and Robert Carlyle of Aon Consulting.
The topic I presented on was Leveraging Trend Analyses in Workforce Forecasting – basically, leveraging your history to intelligently predict the future workforce needs at your company. In a nutshell, I focus on the importance of conducting workforce planning by reflecting on its potential inverse impact… “the biggest risk is doing nothing”.
Suffice to say, the conference was great, and the attendees walked away with a lot of hands on practical knowledge from leading experts in the field of workforce planning, measurement and evaluation.
Some key take aways for me included the idea that workforce planning is neither a science nor an art, but rather an exercise where science in fact becomes art – and that is where instinct and calculated risk take over. The challenge as an HR practitioner then lies in the ability to sell the artful outcomes to stakeholders and leadership as the required future workforce strategy to become or remain competitive. Or, as some might say, if you are “at the table” as a Human Resources leader – the challenge lies in bring value to the organization, actually speaking up “at the table” and being a true partner to the strategic planning process from a workforce perspective.
I guess one last tidbit of insight I can share from an analysis perspective, or when looking at metrics in general is to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey). You obviously will not have all the answers when you set down a path, but you need to start out with both a hypothesis to validate and an idea of what you are trying to measure – what will you do with the results? If the results are X versus Y, will that drive a different business strategy… or, will your strategy remain unchanged whether metrics or analyses reveal that your workforce is doing X or Y… or, even Z. Be prepared to take action on your results, or you might just want to re-evaluate your inputs and focus on outcomes you will in fact be able to control.
Follow me on Twitter