An Operational Process for Workforce Planning

Most discussions of workforce planning stop at explaining why it matters, leaving managers without a usable method for actually doing it. This RAND-developed guide fills that gap by presenting workforce planning from three complementary vantage points—a goal-oriented view (why), a structural view (what), and a process view (how)—and grounds the whole activity in an organization's strategic intent. Built on the authors' review of public and private workforce planning practices and their firsthand experience helping DoD acquisition components conduct their first planning cycles, the book walks leaders through four thematic questions and a four-step, iterative, facilitated-dialogue process that translates vision and mission into critical workforce characteristics, current and projected inventories, gaps, and aligned human resource policies and practices. Whether you are a corporate executive, business-unit leader, line manager, or HR professional, this user's guide gives you a disciplined yet flexible blueprint for ensuring you have the right people, with the right capabilities, at the right time.

What it argues

A framework linking design levers (executive/line judgment, data, modeling) and the workforce planning process to intermediate planning products (desired distribution, projected inventory, gap identification, aligned policies) and ultimately to accomplishment of strategic intent.

Key ideas it contributes

• Strategic Intent — An expression, explicit or implicit, of what business the organization is in or wants to be in and how its leaders plan to carry out that business.
• Active Executive and Line Participation — The enthusiastic, active engagement and judgment of business-unit executives and line managers in articulating strategy and identifying needed workforce characteristics.
• Accurate and Relevant Data — The availability and quality of stock and flow data describing workforce characteristics and transitions.
• Sophisticated Workload and Inventory Projection Models — Analytic tools that translate workloads into worker requirements and project changes in workforce composition over time.
• Future Desired Distribution of Workforce Characteristics — The target frequency of critical workforce characteristics needed in the future to accomplish strategic intent.
• Projected Future Inventory — The estimated future distribution of workforce characteristics if current policies and programs continue.
• Workforce Gap Identification — The overages or shortages between the future desired distribution and the projected future inventory of critical characteristics.
• Aligned Human Resource Policies and Practices — A prioritized set of vertically and horizontally aligned HR policies and practices designed to close identified workforce gaps.