You already know how important your staff is. They are the lifeblood of your company, whether they are fulfilling orders in your warehouse or dealing with customer queries. However, retaining your brightest and best talent has always been an issue, and with 51% of workers saying they are open to changing jobs, it’s perhaps never been more important than now.
One thing to consider, and this doesn’t devalue other roles in any way, is that there are some job positions you’d worry about more than others. If someone in a crucial role leaves, it could have a knock-on effect on other areas of your operations.
IT is one such role, with staff responsible for many areas such as your computing and communications. How do you manage your tech talent to plan for shortages or gaps?
What is your IT Workforce?
The size and roles of your IT workforce are going to very much depend on the nature of your business. They could be anything from software developers to network maintenance operators. Put simply, they will be staff who work in any area of your business to do with computers and, with the tech advancements surrounding it, communications as well.
They may work with hardware or software (or both). Your IT staff could be responsible for installing or maintaining servers or ensuring that CMMS software works as it should. Smaller businesses may have IT staff who wear several hats while an enterprise-level organization may have dedicated teams working in different areas.
What is Workforce Planning?
As the name suggests, workforce planning is about finding a balance that will ensure your future labor needs are met. As well as analyzing your current workforce to gauge employee satisfaction levels and any skill gaps, you also look at your business operations and what labor needs you will have in both the short and long term.
You also need to consider any natural turnover due to things such as staff reaching retirement age. As well as looking internally, you would also look at market trends such as staff turnover. You may operate in the call center sector which can see average staff turnover rates of 30-40%.
Your industry’s average turnover rate can be one of the crucial factors when it comes to workforce planning, and a business offering outbound call center solutions would have to look at both the industry rates and the needs of the business, particularly during busier periods.
It also takes into consideration skills gaps and training needs. For example, your manufacturing plant may be looking at installing new, more efficient, machinery in the next year. You need to identify all the staff in a resilient workforce who will work with these new machines and who will need training to operate them efficiently.
One of the primary goals of workforce planning is to ensure that you have the right staff in the right place at the right time (and with the right skill sets) to meet your business goals and to ensure effective workflows are in place.
The Benefits of Workforce Planning
Good workforce planning can benefit your business as a whole and can also help with HR-based initiatives:
- Identify changes in customer needs and respond to them.
- Improve your staff retention rates.
- Highlight technical skills gaps and inefficient practices among your technology professionals.
- Reduce the costs of external recruitment by identifying staff that can be promoted or trained. This will reduce recruitment costs such as onboarding and training.
- Build and implement robust career progression and development programs that recognize an employee’s chosen career path.
- Boost productivity levels.
- Find ways to improve the work-life balance of your workforce.
- Help HR develop their recruitment policies and to improve onboarding and staff training.
- See what staff may be leaving due to natural turnover and plan succession.
- Build a pool of potential talent that can be recruited in the future.
- Better define job roles and areas where staff could fulfill more than one role.
- Build reward and recognition programs that can boost employee satisfaction and retention rates.
IT Workforce Planning Stages
So, you can see the benefits that efficient workforce planning will bring. Good planning can be especially useful when it comes to your IT staff as you need to ensure that any talent shortage will not cause a decrease in operational efficiency or adversely affect other areas of your business. It can also help you respond to any changes in tech workforce trends. What stages should you move through to build a plan?
- Plan and Define Goals
To implement a successful plan, you need to fully understand your organization as well as the sector and environment it operates in. You need to be able to clearly define short- and long-term challenges your business faces, as well as the business needs over those same timeframes.
Those challenges may be operational or regulatory. For the former, you may want to increase productivity by introducing automation in different areas. For the latter, you need to be aware of any legislative or regulatory changes that may affect your business and the knowledge base of your staff such as the DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act).
- Understand your Workforce
The next stage involves analyzing and understanding your IT workforce. You should build a talent profile for each member of your IT team. This should cover everything from basic info such as age and how long they’ve been employed by you, to more technical information such as their skills, qualifications, and expe