What is a workforce strategy?
A workforce strategy is a plan that helps you achieve your business goals and objectives. It’s all about forward planning and analysing your current staff’s talent and skill sets to predict your future needs, both short-term and long-term. The right workforce strategy ensures that you have the right staff within your organisation at the right times, with the right skill sets and behaviours to fulfil their job role.
In this blog we have set out seven key priorities that will help you ensure that your workforce strategy is executed correctly and will be fit for the future.
1st Priority – Build Trust
It is essential that you build trust with your employees. One way to do this is to always be honest and openly communicate with them. When you do this, it helps your employees trust you, and also encourages them to be honest and open as well. You need to redefine the employer brand as this will enable you to attract and retain your workforce of tomorrow.
2nd Priority – Plan Future Workforce
You need to plan for your workforce of the future. Do this by developing a dynamic workforce supply and demand model. This will then help you see what workforce is required going forward, so you are prepared for your future plans and are able to achieve your goals and objectives, and continue to grow.
3rd Priority – Create Exchanges of Digital Talent
An important priority in your workforce strategy is to create digital talent exchanges. You need to maximise the potential of digital talent. This will then support you in promoting a better match of talent between buyers and sellers.
4th Priority – Rethink Your Skill Development
Take the time to influence the redesign of your learning offering. It is a good idea to look at ways you can modernise any corporate learning and development and also make sure everyone within your business is properly trained and given the opportunity to develop their skills. It’s important to consider a targeted approach to learning and development rather than a generalist ‘one size fits all’ approach, as over time this will help build an educated and adaptive workforce which is crucial for a successful workforce strategy.
5th Priority: Digitise the Workload
Research shows that when workloads are digitised this will increase workforce and productivity. Look at the areas of your business where workloads can be digitised and productivity increased among your workforce. Digitising workloads can massively speed up workflow and also help keep things organised and easy to access for everyone in the business.
6th Priority: Human Capital Awareness
Find ways to embed human capital analytics into your business. This means keeping and collating relevant employee and people related data from your company to help you make informed business decisions.
7th Priority: Redesign Models
Take a step back from your business and review your job titles and subsequent compensation models. Look at ways you can reward employees’ contributions that add value to the business. Think about the job framework too, including capabilities, roles and pay. Take into account new business models and disruptive technology.
Not sure where to start?
Hopefully this blog has given you some ideas and food for thought on how to create an effective workforce strategy. However, if you need some support and guidance with this, speak to one of our professionals by calling 01733 739660.
