As an organization that is growing one of the things you will be concerned about is ensuring that you have the right number of employees for the various roles that you have at the right time. It is often difficult when you have to fill vacancies in a hurry or have gaps in your structure that you are unable to fill in time.
Focused business owners understand the importance of workforce planning and apply these basic disciplines of workforce planning to ensure they have the right people in the right places, at the right time.
#1: Identify New Staffing Needs:
Based on your business strategy for the coming year, review your current organizational chart and identify new roles that need to be created and staffed or existing roles that may need to be merged. Be clear about how many new hires you need arising from your business needs and structural changes.
#2: Estimate Possible Exits:
It is important to also estimate the number of possible exits you may have in the coming year. Reflect on employees whose performances have been particularly poor and who may leave on account of poor performance or resign voluntarily. If you have older employees that are close to retirement or anyone who seems to be interested in furthering their education or taking time off work for personal reasons, then you must begin to plan to replace such people. At this point you are only making educated guesses, but it is a lot wiser to do this, than do nothing at all.
#3: Incorporate Internal Movements:
Some of your employees may be due for a promotion or may be ready to take on higher or different types of responsibilities. So if you have a School Teacher who you believe may do very well as a School Administrator, then you can seriously start thinking about replacing her in the teaching role. If someone is going to be promoted, then you need to identify a replacement for his role.
#4: Develop Key Action Steps:
Now that you have a clear picture of the possible changes that will take place in your organization, you need to identify steps to address the gaps that these changes will create. A number of options include merging existing roles or assigning multiple roles to one person, staff development (training and mentoring) to prepare people going into new roles internally, recruitment (sourcing candidates from outside), and internal sourcing (identifying and preparing candidates from within your organization).
#5: Set Timelines and Execute:
Depending on the various actions that you have decided, you should set clear timelines for implementing. Your timelines should give you sufficient slack time to allow people in new roles settle down. Timelines should also be realistic to adjust for unforeseen hiccups that may occur in the recruitment process. Once your timelines are set, you have a workforce plan that you can implement and deliver you and your organization to your future.
If you think critically about your workforce needs, develop action plans to address gaps that you have, and set clear timelines to implement your actions, you will enhance your ability to have the right people in the right place at the right time, all year round in your business and reduce the risk that staff shortages may have on your business.
