March 2024

Managing a large, global workforce is complex. From staffing to scheduling, labor costs to forecasts, many intricate factors are involved in effective workforce management and planning. Yet implementing thoughtful workforce strategies that promote employee satisfaction fuels business success. When companies support their people with positive working conditions, growth opportunities, and work-life balance, they foster productive, loyal teams. 

Understanding Workforce Strategy

A workforce strategy is examining your current staff and planning for future hiring needs. It’s accomplished by spotting talent shortages, creating processes for employee management, and crafting recruitment plans.

Strategic workforce planning goes beyond just bringing on new workers. It’s the gap between your present situation and your target. Workforce planning assists in identifying who might take on different functions and who could struggle in their current role as ability requirements continuously shift.

Workforce strategy thinks about all forms of movement – up, down, inward, outward, or across the organization. Human resources experts should team up with business heads to define strategic goals and build a business justification for investing in a strategic workforce proposal. 

Understanding what is workforce management would help you get a better insight into workforce strategies.

Why Do You Need A Workforce Strategy?

A robust workforce strategy is crucial for organizations to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape. Deloitte’s 2020 study on Human Capital Trends looks at how an unparalleled transformation in social and economic systems is affecting employees worldwide. An effective strategy enables companies to adapt and optimize their biggest asset – their people. There are several key benefits to implementing a thoughtful workforce plan:

• Identifies talent gaps: A strong strategy analyzes present and future talent needs. This allows organizations to get ahead of impending retirements, turnover, and changes in required competencies. Companies can then devise targeted hiring, training, and succession plans.
• Enhances agility: With clarity around workforce composition and capabilities, companies can swiftly reorganize teams, redeploy talent, and upskill workers in alignment with strategic objectives. This nimbleness is vital in dynamic markets.
• Boosts employee experience: Tracking workforce metrics, trends, and sentiment allows organizations to fine-tune engagement initiatives, career development programs, and diversity and inclusion efforts for maximum impact. This leads to more fulfilled and productive employees.
• Informs budget and operations: HR has hard data to guide critical resourcing, infrastructure, and technology investments. This leads to right-sized budget allocation and workforce optimization.

Effective Workforce Strategies for a Successful Workforce

Employee engagement and retention are crucial for any organization’s success. Disengaged and unhappy employees lead to high turnover, reduced productivity, and even customer dissatisfaction. Implementing effective types of workforce strategies to keep employees motivated and fulfilled in their roles is key. 

Here are six proven strategies for boosting employee engagement and retention:

Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits

One of the top reasons employees leave organizations is limited career growth opportunities. Offering performance-based raises, profit sharing, generous time-off allowances, retirement contributions, and other attractive benefits demonstrates an investment in staff and provides incentives for them to stay. Continually benchmark compensation plans to ensure they remain competitive.

Promote Strong Workplace Culture

Create an environment where employees feel appreciated, challenged, and supported. Encourage open communication, collaboration, creative freedom, and work-life balance. Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and empower employees to take ownership of their work. A positive workplace culture greatly impacts job satisfaction.

Invest in Professional Development

Employees want opportunities to develop new skills, take on greater responsibilities, and progress in their careers. Offer training programs, skill-building courses, mentoring opportunities, tuition assistance, and clear paths for advancement. Supporting growth communicates a commitment to staff and gives them reasons to stick around.

Prioritize Wellness Initiatives

Burnout and poor health lead many workers to seek less demanding jobs. Implement appropriate workloads, flexible schedules, remote work options, and wellness perks like office gyms, standing desks, mental health days, healthy snacks, and lifestyle coaching. When companies support employee wellbeing, they are more engaged and productive.

Conduct Frequent Employee Surveys

Check-in regularly with workers to better understand their goals, challenges and levels of satisfaction. Anonymous pulse surveys provide insights to improve processes, tools, manager relationships, and happiness levels. Employees want their voices heard, so act upon survey findings.

Automate Tedious Administrative Tasks

Look for ways to leverage technology to eliminate repetitious, low-value tasks that waste precious time. Invest in automation, AI, and analytics tools to free up bandwidth for more meaningful, human-centric work. Not only does this improve efficiency, but it allows more inspiring job roles that engage employees.

Case Study

PwC collaborated with a client facing challenges in understanding workforce demand and supply due to the isolated use of spreadsheets and tools across different teams, coupled with inconsistent data from various sources. The objective was to formulate and implement a comprehensive people strategy covering all aspects of the employee journey.

To achieve this goal, PwC instituted strategic workforce planning principles throughout the organization, transforming them into guiding “touchstones” for stakeholders. Additionally, a customized strategic workforce planning (SWP) modeling solution was developed to unify and standardize diverse data sources.

Introducing an SWP decision-making framework, the team empowered leaders to make evidence-based decisions in recruitment, talent development, and restructuring. They generated SWP reports and plans, scrutinizing potential workforce gaps over a five-year projection and proposing scenarios to effectively address these gaps.

Conclusion

Workforce planning is indispensable for the modern organization. With people being the lifeblood of companies, workforce strategies enable more targeted talent management and adaptable structures to drive competitive advantage. A Gallup study found that companies with highly dedicated employees demonstrate 22% higher profitability. The reason is that engaged employees are more productive – putting in extra effort, working harder, and providing superior value for their organizations and clientele. This leads to both fulfilled workers and organizational success.  

Explore how Procloz, as your trusted employer of record, can elevate your workforce strategies with innovative technology-driven services. Contact us today.