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Klara Freitag
Skills & Content Lead
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Strategic personnel planning (English: Strategic Workforce Planning, abbreviation: SWP) is a process of analyzing a company's current workforce and predicting future personnel requirements. The aim of SWP is to ensure that a company has the right number and type of employees with the right skills in the right place at the right time to achieve its business goals. The process of strategic personnel planning generally includes the following steps:
In this blog, we'll explore each of these steps and suggest a more effective, skill-based approach to strategic workforce planning. We will also give an example to illustrate.
Traditional personnel planning is based on job profiles. In contrast, we recommend using skills as a basis for forecasting and planning your headcount. This has three advantages:
The first step is to align with the company's goals. What goals does the company have, which transformation processes are being initiated and how should they be implemented? What specific business goals are there that require new skills or that build on existing skills? At this point, it can be helpful to look at market data on skills in the industry, from companies with a similar focus, or skill data from your own company.
We'll look at this example in all 6 steps.
At managing director level, ACME Corporation has decided to transform to highly automate processes. In order to initiate the transformation process and drive forward greater process automation, the HR department has been commissioned to build up expertise on “Robotic Process Automation” (RPA) across an entire division. The HR department determines all competencies and underlying skills based on market data, competitors and internal data in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the skills required.
The second step involves a specific needs analysis of the required roles and underlying skills. In other words: What specific skills are required for the transformation process? Skills are a decisive advantage here compared to needs analysis based on job roles, because roles change quickly. They are also not specific enough to identify skill gaps and to derive recommendations for action. To do this, it is recommended to use a skill taxonomy to define specific target skill profiles. These are significantly more flexible than rigid job rolls and can also be 100% tailored to your needs.
Back to our example:
The HR department of ACME Corporation incorporates the skills identified in step 1 in a Skill taxonomy brings together and combines concrete skill profiles for the implementation of the transformation process. This is done in collaboration with the respective experts from the department and stakeholders at management level to ensure that all needs are covered.
Before new talent is brought in, it can be worthwhile to first check in the team which skills already exist. The status quo provides information about the current situation and creates a data basis for future decisions. The first step is to determine where the company stands in terms of the skills they are looking for. Based on the skill profile, the workforce can be analyzed and mapped accordingly. It is important that skill profiles are not out of date and are adapted to new developments. The existing skills can be determined, for example, through skill assessments or self-assessment.
Back to our example:
ACME Corporation provides all employees in the division with the defined RPA target skill profile, e.g. via a Learning Experience Platform (LXP). On the basis of a self-assessment, the level of knowledge of each individual is then measured. In addition, this self-assessment can be validated or classified by supervisors, if necessary. The result is a picture of the current situation of RPA-relevant skills in the company.
The next step is to compare the existing skills and their distribution with the target skill profile. By comparing target skill profiles with the status quo, it is possible to see exactly which skills are well covered, which are completely missing, as well as the “removal” of individual people (or cohorts) from the target profile. Comparing actual with target creates a clean basis for decision-making for future steps in workforce planning.
In this example:
The company already has a number of experts who meet a large part of the target profile for RPA. What is missing is comprehensive knowledge of the basics and areas of application of automation, which enables communication with experts and can thus drive the broad transformation forward.
We know the skill profile, know who meets it and what is specifically lacking. The next step is to find solutions to the skill gap, i.e. to define the specific measures. Various solutions can help here: The required skills can be brought into the company, for example, through upkilling or reskilling, outsourcing or internal mobility. Skills link the various initiatives as a common language. Depending on the use case, for example, a skill-based internal project platform can be set up or personalized learning recommendations can be played out.
Back to our example:
The HR department ACME Corporation has decided to develop the required skills by continuing education of existing employees in the company. For this reason, they purchased and compiled learning content on the basics of automation and assigned it to the appropriate skills in an LXP. In accordance with the assigned target profile and the previous assessment, learners are recommended the appropriate content for their level of knowledge. The artificial intelligence (AI) of the learning platform also ensures that the learning content is automatically adapted to the learners' previous knowledge and that employees only learn the learning content they really need. This saves time, increases the willingness to learn and maximizes results.
Did the learning content produce the desired results? Were they used at all? What was the user experience with the learning content? The right key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you find answers to these and other questions. Here are the KPIs of our example organization:
KPI:% of automated processes
KPIs:
KPIs:
KPIs:
Skill-based strategic personnel planning makes it possible not only to place certain skills in a team, but also to develop them in the long term so that they are retained and developed further. Through a strategic, step-by-step approach, the method enables long-term results. Through intelligent performance measurement, the process feeds itself with new input and can be continued flexibly. Supported by AI and other technologies, learning new skills can not only move the company forward, but also create successful experiences for employees and experts. This is not just about expertise, but about a culture of skill development and personal achievement. Lifelong learning is anchored in your company and becomes a recognizable advantage.
Do you need advice on your personnel planning strategy?
Arrange a intro with one of our skill architects and get free advice on the state of your strategy, processes and learning environment.
edyoucated is funded by leading research institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
