The start of winter heralds a time of reflection and planning. Businesses are setting budgets, reviewing the year that has been and considering what is ahead. Your employees will be doing the same, especially if performance reviews and pay reviews are on the cards from June.
When it comes to your people, your employees, you need a workforce plan or HR Plan. It doesn’t matter whether you have 3 staff or 20 staff, you need a plan that incorporates these four key aspects.
- Business Change
- Employee Performance
- Capability and Expertise
- Salary/Wages Budgets
We will touch on each of these as part of our 5 part Workforce Planning blog series. Read it and reflect, and use to develop your Workforce Plan.
If it all sounds too hard and you need help developing your plan, please get in touch. We will spend time with you to not only develop your plan but also help you bring it life. Contact us on 021 069 1913 or advice.info@stapletonconsult.com
Part Five – WorkForce Planning – to sum it up
Your workforce plan, is just that, a plan for your people, your workforce and your most valuable asset. It enables you to identify and become aware of potential risks and opportunities. More importantly, it shows what the workforce of tomorrow could look like based on what you know now, and steps you need to take to ensure you have the workforce of tomorrow when you need it.
The path forward is never straight. By having a plan, you can respond, adjust and move forward with purpose and clear intentions. Even if the future is blurry and unknown, your workforce plan will provide:
- an overview of anticipated salary/wages costs,
- the implications of changes,
- overview of existing capability and expertise,
- employee performance potential, and
- take into account the feedback and ideas of others.
Develop your workforce plan at the same time as your business plans. All of your plans, budgets and forecasts should align and form part of a centralised business strategy. If your industry or business is changing rapidly then review the plans more frequently. We have known some to review budgets, performance reports and plans fortnightly due to the rate of change and level of certainty.
It doesn’t matter whether you review your plans weekly or quarterly. It is important that you review it often enough that you don’t lose touch and drift away from the plan without realising it. As a guide, we recommend reviewing your workforce plan before change, during change and after change.
As your contract HR Manager, our Consultants can work with you to develop a workforce plan and meet regularly to review it and keep you on track. Our monthly retainer packages are designed to give you the flexibility of having a specialist HR Consultant on hand for when you need it, without the big invoices. We allow clients to accumulate unused hours over three months in anticipation of a project or piece of work, without the pressure on cashflow.
Interested to know more about our services and retainer packages. Check out our website for more information and call us today to book in your free initial 30 minute meeting – Contact us on 021 069 1913 or email – advice.info@stapletonconsult.com
