Workforce planning is a field that doesn’t stand still for very long.
At the heart of what you do is identifying and solving workforce problems by taking action.
Workforce planning is important if you want growth, expansion and efficiency.
It is also important for you to involve all of the relevant people in your organisation to ensure your plan includes all the necessary information and get the best result for your business. Getting other people involved provides efficiencies because the broad base of knowledge you draw from can produce answers very quickly, however you also bring in a lot of different views and personality types. The trouble is that when you bring these personality types to the table in a workforce planning context some of them like to stay in their favourite stage of the planning, or worse, once you have moved past that stage they want to keep revisiting it.
Some people think it is just better to identify these personality types and remove them or minimise their input in the process but doing this means your plan may be missing some really important data. Let’s have a look at some of the personalities you are going to encounter, what they contribute and where they may like to keep revisiting.
Pessimists
Want to stay in the problem state. This is no good because if you only had them in the room you would never find a solution.
However these people are really good at finding all of the problems. Which is great news because if you know what the potential problems are you can put in place strategies to deal with them before they arise.
Optimists
Want to focus on the opportunity and can ignore some of the issues that need attention. If you only had optimists in the room and ignored the potential problems, you could find yourself in a place where you are constantly reacting to problems.
However, these people are really good at balancing out pessimists and finding solutions to the problems pessimists find.
Futurists
If you are not careful futurists could create something that is just a pipe dream. If you forget about where you came from or where you are now, you can have plans for the future, but you can’t possibly map out how to get there. Futurists can fall into the trap of trying to move too early, but they do bring a lot of value by ensuring you are looking long term and not boxing your organisation into a corner by only making short term decisions.
Historians
Historians want to tell you about where you came from and what it used to be like. While this is good because it can give us a lot if inspiration, we also need to recognise that the things that got us to where we are today are not necessarily the things that will get us to where we want to go.
If you’d like to talk through how to get leaders, stakeholders and team members involved in strategic workforce planning then please send an email to wendy@workforceblueprint.com.au to make a time for a chat.