We've heard this expressed in many ways - "workforce planning is not really possible", "take a smaller approach and just develop a high level plan", "don't boil the ocean!" - and this advice made perfect sense before there were tools to implement effective workforce planning. It is well put that you should take a highly complicated problem - like workforce planning - and deconstruct it into simpler and more manageable parts. However, our software does just that so that you don't have to sacrifice any detail that is important to you. We use a hybrid approach that contains both a living model and detailed plan that allows users at any point to get both a compelling top-down view of the workforce or dive down into detailed demand planning and supply analysis.
It's true that the act of planning and discussing what is important to success and what is not creates excellent dialog, challenges complacent thinking and does other wonderful things for organizations. However, a workforce plan created in Vemo answers many questions and provides the pay-off for the planning process. For example:
The fact is there are some long-term talent supply issues that are best addressed through actuarial and risk modeling activities. However, the more critical challenge is making a business strategy operational, identifying what talent is most critical and then converting these factors into a workforce model. With this information, our software services help you create and apply an optimal workforce model, using a number of templates that allow your organization to operationalize strategy. And our toolset runs the heavy data crunching behind the scenes so that you can understand, present and address the implications of the numbers without getting mired in them.
Demographic challenges are fascinating and really useful to understand. But everyone is facing the same challenges. Identifying and exploiting short-term talent distribution problems is the best path to talent-based competitive advantage. While everyone is focusing on the big problem, your organization can hone in on what types and number of people are most critical to executing your organization's strategy.
Organizations that use Vemo develop very strong competency in workforce planning and integrating HR/talent management with strategic objectives. They accomplish far more with a smaller application of their human resources tool set. We believe that workforce planning is the missing part of strategic HR in many organizations and when done well, improves the quality of all other talent management processes and programs.
