Resource Management can mean different things to different people. For some, it implies a more “strategic” approach taking a high level view of an organization’s  longer term needs including skills, location, cost structure and competition.

For others, it is more short term focused to support business and revenue requirements over the next fiscal year.  The former is proactive, latter reactive.   Thus there is another term for the visionary view, Strategic Workforce Planning. Which type of planning  does your organization primarily engage in?
 
A 1/28/15 article by Sue Brooks in HR Magazine.org titled ”Overcoming barriers to strategic workforce planning”  provides a good summary of the steps to take for a truly strategic plan involving organizational resource requirements for the intermediate and long term.

• Create a vision
• Engage stakeholders
• Start simple
• Define your deliverables
• Identify the right internal support
• Leverage data
• Iterate

 
What I like about these steps is that it can be applied as a structure for many broader organizational plans.  The two that particularly resonate are the steps ensuring organizational alignment. 

• Engage Stakeholders  - It is risky for any plan to be done in a vacuum without input and buy in.  DEAD ON ARRIVAL.  You cannot impose a plan on anyone. The key stakeholders need to ensure their points are addressed.  Compile this list, circulate it, get feedback.   These stakeholders are the ones who must approve to adopt and implement the strategic workforce plan.
• Indentify the right internal support -  Who needs to be involved to build the visions, priorities and requirements?   Organizations are often complex and those functions deemed “critical” must be identified and brought into the working circle.  

 
The other steps involving creating a vision, defining deliverables, leveraging data and continually update are table stakes. But without the stakeholder engagement and internal support, you will have a finished product gathering dust.

Workforce Planning is a complex process with many obstacles for a quality result let alone an effective implementation.
 
A 10/3/14 article by Peter Louch in Society for Human Resource Management  titled ”Workforce Planning is Essential to High Performing Organizations”  makes a case of some key obstacles including :

1. Time Frame(Often too short)
   
2. Data Integrity
3. Control of data (stakeholders want to use intuition)
4. Detail(broad categories of role types or specific job titles)?
5. Forecasting

 
Peter Louch confirms that there are a few trends addressing these gaps. First, acceptance of data analytics for understanding the current situation.  The tools capturing information, i.e. titles, skillsets, and capabilities are much more robust these days.   Intuition based decision making is getting replaced by data driven decision making. This is great news but places exceptional importance on accurate data.

The second trend is the improved predictive analytics and modeling capabilities.  Analytics are becoming critical in making more effective decisions related to workforce planning and recruitment, risk management, compensation, development programs, and deploying critical talent.  The analytics tool will need to be tailored a bit to your business, industry and employee composition. Your modeling should include the following categories:

• External Economic Conditions
  

                  i.e. Local job market, stock market, competitors vying for skill sets

• Employer Actions/Workplace conditions
  

                  Promotions and Raises, Work environment, Salary inequality, Manager ratio

• Employee Demographics
  

                 Age, tenure, gender, job type, salary range, commute
 
The larger and more complex the organization, the more time/investment should be made developing this predictive modeling tool to narrow the margin of error of totally inaccurate forecasts. For small organizations, it need not be as complex but you want to be sure to incorporate the factors into your assessment on future resource needs over the next 6, 12, 18 months and beyond.