Workforce Planning. I’ve sat in thousands of rooms with thousands of TA/HR professionals and the words ”don’t worry, we’ve nailed workforce planning and you can 100% rely upon our forecast hiring numbers for next year” have not once escaped anyone’s lips. Not once. But everyone talks about it. “Yeah we’re really focussing this year on improving our workforce planning, and (cue dramatic pause and impending mic drop moment), we’re moving from tactical to strategic workforce planning”. Like focus and effort are the problems. As if only trying harder will uncover the elusive truth, the divine will come to us. In the words of Depeche Mode, just “Reach Out and Touch Faith”…

I’m calling bullshit. 100%. Whilst I’m looking forward to Danny Hodgson at Foresight commenting to tell everyone otherwise, workforce planning in many businesses is doomed to failure, and only the faithful will continue to believe. Why? It’s nothing to do with tools, tech, processes. It’s all to do with incentive. And people.

If you’re going to do workforce planning well enough to make a meaningful impact on the lives of recruiters, you probably need to be able to answer these types of questions;

• How fast will we grow?
• Where, how and when will we grow?
• How many people will leave our organisation voluntarily?
• How many will be fired or made redundant?
• How many will be out due to long-term illness, maternity/paternity leave?
• How many will retire?
• Will we launch new products or new markets that will drive hiring spikes – and for new skills or locations we’ve never recruited in?
• Will external market factors drive a change in the need for talent?
• Will our strategy change, accelerate, decelerate?
• Will our competition change what they do to make it more or less difficult to retain our talent or hire new talent?
• Should we hire permanent or non-permanent talent? For all roles or just specific roles? Will that be different from the last 12 months? Will the market make us shift?
• Should we hire certain roles in certain countries and what does the labour market in each country say about how easy that will be?

Head hurting yet? So you’re a TA professional and your head is hurting. Imagine you’re a business leader who doesn’t even think to ask these questions?

There’s probably more questions than this. All complex, future-focussed and completely impossible questions to answer with any level of certainty. Of course, as a business leader I can guess. I’m forced to when I budget. But I have to guess quantum, cost and timing for my budgets. And if I’m smart I know I’m getting it wrong because the questions demand a prediction of a future I can’t see. And if I could see around corners with certainty, why would I focus that talent on anything other than this week’s lottery numbers?

So what do I do? I do what I need to so my budget gets approved. And the data quality threshold for that isn’t as high as answering all these questions. And if I’m a seasoned leader, I also understand the magic of provisions and their “get out of jail free” card capability if my numbers are wrong. Which they will be. So what’s my motivation to answer your WFP questions? Where’s my incentive to think this hard? There is none….

So when TA comes and asks me for my forecast, they get the cursory attention to detail the futility of the questioning deserves. Because I also know one other immutable truth. When, not if, I get my workforce plan wrong, TA will either be good enough to bail me out or I’ll blame them. “Recruitment. They never deliver when I need them to…”

Seeking the unknown truth is admirable. But if I’m wrong, I welcome counter-commentary from the majority. The majority of TA leaders with engaged business leaders that provide accurate workforce plans their recruiters can rely upon. Because if there’s a majority out there, I’m clearly sitting in the wrong meetings.

I would say I’m ready to be educated but really, as I press publish on this piece, what I’m really getting ready to do is Enjoy the Silence…..