Five Best Practices for Work Force Planning Success

What are the essential ingredients for work force planning success? What work force planning strategies, processes, and practices give your organization an advantage over competitors?

In thinking about these questions, did any of the following approaches come to mind?

1. Formalize and standardize work force planning processes.
2. Ensure work force planners have analytical skills and knowledge of strategy and operations.
3. Align financial and HR data. Establish standard, enterprise-wide data definitions.
4. Use work force planning and analytics software to enable the process.
5. Focus on critical roles and skills that are required to execute strategy.

These are five out of fifteen best practices uncovered in APQC’s Collaborative Benchmarking study on strategic work force planning. To read about the other ten best practices, checkout the complimentary article: Strategic Work Force Planning: Anticipating and Filling Talent Gaps—An Overview of Findings from APQC’s Collaborative Research. APQC Knowledge Base, 2010.