Workforce Planning

In Part 1 of this article, I outlined the first six of 13 key factors that differentiate great workforce planning efforts from mediocre workforce planning efforts. Here are the remaining seven points to note. Factor #7   Demonstrate the likelihood that your recommended actions will actually work. In addition to …

Few would argue that workforce planning is not a hot topic these days. Just five short years ago, it was nearly impossible to find a titled role for workforce planning in corporate America. Yet today, more than 54% of the Fortune 100 have dedicated FTEs to the activity.   Even …

Lack of Leadership Bench Strength: A Growing Problem As the second phase of the War for Talent slowly builds momentum, more and more firms are going to experience havoc directly related to the absence of leadership bench strength. The problems that have crippled smaller firms historically will establish a footing …

Beyond this commitment, what follows are the major steps: 1. Make the business case for external succession planning. The first step is to present arguments to your senior leadership about the need for including external talent and development opportunities in your succession plan. Generally that means documenting current development problems/shortages, …

Patience Is Waning Senior leaders thoroughly understand that building an organization or changing one takes vision, planning, patience, and flawless execution. To that point, they have given HR five years. All indicators are that HR has yet to change or plan to change anything, and that the patience of senior …

Readers responding to Part 1 raised some very valid points: R. Bistrick noted that many in HR have no associated industry work experience, which limits their understanding of the business and its issues to one of keywords, often without the benefit of context. (This is certainly true for many corporate …

The Cost of Turnover may be higher than you think Performance Turnover Try using “Performance Turnover”, a measure I developed in our retention work, in lieu of the traditional turnover calculation. We have used it in a variety of configurations but it works something like this. Start with the assumption …

Do you remember the war for talent in the late 1990s? Well get ready, because it’s about to return with a vengeance. If you read my articles and books, you are aware that I do a good deal of forecasting. In the past, I’ve forecasted the beginning and the end …

Offshoring has become a major topic of conversation lately as more and more firms look to leverage the economic benefits of lower labor costs and availability of skilled labor abroad. While politically many see offshoring in slow economic times, when jobs for U.S. workers are scarce, as taboo, for many …

As an author and corporate advisor, I receive several hundred questions a week from firms looking for advice, direction, and assistance on recruiting issues. Recently, I was contacted by a firm who posed the following questions after reading article I had previously written on preparing for the second installment of …