A Guide to Agile Workforce Planning

Today’s world is full of uncertainty and disruption. Rapid technological changes, shifting demographics, competitive markets, and other trends have necessitated the creation of new types of business structures that are designed to be adaptable. Organisations that plan ahead of time and have a clear vision turn these challenges into opportunities for growth.

Along with the vision and strategic outlook, organisations need to work towards Agile workforce planning to achieve success.

Let us talk about agile workforce planning and see how Nitor implements this approach to turn challenges into opportunities.

What is Agile Workforce Planning?

Agile workforce planning is a continuous approach to create the right capabilities within your workforce to align and meet business objectives. It helps in building a strong foundation to stand tall in the challenging times. In a nutshell, to have a responsive workforce, the process that supports this workforce planning needs to be adaptable itself.

Key elements of Agile Workforce Planning

1. Continuous/On-going Activity:

Gone are the days when workforce planning was based on financial year targets and budgets that included a buffer budget for unplanned market conditions. Current scenario demand for shorter cycles of workforce planning, which are accurate and free up funds for critical projects. When planning is done on a shorter cycle, it enables HR to quickly realign resources to different projects as they become more critical.

2. Mindfulness:

HR leaders always need critical mindfulness. It is important to have a solid understanding of how the business is doing in relation to planned hiring targets, compensation budgets and other key business objectives. Mindfulness of where deviations may be happening in the plan, HR can best support the organization’s goals.

3. Collaboration:

Agile workforce planning cannot be done only with HR and business leaders. You need to involve the line managers and subject matter experts. This will help to ensure that you plan for critical skill gaps because you will receive valuable input on- what to do to obtain those required skills? Can we rely on home grown talent? Or plan for the aggressive hiring strategy.

Steps towards Agile Workforce Planning

1. Find out the ‘WHY’ for agile workforce required for your organization. This will be achieved when you understand the business model and business vision. Along with this you can try to learn and analyse the market conditions for your organization. This will help you to identify the skill gap and create the competent workforce.
2. The next step is to determine ‘HOW’ you will engage the identified people and who will support you in this process. This includes not only your senior stakeholders, but also the entire group. This is not a job for HR in silos, but rather a group activity in which we engage the right people with the right mindset to solve the problem as a team.
3. Once the thinking and planning phase is over, then you need to start the execution part. It is better to go step by step in the target area and go with steady pace. You can do brainstorming and decide what to do and how you are going to implement it. You can modify the process or take required measures to make this process better to achieve the desired outcome.
4. Add review and impact mechanism to ensure better implementation. Be open to critics or make modification in the implemented process. This step will require the collaboration of HR, senior stake holders and management in order to conduct a transparent review.

Agile Workforce Planning at Nitor Infotech

Nitor Infotech has always been an organization where new ideas are implemented and adaptability to change is promoted by the top leadership. I would like to share an example of Agile Workforce Planning at Nitor Infotech.

When the pandemic began, a different approach to uplift employee morale gave way to focus on the Learning and Growth area. We developed an Agile Workforce Planning strategy and formed a collaborative team of business leaders, talent development professionals, and subject matter experts to work on developing the Technical Landscape for current and upcoming projects, as well as the skills required for the same.

Based on the inputs from all stake holders involved in this process, Talent Development team has created the learning plan with evaluation and started the execution. While rolling out the different learning plans, all participants were oriented about why we are doing it, how it will benefit them in near future and how they can grow in this Agile Workforce Planning model.

The results were outstanding, as Nitor experienced multi-fold growth and development, with proper Agile Workforce Planning playing a significant role.

There you have it – the key elements and the steps that you can take towards agile workforce planning. Feel free to write to us with your thoughts and visit our careers page to know about our current openings!