Gather information

Consider the timeframe of your plan when setting your goals.

Business goals tend to fall under one of four scenarios:

• growth
• decline
• maintain
• diversify.

To be in the best position to have the right combination of people, skills and employment types across your workforce, you should think about your business goals and how you will achieve them.

Each goal has its own challenges and barriers to success. Using the resources, we help you explore them further and plan how you will reach your goals.

Using the most recent information you have, Workforce Planning Connect helps you create a picture of what your own workforce supply looks like now.

Workforce supply is the size of your current and future workforce. It takes into consideration employee turnover through resignations and retirements, and how these affect the size of your workforce over time.

It is possible that some of the workforce data may not be available when you start your workforce planning journey. Use what you have and use the planning process to collect more accurate information in the future.

Workforce supply data you may already have access to

What are your workforce segments?

• Role/job family
• Employment status
• Business unit

What are their key skills/occupations?

• Skills/current capabilities
• Qualifications

How many staff do you have?

Permanent:

• Full-time
• Part-time (full-time equivalent, e.g. 0.6)

Temporary:

• Casual
• Contract
• Other, e.g. labour agency

What is your turnover rate?

• Resignations (anticipated turnover based on previous resignation rate)
• Retirements (workers approaching 60+ years)

What are your current work practice arrangements?

• Fixed hours of work
• Shift work
• Flexible
• Leave (annual/sick/other)

What is the demographic profile of your workforce?

• Occupation/position
• Location (if your business has more than one location)
• Length of service
• Diversity statistics:
  • gender
  • age profile (including youth and mature age)
  • cultural background
  • declared disability.

What is the current workforce cost?

• Fixed costs, e.g.:
  • wages/salary (including superannuation, leave loading, etc.):
  • overhead costs
• variable costs, e.g. training.

The answer to this question may surprise you!

Workforce Planning Connect helps you understand your future workforce needs, estimate the number and types of employees required to deliver on your business strategy goals. Through the workforce planning process, you will be able to answer the following key questions:

• What types of skills will be required?
• How many jobs will be required for the future?
• What number of people will be required for each role?
• What roles will be hard to fill, central to business capability and can take a long lead-in time to build the required skills?

Workforce demand data you may already have access to

What factors will drive your future workforce needs?

(One or more of these scenarios will fit your business plan)

• Business growth - increase in demand for products and services
  • What skills/occupations will be needed? Ongoing or for a defined period.
  • When will these skills/occupations be needed? Continuous need or requirement to cover peaks and troughs, e.g., leave.
  • What locations will they be needed in?
  • How many of these skills/occupations will be needed?
• Maintaining current business size and operations
  • Which skills/occupations will be needed?
  • Will there be any changes to these skills/occupations?
• Business downsizing or shift into new areas - a decrease in product line or service
  • Which skills/occupations will be affected?
  • How many employees will be affected?
  • What is the timing of the impact?
  • What locations will this occur at?

What skills and capabilities will be required?

• Changed skills
  • What is the level of impact on affected roles?
  • Do you need to recruit new staff?
    • Permanent (full-time or part-time)?
    • Temporary (casual/contract/other, e.g. labour agency)
  • Can you train existing staff?
• Maintaining existing skills and capabilities
  • Will this level increase, decrease or remain stable?
• New ways of working required, e.g. introduction of new technology
  • Is this across the whole business?
  • Is there a specific role affected?
• What are the volumes and timings of these impacts?
• What is the availability of these skills/occupations in the existing and external workforce? (Note that this can be influenced by geographic location)
  • Are they difficult to find?
  • Are they readily available?
  • Are you expecting that they will be harder to find?
  • Will the cost of these new skills be competitive or come at a premium?
• What are the expected workforce costs?
  • Fixed costs, e.g.:
    • wages/salaries (including superannuation, leave loading etc.)
    • overhead costs.
  • Variable costs, e.g., training.

Now you can compare your current workforce (people) and skills supply to your future demand, and in doing so, identify your workforce and skills gaps. By doing this, you can begin to identify strategies and put actions in place to close your workforce and skills gaps. By doing this, you can begin to identify strategies and put actions in place to close your workforce and/or skills gaps. These strategies and actions will form the basis of your workforce plan that you can prioritise, implement, monitor and review.