Integrated workforce planning: Three organizations share their success stories

Predicting the unpredictable is a tall order, but that’s almost expected these days just to survive.

Today businesses struggle daily with volatile markets, introduction of new and disruptive technologies like AI, a shift to the gig economy, a tight labor market, and a severe skills shortage. Amidst all of this, executives and leaders are expected to pivot nimbly in the face of market fluctuations and internal adjustments. But when it comes to workforce planning and business forecasting, most are still relying on fragmented applications, siloed systems, and “dueling spreadsheets” — the all-too-familiar phenomenon where multiple versions of the same spreadsheet shared with different stakeholders do not agree with one another.

Furthermore, workforce planning is often based on headcount exercises done once or twice a year, which often lead to problems later on because it relies only on a snapshot in time. Cue integrated workforce planning, an approach to workforce planning that is fast evolving from a nice-to-have to a necessity to future-proof your organization.

The status quo no longer cuts it

The Josh Bersin Company’s report, Integrated Workforce Planning: Building Organizational Readiness and Resilience, defines integrated workforce planning as a strategic process that continuously aligns an organization’s human capital needs with its business objectives. It’s real time, collaborative planning in an ecosystem where your finance, HR, operations, and business leaders are continuously working together and their plans all feed into the workforce planning.

“In a world where talent is constrained and change is happening faster than ever, we need an integrated workforce planning process so that we can fill the gaps quickly,” says HR guru, Josh Bersin.

Rather than focusing solely on headcount growth and open positions, organizations must become more disciplined and intentional in how they plan to acquire and develop new skills, identify missing capabilities, and navigate how to hire and allocate resources internally to grow the company in an era of automation and AI-driven productivity. 

In fact, many organizations are still stuck in what Bersin describes as the industrial age model of legacy job structures, rigid hierarchies, and top-down management models, relying on recruiting as the sole source of their growth. This model no longer works as it relies on predictable, unchanging jobs and assumes we can always find employees to fill them.

However, he explains that increasingly there is a shift to what he calls “dynamic organizations — where a job isn't really a fixed job anymore, it's a role based on skills.” These dynamic organizations are strategically aligning people and skills to opportunities and therefore improving productivity and business competitiveness.

In fact, the same report shows that using a business integrated-integrated workforce plan results in businesses being twice as likely to exceed financial targets, three times more likely to adapt well to change, and five times more likely to have high productivity levels.

Follow us on a workforce planning journey 

Let’s take a look at three of our global and dynamic customers: a telecommunications company, an energy and resources company, and a humanitarian organization, each on their journey to operate in a more connected and integrated way ensuring there is a continuous balance between workforce supply and the demands on their organizations.

1. A telecommunications company scrapped its traditional and rudimentary headcount planning process, which is still practiced by so many large organizations, and implemented an integrated planning platform that allows finance, HR, and managers to have continuous and connected  dialogue about how the workforce plan should evolve in line with their business need. As sales or operations data fluctuate, the finance and HR functions can make changes promptly to allocate skills.
   
2. A global energy company bolstered its business plan by uniting workforce planning with financial planning. It implemented a system that connects maintenance requirements to supply chain planning across its plants. This means that when the company schedules a maintenance project, the system can predict labor hours, skills needed, and costs for the repairs. It also connected this planning platform to its crew scheduling system so maintenance projects are planned, scheduled, and managed.
3. A humanitarian organization implemented a people analytics and workforce planning system that would enable it to react quickly to world emergencies, providing it with the agility to ensure every project and humanitarian crisis is staffed sufficiently across the world.

What were the challenges?

The most common challenge and bottleneck faced by organizations is having disparate data as well as data that has to be manually input into spreadsheets across departments, offices, and even countries. And these three organizations were no exception. As they grew, spreadsheets became too rigid and unwieldy.

Inability to plan long-term

The telecommunications company, with over 8,500 employees globally, faced workforce growing pains as it expanded. “Our planning process lacked enterprise-wide technology,” says the global director of business intelligence. “Our financial planning team could only produce enough information to support the organization as is, but not enough to conduct long-term, predictive planning.”

By removing the need for manual spreadsheet creation, manipulation, and distribution, finance professionals can provide strategic financial leadership through value-added analytics.

Lack of controls

Spreadsheets also became problematic for the 10,000-strong energy and resources company. “Benchmarking activities and calculating our costs across the value chain was a challenge because it was a manual process without any controls,” says a financial performance manager. “There was a disconnect between hours worked and the staffing of business priorities.”

Inflexibility in scenario planning

For the humanitarian organization, with over 20,000 staff alongside millions of volunteers, timeliness is of the essence. Its geographical spread and the unpredictability of the worldwide need for its services demands agile staffing and proactive upskilling. It needed a flexible solution that could enable it to plan for different scenarios across any time horizon — from a couple of months to a few years in advance — and act quickly when unpredictable circumstances arose.

What are the successes so far?

Having a single source of secure, reliable, and real-time data that can be acted upon immediately, automation of data processing saving professionals valuable time, and an accurate visibility of plans and progress so leaders can make informed decisions are just some of the benefits so far.

Connectivity of data, processes, and plans

For the telecommunications company, a single platform that connected financial planning, sales signals, demand forecasting, and workforce planning was essential to ensure the organization was staffed according to growth. “We pride ourselves on being people driven, and our C-suite speaks to the value of bringing people into the right roles where they can do the right things,” explains the global director of business intelligence.

Time-saving automation

For the energy and resources company, their time savings has been phenomenal. The financial performance manager explains, “The ROI of our planning efforts has significantly increased. We are getting more value per task because we no longer must invest in large, manual consolidation exercises. Our leaders also have more time to focus on other value-added tasks.” 

Better decision-making

Another benefit so far at the energy and resources company is that data reliability is empowering people to make better decisions for the future. Its Connected Planning environment enables the smooth transfer of employee information while adding a layer of safeguarding. Having a centralized, single source of truth has equipped frontline leaders with the level of integrated data necessary to make proactive, insight-driven workforce planning decisions beyond simple succession planning recommendations.

Having the right people in the right positions at the right time

Adaptability is key for the humanitarian organization which has configured a flexible workforce planning platform tailored to the organization’s unique operating model. The platform is being rolled out to more than 150 HR professionals worldwide to achieve the agility required to successfully navigate the unpredictability of world events. “For our organization, we need to empower many HR professionals to use long- and short-term workforce planning for their specific population,” says the head of people analytics and workforce planning.

What’s in store for the future?

We said it’s a journey, because it is, and our three customers intend to further embed a culture of collaboration, transparency, and data empowerment across their organizations.

People empowerment through data

Over the past three years, the telecommunications company has continued building its connected planning and business environment. Next up are product and accounting upgrades that will provide further supply chain and financial visibility. “People empowerment through data is the cultural journey we see developing over the next few years,” says the global director of business intelligence.

A culture of data transparency

At the energy and resources company, a gradual implementation of Connected Planning use cases — there are over 30 so far — has resulted in a culture of data transparency, adoption, and informed decision-making. Looking forward, the organization is exploring the integration of AI into its forecasting process.

Embedding workforce planning into the mission

Finally, for the humanitarian organization, the aim is to facilitate a mindset shift that workforce planning is mission critical. “We’re building a mindset of accessing gap forecasts from our platform, seeking to understand our needs, and then taking action in anticipation of those needs,” says the head of people analytics and workforce planning.

Once the 150 HR professionals are trained, the plan is to train more than 200 leaders to use the platform. Eventually, select managers at all levels will be given visibility into talent forecasts to embed workforce planning further into the culture and mission.

The gear shift toward integrated workforce planning is not a passing fad but a strategic imperative for businesses aiming to succeed into the future. By creating a collaborative and transparent relationship between finance, HR, and business leaders and giving them the right tools to plan, organizations can achieve a level of dynamism, resilience, and agility that traditional planning methods simply can’t provide.