The world of work was evolving long before the pandemic arrived. Market dynamics, shifts in consumer behaviour, and the speed of technology advances have changed the landscape for how workforces are planned, managed, and engaged.

As consumers and businesses increasingly shift to on-demand services and are buffeted by powerful disruptions outside organisational control, both the here-and-now and the future of how workforce planning occurs is in sharp focus. The question for organisations isn’t whether they should adapt to these changes, but whether they can adapt fast enough keep pace with the speed and scale of change.

The intersection between HR, operations, finance and IT has never been more critical. Business leaders need to be able to identify their optimal workforce mix and tailor their forecasting to match, especially in a post COVID-19 world.

Making the case for workforce planning analytics

Workforce planning – having the right people in the right place at the right time doing the right things – has never been more critical as people are usually the biggest cost in business. In uncertain times, optimising the workforce to adjust to the ebb and flow of demand is vital for customer experience as well as cost minimisation.

Business leaders usually have a good grasp of the dynamics of seasonal change on their workforces, such as Christmas, school holidays, and other predictable annual events. Spreadsheet-based planning is very common for many industries to manage permanent, part-time, contingent, and contract workforces. Unfortunately, workforce planning by spreadsheet alone is often hamstrung by complex and cumbersome processes, particularly in environments where awards, conditions, and reliance on a contingent workforce are difficult elements to get right in more ‘normal’ conditions.

The supercharging of workforce change brought about by COVID-19, such as sudden and extended lockdowns, surge in demand for home delivery and online services, and a permanent shift to digital engagement has added layers of complexity to what was already a complex problem. Relegating workforce planning to a spreadsheet and data wrangling exercise is simply not viable when faced with the need to scale or contract staff quickly.

However, the momentum for augmenting, spreadsheet-based processes to utilising cloud-based planning and analytics tools, such as IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, is gathering pace. Streamlining and integrating financial, operational, and workforce planning is enabling organisations to acquire the ability to access powerful workforce analytics and HR planning capability. This allows a organisation to immediately see in a single consolidated dashboard, their resource mix, the financial impacts and the capability to meet demand, while at the same time having the ability to perform scenario modelling at the consolidated or drilled down to the detailed level.

The shift from data wrangler to agile workforce planning

Fit-for-purpose continuous planning enables business to quickly and efficiently model different financial scenarios including different workforce mixes, and understand the investment required or where costs can be reduced. By connecting different decision makers in an organisation and enabling them to collaborate easily in the planning process the right people who have clear understanding of workforce planning requirements at an operational level can plan the best outcomes for the business.

This is vital for shorter-cycle planning. Many organisations have been faced with the need to rapidly increase or decrease their staffing levels, particularly in retail and service environments due to COVID-19. The ability to be agile and realign resources to meet demand instore, in customer support, or delivery and supply chain management has become more critical.

The ability of HR, Finance and Operations to access trusted data in the cloud, for planning and analytics, allows these organisations to be highly adaptive and identify and understand patterns and relationships in workforce data. This can also be a vital part of measuring KPIs against expected performance to highlight strengths and weaknesses in workforce planning.

Eating the data elephant, one bite at a time

Teams that are responsible for organisational workforce planning are under immense pressure to accurately forecast the cost and headcount scenarios that influence how a business can respond to demand, employee retention and acquisition needs, and future skill needs, which are made more acute during seasonal and uncertain change.

Analytics-driven planning provides the foundation and flexibility for futureproofing the business to both rapid and long-term changes. This is where having trusted data is an imperative. Leaders who can access relevant data that they can rely upon are a step ahead, especially if they don’t require a team of analysts to manipulate and model it in a cascade of Excel spreadsheets each time they need to make a decision.

When broader business analytics and workforce planning combine, the promise of organisational agility can be realised. Data is one of the most valuable assets in business and it’s critical to provide assurance to stakeholders about its quality, security, governance, architecture, usage, and analytics – especially when it means changing existing processes.

Whenever data is required to be manipulated outside of robust enterprise planning systems – typically in Excel–it is prone to deterioration and error.

Like any digital transformation, the successful adoption of workforce planning and analytics tools is about setting up for success. Not only does the organisation need to adopt a fit for purpose solution but it also needs to engage a strong coalition of sponsors and stakeholders, and gathering support from integrated planning across HR, Finance, and Operations is vital.

In Cornerstone’s experience, organisations do not need to implement connected planning in one large program—it can be delivered in modules. One approach is to undertake a pilot project that can demonstrate the benefits of workforce planning on a smaller scale before it cascades across the organisation.

This allows stakeholders and the executive to see the benefits of investing in the platform and augment their teams with capability from experienced SMEs that understand not only the capabilities of planning analytics but the challenges of workforce management planning. Working with a trusted provider means business leaders can have faith not only in the solution itself, but also the team rolling it out. Small wins, delivered often, can ensure that workforce management planning is set up for success.

PMsquare Asia has delivered Workforce Planning and Integrated Planning solutions to both mid-size and enterprise customers in Australia’s as well as some of the world’s largest global brands. We partner with IBM to deliver Planning Analytics with Watson across many aspects of business performance management. For more information about our workforce planning analytics capability, please contact us.