As a manager, you have been involved in some level of workforce planning. Workforce Planning is the process of analyzing, forecasting, and planning workforce supply and demand, assessing gaps, and determining target talent management interventions to ensure that an organization has the right people - with the right skills in the right places at the right time - to fulfill its mandate and strategic objectives.

At the core of workforce planning are your workforce or people plans. These can be developed to address training, transformations, project planning, and more. In this post, we’ll introduce you to 6 project plans every manager should know. 

The “Employee Development” Plan

An employee development plan is a process for helping individuals improve skills for their current job and acquire knowledge and skills for new roles and responsibilities in an organization.

As a manager, you should always seek out opportunities to strengthen your people’s capabilities. Not only does this improve their performance, but it can also improve engagement and retention. 

75% of employees do not plan to stay with their current job for more than 5 years. Providing consistent opportunities for employees to grow within your organization can significantly improve your chances of retaining your top talent. 

Tip: To build employee development plans that are effective and adaptable, leverage dynamic data over static data. Dynamic data is collected on a regular basis over time, providing you with an up-to-date view of your people’s skills and capabilities. Static data can leave holes in your view, causing you to overlook key insights and making it challenging to adapt your plans. 

The “Upskilling For Transformation” Plan

This plan is similar to your regular employee development plan, but tailored to the requirements of a transformation. The way we work is rapidly evolving thanks to big changes in technology. Organizations are managing digital transformation initiatives left and right. Others are making product changes and market expansions. Big or small, your business is likely to make a change over the next fiscal year. And these changes will require new sets of skills. 

An “upskilling for transformation” plan will help any manager navigate the choppy waters of change management. Find the gaps in your workforce and ensure your people have the right skills to implement and maintain transformations. Upskilling enables you to take a proactive approach to change management, preparing your workforce ahead of the change to deliver a smooth transformation. 

1. Identify Gaps in the Workforce : Conduct a thorough assessment of your organization's skills gaps, ensuring that you understand the areas where your employees require upskilling and reskilling.

2. Develop a Proactive Change Management Approach : Adopt a proactive approach to change management, preparing your workforce ahead of time to minimize disruptions and ensure a smooth transition.

3. Enhance Transformational Skills : Provide targeted training and development opportunities that focus on developing transformational skills, such as:

   • Digital literacy

   • Data analysis and interpretation

   • Innovation and design thinking

   • Leadership and change management

4. Build a Culture of Continuous Learning : Foster a culture that encourages continuous learning and professional development, empowering employees to take ownership of their growth and development.

Tip: As you develop your “Upskilling for Transformation” plan, make sure the goals of your plan align with the transformation goals. This may sound obvious, but too often we see managers jumping into training without prioritizing and aligning their efforts against the roadmap of transformation. Start by defining the goals of the transformation. What does the outcome look like? Then compare those outcomes against the existing data of your workforce to uncover the skill gaps you need training to address. 

Benefits of Upskilling for Transformation:

1. Improved Adaptability : Equips your workforce with the skills to adapt to changing business needs and stay ahead of the competition.

2. Increased Productivity : Helps your team deliver more efficiently and effectively, driving business results and improving overall performance.

3. Enhanced Creativity : Fosters a culture of innovation and creativity, enabling your organization to respond quickly to emerging trends and opportunities.

4. Better Decision-Making : Empowers employees with the data-driven insights necessary to inform strategic decision-making.

Implementation Strategies:

1. Regular Talent Assessments : Conduct regular talent assessments to identify areas where upskilling is required, ensuring that you're addressing skills gaps proactively.

2. Customized Training Programs : Develop customized training programs that address the specific needs of your workforce, incorporating a mix of online and offline learning experiences.

3. Mentorship and Coaching : Provide access to experienced mentors and coaches who can support employees in their upskilling journey.

4. Performance Metrics and Feedback : Establish clear performance metrics and feedback mechanisms to ensure that upskilled employees are delivering on the expected outcomes.

The “Cross-Training” Plan

Cross-training plans are designed to train employees in another job function. Why is this important? Cross-training enables internal mobility. Not only does this support internal growth for your people but it gives you more leverage as a manager when it comes to project planning, RFP responses, transformations, and more. When your employees are trained in multiple areas of the business, you have the ability to fill gaps more quickly without raising recruiting costs.

Tip: Understanding where to allocate budget towards a cross-training program can be difficult. Invest in a tool that offers you a wide-scope view of your organization’s skills and proficiencies. You should be able to analyze your workforce at the individual, team, department or organizational level. This perspective will enable you to uncover the critical gaps that need to be addressed right away. 

The “Project Staffing” Plan

Whether your organization submits RFPs, proposals, or another form of project estimation, a “project staffing” plan will give your company a competitive edge. Stakeholders want to see how your team will address their questions and concerns around the project. You want to develop your team around these specific project needs, matching complementary hard and soft skills. 

As you develop “project staffing” plans, you begin to develop a backlog of project team history. From this data, you can learn which teams performed the best, which types of projects are optimal for your business, and which types of projects you should avoid in the future. You can also use this data to develop future project teams that display a history of high performance and great results. It will be hard for stakeholders to turn down a proven project team. 

Tip: Leverage data visualizations to easily communicate your team’s capabilities to stakeholders. Visualizations offer a universal form of communication and come in handy when dealing with large amounts of data. Why scroll through rows of data in a spreadsheet, when you can summarize that same data into a beautiful, easy-to-interpret visualization. 

The “Internal Recruiting” Plan

According to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Talent Mobility Survey, “internal talent mobility has become a C-suite-level topic, with 76 percent of our survey respondents rating it important and 20 percent rating it one of their organization’s three most urgent issues.” While hiring external talent is not out of the question, finding top talent in a tight labor market continues to be a huge challenge. Now, organizations are turning their focus toward internal recruiting.

Do you have an “internal recruiting” plan in place? You should. Internal recruiting can be used to fill permanent or temporary positions. For example, let’s say your IT director leaves the company. You could replace him through hiring, but you could also seek out someone within the organization to fill this role. The benefits of this include shorter time to hire, less onboarding time, zero acquisition costs, and clear support of internal career advancement. 

Tip: Look outside your department to fill positions. Many skills are transferable across job functions. The perfect candidate for your open position may be hidden in another department. Again, maintaining that wide-scope view of your workforce’s skills and capabilities can help you improve your internal recruiting capabilities. 

The “Mergers & Acquisition” Plan

This plan may not apply to you right now, but at some point in your career as a manager, you will likely be apart of a merger or acquisition. Mergers and acquisitions deserve their own plans because you are combining two workforces into one ideal workforce. 

A “M&A” plan is critical to the success of post-merger integration. While systems, processes, and technology must be integrated under the new identity, people integration present a unique challenge. Two workforces may be very different culturally. There may also be overlap in the roles, skills, and capabilities of each workforce. 

A “M&A” plan identifies strengths, weaknesses, redundancies, and gaps. All elements that can influence the success of the new workforce. As a manager, you may develop a plan for your department, multiple departments, or the entire organization. Collaboration is key here, as there are many moving parts to people integration. 

Tip: Use a tool that allows you to automate the collection and organization of data in a visual universal way. During an M&A, you don’t want to spend valuable time collecting skill surveys, organizing data to interpret it, or trying to gain insights from spreadsheets. You want to spend your time developing actionable plans. Invest in a tool that does the heavy lifting for you. 

Those are our 6 workforce plans every manager should know. Our final tip is to rely on data! Data-driven workforce plans empower you to make informed decisions and adapt to changes easily. Let us know which workforce plans you are implementing below.