SECTION 2

Current Practices

Rob Tripp

IT HAS BEEN SAID that if you line up thirty workforce planners, you will get thirty different definitions of the term! You will see some of that in the following chapters by several leading practitioners of the art and science of Strategic Workforce Planning. But at its core, SWP is about workforce demand, workforce supply, understanding the gaps, and taking actions to address those gaps—all embedded in the business, economic, demographic, cultural, technological, and political context of our increasingly complex world. So just to add to the list of definitions, here’s mine (SWP definition number 31):

Strategic Workforce Planning is a disciplined business process that ensures that current decisions and actions impacting the workforce are aligned with the strategic needs of the enterprise.

Although I don’t think we’re yet to the place where workforce planning can be considered a separate profession or even a specific academic discipline, the field has grown during the last few years to the point where:

There are many articles on SWP available just a few clicks away (some are pretty good, too!).

A small number of books about SWP are available. (If you’re just getting started, I strongly recommend Tom Bechet’s Strategic Staffing.)

You can take a class in SWP and even become a certified Strategic Workforce Planner.

There are several SWP conferences, consortia, roundtables, and other informal and/or formal workforce planning associations.

A number of the large HR consulting firms have active and experienced workforce planning practices that help companies implement SWP as a business process.

There are several high-quality commercial workforce planning software packages from both mainline and boutique vendors.

With a bit of effort, you can develop your own network of SWP peers through more than one social media site.

As you read the following chapters on workforce planning, you will get a feel for some of the breadth of approaches as well as the struggles needed to mature this work in various public and private organizations.

Robert D. Motion of Raytheon, in “It’s Not Just Data: Workforce Planning and Change Management,” has described the “burning platform” that led Raytheon to develop an effective SWP process, the company’s learnings along the way, and how the process and those learnings have better positioned Raytheon for the future. His chapter is a really nice “how to do it” summary.

Boeing has found its own way to SWP and in so doing is now a recognized company leader. Everything has been “homegrown” and absolutely focused on meeting the needs of the business. Dianna Peterson and Tina Krieger’s contribution, “Strategic Workforce Planning at Boeing,” is the result of an interview conducted by Amy Sund and Rick Smith with Dianna and Tina. Boeing’s burning platform was around its concern for future technical talent and what is called the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education pipeline, and the company has developed tools and processes to help answer the questions about its future talent supply.

In “The Role of WFP in Mergers and Acquisitions,” Mary Boudreaux Carroll has provided a nice summary of her work in mergers and acquisitions, partly through her experience as HP acquired EDS in 2008.

In “Workforce Planning: Does It Hurt Enough to Begin?” David Howerton, who also experienced the HP acquisition of EDS, gives us a glimpse of how EDS’s workforce planning efforts grew out of its pain points and ultimately led to EDS’s integrated workforce management processes.

Our third contributor from EDS, Jeff Buchmiller, in “When Workforce Planning Worlds Collide,” sees the workforce planner as an architect whose workforce planning framework spans core HR and business and finance activities and brings them together.

China is different. Naomi Stanford’s “Workforce Planning in China” tells of the enormous challenges faced by HR managers dealing with rapid growth and changes in the ability of global enterprises to compete for talent. She provides a nice summary of key opportunities and actions in the face of great uncertainty.

China is not the only expanding economy: In “Workforce Strategies for High-Growth Markets,” James David Eyring and Alison Romney Eyring share their learning about the challenges of the BRICs and other expanding economies. (BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the term is often shorthand for many rapidly growing economies.) They offer some tools and insights to help us address those challenges.

As Marta Brito Perez tells us in “Strategic Workforce Planning in the Federal Government: A Work in Progress,” robust workforce planning has become essential to the success of the federal government. Her work with the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Global Health is a story of engagement with multiple stakeholders to develop a robust SWP process that will be a model for other government agencies. Additional case study material for this article is in the electronic version.

The workforce challenges in government are both similar to and different from those in private industry. In her chapter, “Strategic Workforce Planning: Vital Tips for Professionals in the Public Sector,” Rachel Bangasser points out that SWP in the public sector is similar to but also different from that in the private sector, and she shares her learnings about SWP from her experience in state-level government.

In “Do as I Say, Not as I Do!” Laura Chalkley—also in the public sector—ties workforce and succession planning together with individual and organization development, areas of major HR concern that are not always fully integrated into SWP.

In “SWP: A Rigorous Simulation Optimization Approach,” Marco Better, Fred Glover, Dave Sutherland, and Manuel Laguna have shown an intriguing approach that they believe provides a realistic way to find the best balance among the various “levers” we have available to reduce or eliminate demand versus supply workforce gaps. They do this by drawing on many years of experience in applying mathematical optimization techniques to many business problems. To quote their conclusion, “we believe no other approach to Strategic Workforce Planning can achieve the same level of accuracy at such granularity and with more confidence in the predicted outcomes.” Although their contribution is more technically detailed and analytically advanced than the other chapters in this book, their approach may exactly meet your needs.

Peter Howes is one of the most experienced workforce planning professionals in the business today. As the founder of Infohrm, originally a stand-alone consulting and software company that is now part of the SuccessFactors system, his experience is long and deep. His starting point is to think of SWP as a risk mitigation process. Peter’s contribution, “Wisdom on Workforce Planning,” takes you into the foundations and basic components of SWP and provides a high-level summary of key aspects of effective SWP practices and integration with HR and business strategy.

Sometimes the best teachings are personal. Dan Hilbert’s piece, “Pioneering New Business Frontiers: Unaware of What ‘Shouldn’t’ Be Done,” contains a personal account of his journey from finance to SWP. He tells how a strong focus on business outcomes, along with a willingness to “step out of the box,” took him from scratch to founding OrcaEyes and now being one of the leading SWP consultants in the field today. I hugely enjoyed the read and am sure you will, too.

As noted in the beginning of this section, you will see a variety of approaches and processes, clearly showing that “not one size fits all.” Dig in, enjoy the read, have a silent debate with the authors, and write up SWP definition number 32. Maybe you can even write your own chapter!

Rob Tripp is a workforce planning manager at Ford Motor Company, where he has been engaged in numerous workforce planning and workforce analytics activities in support of business needs, from building forecasting models and bringing the power of statistics to workforce issues to telling compelling stories about the future based on data. Prior to joining Ford, Rob worked at General Motors, where he developed and used various workforce planning models that simulated workforce actions involving the hourly workforce, including models that simulated complexities of the contracts with unions and served as “what-if” tools in response to both contract negotiations and business strategic planning.

Rob, Dan Ward, and the late Tom Bechet coedited Human Resource Forecasting and Modeling, published by the Human Resource Planning Society in 1994, and one of HRPS’s most popular titles for some time.

Rob’s longtime appreciation for the work of Hari Seldon led him to pursue and earn his Ph.D. in statistics at Virginia Tech. Rob is married to Lucinda Tripp and is father of two incredible sons. They live in Redford, Michigan. Rob’s answer to midlife crisis is learning to play the highland bagpipes.