WELLBEING Workforce planning
In his regular column this month for Education Today, MARK SOLOMONS, creator of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, an online evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, shares his advice on workforce planning.
such as the current challenges in recruitment of leaders, teachers, and support staff. While many external factors cannot be controlled, understanding their impact on current and future staffing will help leaders decide on the most effective action.
Assess current resources. This includes budgetary constraints, the knowledge and skills of staff, and talent breakdown of the MAT, school or college, and what is needed to ensure this meets future needs. Multiple data sources can be used: performance reviews, professional development undertaken, and feedback from staff – staff wellbeing surveys, and stay and exit interviews. Effective staff feedback tools, provide better data and improve decision making.
Step 3 - Future needs M
ulti-Academy Trusts, schools and colleges are ramping up their recruitment and trying to fill vacancies. It’s time for leaders to look to workforce planning if they want to deliver their future objectives. With the current retention and recruitment challenges, doing this effectively will deliver a competitive advantage.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) describes workforce planning as: analysing the current workforce and determining future needs; identifying gaps between the available workforce and the organisation’s needs for the upcoming year. Workforce planning is a core business process which aligns changing organisational needs with people strategy. The CIPD and other thought leaders differentiate between this and strategic workforce planning, with the main difference being the timeline – strategic workforce planning looks further ahead at a 3-5 year horizon. By developing a robust plan, a MAT, school or college can ensure it is more likely to have the resources, skills, and knowledge to deliver its objectives – and to better manage expected and unexpected changes. There are multiple models for workforce planning, names may differ, but the content is often similar.
Step 1 - Objectives
Set clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). These go beyond the workforce and include deliverables and growth plans covering operational aims for the next year, and strategic ones for the next 3-5 years. They need to be regularly reviewed in response to internal and external pressures and changes.
Step 2- Analysis
Understanding the current workforce will help enable delivery of the objectives set. Collect information, and recognise external influences,
Understand likely demands – the staff and skills needed in the future. This is often one of the more difficult tasks, but helps create a more accurate plan. While there may still need to be some guess work, use the data collected. Consider future leadership requirements, career paths, competencies and skills. In today’s rapidly changing world, the necessary roles or skills may not even exist as yet – for example, expertise in place to take the long-term opportunities that AI and machine learning is undoubtedly going to bring to the sector.
Involve all key stakeholders in determining the strategic vision: growth and at what scale; transformational changes, such as outsourcing or new systems; likely future requirements for students, parents, and staff; proposed changes to regulations; opportunities for process improvement, automation, and work-load reduction; and planned changes to ensure the necessary outcomes are delivered.
Step 4 - Identify gaps
With clear objectives, and knowledge about staff resources and skills and future needs, gaps in the workforce can be identified. These include immediate ones and predicting those that are likely to come.
Gaps are likely to be all about numbers and skills - whether there are the right number of staff, with the right skills and knowledge for the classroom, functions, departments and leadership, to deliver in the coming year and over the longer term.
Staff shortages and not having the right resources and talent in place, can cause enormous strain and add to stress. A poor pipeline or hidden talent will significantly impact both short and long-term objectives.
Step 5 - Action plan
Determine the best course of action to close the gaps you have identified. The CIPD shares a useful workforce planning framework consisting of five talent management and two demand optimisation levers. These can help determine whether to take specific action, and
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• The plan is adapted as objectives are moved, and external and internal factors are considered.
For more information or support with workforce planning, contact
welbee.co.uk
June 2024
are as follows: Buy: acquire the necessary external resources and talent – this includes recruitment plans, processes, and employee offers. This can be an effective way of closing gaps and acquiring new talent, but also expensive with time taken to recruit and onboard new staff. Build: develop internal resources and talent through professional development, talent schemes, career paths, competencies, diversity, and succession planning. Create the capacity needed internally, rather than relying on external hires. This can be resource intensive to start but provides a tailored workforce. Borrow: flex resources for when they are needed - use contractors, outsourcing and secondments. If roles are needed to deliver a specific programme, to manage a transformation, to gather staff feedback or to support a temporary initiative, then outsourcing can be cost effective. Bind: retain key employees and capabilities through developing leadership opportunities, career paths, building culture, and providing motivating rewards. Bounce: remove employees where necessary, including through performance management, capability, redeployment, and budgetary considerations, for example redundancy. Balance: ensure an appropriate combination of operational performance, budget, service levels, performance improvement, technology, and organisational design. Bot: use automation to support or replace existing capacity or capability, including AI and machine learning.
Put these into an action plan, determine timelines and create a compelling story to share with all staff.
Step 6 - Implementation
The final step is implementation, and this is often a differentiator – executing effectively is an organisational competency and will need buy-in from leaders and staff, so ensure that:
• There is clear accountability and responsibility
• Governance, monitoring, and reporting are in place; dividing the plan into key stages will make management and reporting easier
• Risks are identified and managed to increase the likely impact of the plan
• People analytics and data are utilised to drive decision making, so changes are made to meet specific challenges
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