If you ask yourself what one of the most significant expenses for most organizations is, the answer is obvious: their workforce. Large or small companies must employ individuals, which comes at a cost and not a small one. For this reason, the hiring and staffing decisions made by companies must be taken carefully. As there is a high organizational impact due to the workforce of these organizations, companies must ensure that their workforce planning is done meticulously and methodically and that the standard does not fall.
Learn more about our NetSuite Services
Here are four of the best practices that you can use to conquer the workforce planning process:
-
Gaining visibility into your current workforce
One way to ensure that your workforce planning process works to the best of its capabilities is to gain visibility into your current workforce. To obtain a complete view into current and the future condition of your workforce may not be easy because data can have a dynamic nature. Individuals are hired, and then their roles may change, and so the job they were hired for initially will not look the same. One method that organizations use to stay on top of their workforce is spreadsheets, but this is an outdated way to stay informed as, by the time spreadsheet analysis are carried out, your data may be quite different from when it was first entered.
The HRMS (Human Resource Management System) systems do not always have the entirety of the data needed. Team leaders and decision-makers require more information, such as details about company finances and job roles and qualification requirements. Without this information, there is no chance to create a workforce plan that could be enforced. The HR (Human Resources) department needs real-time, complete views into their workforce.
-
Implementing a continuous workforce planning process
For a workforce plan that is implemented to be successful, it needs to be continuous. It is not enough to create a workforce plan and then implement it without a feedback loop. This is because organizations change as they grow. This is where many of the organizations fail because they do not go ahead with updating the strategy they create. It is essential to keep in mind that organizational workforce will not look the same in a few years’ time. Some employees quit, some are promoted, and some retire etc.
Outside factors will also influence the workforce plan you create such as economic conditions, demographics, and other competitive factors. All these changes must be taken into consideration and the plan must evolve over time. For example, if you keep an accurate record of your staff’s training, then this will enable you to decide which person is the best fit for which role and in which department are they needed the most.
-
Integrating workforce planning with corporate strategy
One of the best laid out plans for hiring and recruitment purposes is to have an integrated workforce plan; in this instance, all department leaders, such as finance, HR, etc., share one data source. However, this can get confusing when done through spreadsheets. It can become problematic when there are no direct links from your workforce gap analysis to the approved hiring plan that is put in place.
Having a plan for an integrated workforce helps remove the confusion in the HR department as implementing an integrated workflow plan gives them the ability to synchronize with other business plans in place, such as corporate strategies, operations, departmental budgets, and so on. This eventually enables the department leaders to move out from the calculated headcount plan to a more strategic workforce plan, allowing them to place the right people in the right place at the right time. For those who use NetSuite, this process can be managed using the HR module.
-
Harnessing the power of scenario planning
Organizations need to preemptively plan for disruptions and developments, for example, the acquisition or expansion of an office and the ability to respond to any change in the market conditions. Such scenario planning gives HR and finance departments the ability to create potential outcomes for several what-if scenarios. These scenarios may range from long-term implications of hiring, outsourcing jobs, providing support to remote workers, etc. It is crucial to plan to develop workforce plans for various scenarios. This will enable department heads to prepare for any possibility and challenges and prepare plans for those challenges.
With NetSuite Planning and Budgeting for Workforce Planning, you have HR, payroll, and finance together in one solution. This solution enables you to model your headcount and other costs and gives you a dependable source for information about your workforce expenditures in real-time.
Here are some of the many benefits of NetSuite Planning and Budgeting for your businesses when it comes to workforce planning:
- Helps to improve collaboration on plans across departments such as HR, finance, and operations and connects data from HCM (Human Capital Management), GL, and other sources into one primary source.
- Reduces the risk of errors with automatic importing of personnel lists from NetSuite, such as employee, job type, and compensation.
- Calculates all workforce-related expenses, from headcount to salary, to taxes, etc.
- Offers what-if workforce analysis competencies including salary, bonus, raise, etc.
- Tracks the total headcount and new hires across subsidiaries, departments, and other segments.
- Allows you to manage your workforce planning with pre-built forms and drivers with Smart View for Microsoft Office.
Are you looking for a NetSuite Solution Provider?
If you do not already have NetSuite or are looking for a solution provider to help you optimize or implement your NetSuite ERP (ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING), be sure to handpick a trusted advisor much like AlphaBOLD. We have never lost a customer and have our very own methodology called BOLDRoute that allows us to implement NetSuite successfully for our clients.
Reach out to us if you have questions or want to schedule a demo with our NetSuite expert.
