How Strategic Workforce Planning Drives Business Outcomes

Picture this: Your star employee just handed in their two weeks' notice. Your tech team is struggling to keep up with new AI implementations. And your biggest competitor just launched an innovative service you didn't see coming. Sound familiar? 

Most organizations are stuck reacting to these challenges and scramble to hire talent as fires emerge. While bringing in talent as needed satisfies immediate business goals, it sets your organization up for bigger obstacles tomorrow.  

In this overview, you’ll learn how strategic workforce planning transforms organizations from reactive responders into market leaders. It’s the strategy companies need to remain competitive, innovative, and equipped for evolving industry demands.

What is strategic workforce planning?  

Strategic workforce planning allows HR teams to identify the right people, the right skills, and the right roles to align talent with their organization’s long-term business objectives.  

Forming a strategic workforce plan requires analyzing an organization’s existing talent, forecasting future talent needs based on the business trajectory and market conditions, and identifying the skills needed to fill those gaps.  

“In a survey to 200 boards of directors, 61% said workforce planning is a very/extremely important talent issue (Fast Company)” 

Adhering to a strategic workforce plan allows organizations to reach talent agility. Employees are deployed across the business when needed with as little friction as possible and external talent is hired as allocated by the roadmap. A strategic workforce plan will also provide flexibility for ad hoc hiring when needed.  

The difference between strategic workforce planning and headcount planning  

Headcount planning focuses on meeting an organization’s urgent talent needs while strategic workforce planning focuses on the greater long-term outlook of the organization to ensure business goals are reached.  

“66% of HR leaders day their workforce planning is limited to headcount planning, according to Gartner.”  

Headcount planning may include assessing staffing levels, budgeting for payroll costs, and making decisions about hiring, layoffs, or reallocating staff. It doesn’t typically address the broader issues of skills development, talent retention, or future talent alignment to business objectives in the way that strategic workforce planning does.  

Both strategies are needed, but headcount planning structures talent teams as a fulfillment center and greatly impacts an organization’s ability to respond to evolving business circumstances and meet company goals.  

Sample questions to inform strategic workforce development goals 

Both HR and talent teams should understand how their people can meet the needs of the organization’s clients or customers. The following sample questions can get teams closer to addressing two overarching questions that strategic workforce plans can answer: 

• Where is the company right now and where does the company want to go?  

• What skills and capabilities does the company need to get there efficiently?  

Sample questions to company leaders 

These questions can help HR and talent teams understand the business’s vision, identify areas of anticipated growth and the skills needed to support them and prepare for external risks or industry changes.  

1. What are the key business objectives for our organization in the next one to five years?  

2. What markets, products, or services are we extending into?  

3. What challenges or disruptions should we prepare for in the next several years?  

4. What skills do we need to achieve each business goal? 

5. which emerging technologies could reshape our workforce requirements?

Sample questions for HR and talent acquisition teams 

These questions can help HR and talent teams pinpoint skills shortages and create targeted goals to better align with business objectives.  

1. How can shifting our focus to skills-based hiring rather than traditional credentials help us access untapped talent pools?

2. What is the composition of our workforce right now in terms of staffing levels, diversity, and demographics?  

3. Which departments have skills gaps and how will that affect our business goals?  

4. How can we improve internal mobility opportunities to meet future goals?  

5. How can AI and data optimize workforce planning?  

A major challenge in launching a strategic workforce plan is a lack of communication between HR, talent acquisition, and other business functions. These sample questions help create an environment of inclusivity and understanding where information can be freely exchanged and voices can be heard to create a comprehensive long-term talent framework.  

Benefits of strategic workforce planning 

There is no shortage of challenges that a company will face in its lifetime. But with preparation, companies can position themselves to thrive amid uncertainty and maintain competitive advantage. 

"Strategic workforce planning removes unnecessary friction,” says Dermot O’Brien, startup advisor and former CHRO and Chief Transformation Officer at ADP. “The better you can plan, the faster you can deploy people to the business needs, and the faster you can solve customer or client issues.”  

The benefits of adopting a strategic workforce planning framework include:  

1. Increase agility and mitigate risk  

While you can’t predict the future, you can create different scenarios based on market and competitor research insights that you can adjust over time. With data, HR teams can forecast their ability to meet business goals. For example, HR teams can spot what skills are trending in their sector and use that to determine how many employees they can upskill and how many new hires they’ll need to fill in the gaps.  

2. Save on hiring costs  

Strategic workforce planning helps prevent costly mistakes like overstaffing. By anticipating future talent needs, organizations can prioritize their hiring efforts and focus on essential roles versus reactive, last-minute hiring. This approach also reduces the likelihood of expensive churn because employees are hired specifically to meet long-term objectives.  

3. Increase retention 

According to Pew Research Center, 63% of workers quit their jobs in 2021 because there was no opportunity for advancement. Strategic workforce planning emphasizes developing internal talent, when possible, through training and upskilling to provide employees with a clear career path at the organization.   

4. Meet DEI goals and fuel innovation 

Strategic workforce planning fosters a more innovative workforce by ensuring that the organization attracts and retains diverse talent with a variety of skills and perspectives. 

“Just think about developing products or services, for example,” says Nadikia Yousif, Chief Diversity Officer at Boston Consulting Group. “A broad range of backgrounds and views will fuel innovation and be better attuned to the diversity of your customer base."   

With a strategic workforce plan in place, you’ll promote a culture of continuous learning and development. This arms employees with the latest skills necessary to adapt to changing market conditions and respond effectively to emerging challenges. 

Strategic workforce planning examples 

Strategic workforce planning can help organizations respond to market changes in many ways, but here are a few common examples to illustrate its effectiveness.  

Anticipating technology trends  

A technology company expects a significant shift toward AI in its products. The company assesses its employees and determines they lack skills in a few programming languages that are essential to developing AI technology. The HR team then develops a multi-year plan that targets recruitment campaigns to attract talent with these skills and invests in upskilling initiatives for existing employees whose career paths are aligned with the company’s needs.   

By aligning workforce strategy with the future goal of expanding AI capabilities, the company can address both immediate and future skill gaps. By ensuring that it has the right talent in place to outpace its competition, the company can also position itself as an innovative leader.  

Meet a future demand in services  

A healthcare organization is preparing for an increase in patient volume due to an aging demographic. They analyze their workforce and estimate how many registered nurses and specialized healthcare professionals they'll need to meet the growing demand. To set the plan in motion, HR partners with nursing schools to create a career pathway for graduates. The organization also adjusts its employee retention program by creating a leadership development program. This organization can build a skilled workforce over the next several years that is capable of delivering high-quality care to future patients.  

How to get started with strategic workforce planning 

According to Gartner, two-thirds of HR leaders struggle to demonstrate ROI for strategic workforce planning efforts. Strategic workforce planning calls for a cultural shift in your organization toward a growth mindset, but this can’t happen overnight. Start small and build a success case for stakeholders before casting a wide net.  

1. Identify a talent problem and connect it to a business objective. You don’t have to start from scratch. Build on an existing initiative and create alignment between finance, HR and business leaders to zero in on a clear deliverable.  

2. Assign ownership. Take a RACI approach: Narrow down who will be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed throughout this phased approach. Identify the people across leadership, talent acquisition, HR, and finance who will own tasks. Example: The finance team will be Consulted to set goals, allocate budget, and approve technology purchases.  

3. Assess existing talent with a matrix approach. Determine your organization's strengths and weaknesses by assessing your workforce’s skills. AI-assisted talent management solutions like SeekOut Grow can surface this data seamlessly. Avoid building a skills inventory through the painstaking manual method of spreadsheets—you'll only find them to be outdated in a few months. AI can help you adopt a pragmatic approach to managing skills that better reflects how people continually grow and change.  

Build your strategic workforce strategy with SeekOut Grow

In today's dynamic business environment, agility is everything. Why spend thousands on external hiring when your next star performer might already be on your payroll? SeekOut Grow transforms your workforce planning from reactive to proactive, turning potential disruptions into opportunities for growth: 

• Leverage AI-powered insights to discover and redeploy hidden talent within your organization 

• Boost retention rates by creating clear growth pathways for your top performers 

• Drive cross-functional collaboration with our intuitive workflow tools, turning fragmented talent data into unified action plans 

• And much more 

Take an interactive tour of SeekOut Grow to see how your organization can match the right talent and the right skills to reach the best outcomes.