Workforce Planning through Trying Times – Sustaining Resources

Workforce Planning’s goal is to supply the right skills and expertise at the right time at optimal cost to sustain the demand generated by clients and/or customers (short and long term). It is a supply / demand balancing act to optimize skill and expertise availability during any environmental, business, and people dynamics.

What does a Workforce Planner need to focus on right now regarding access to skills and expertise?

Immediate focus should be on maintaining the workforce, providing a safe environment to work, and sustaining physical and mental health to better respond to the crisis and optimize the chances of recovery. Workforce planners must help with maintaining the workforce by providing a safe and sustaining environment. This requires:

• Businesses to provide a safe environment for all to work in, providing assurance not only to their employees, but their customers that it is safe to do business with your company. This is part of the employee and customer value proposition.
• Adherence to schedule (or showing up to work) is monitored closely. Employees may not be able to make it to work, incapacitated for health reason, having to tend to a family member, not having any means to come physically if required because of changes in public transportation, etc. It may require leveraging more people to do the same amount of work to ensure operations can maintain the throughput required by customers.
• Safety and safe operations guidance and protocols should be centrally driven and applicable to all, not left to individual locations or managers to decide, to ensure consistency in how to protect people and deliver a uniform message and brand.
• With the shift to work at home, and distancing taking place at work, special attention needs to be placed on keeping employees in the loop. Even if a person is perceived as “a loner” in an organization and does not interact much during the day with colleagues, the office presence creates a feeling of belonging by being within proximity. Physically separated, one misses the presence and little bits of information gleaned through a regular day at the office, the feeling of being “out” or an “outsider” can creep in. The COVID-19 situation requires us to have meaningful and regular communication with our workforce to provide a sense of direction and maintain the health / sharpness of the workforce. Some tactics may include:
  • Clear and regular leadership voice for the organization: a cadence of CEO communication and directives informing of what is being decided, not decided, being done, etc., not just via email, but also an online town hall to provide a sense of presence, access and immediacy: seeing the captain at the wheel, getting told over and over of the path forward, understanding the candle is still lit during the storm
  • Regular check-in with employees: not just through working meetings, but space created to have a talk – “check-in” with each other. Of course, I am sure there are some employees who finally are happy they do not have to see or speak with their manager. This leads to the final point.
• Be ready to shift or swap managers quickly, crises have various impacts on psychology and aptitude. Some can provide the leadership needed in trying times, even rise to the occasion, while others fizzle out and create more harm or confusion than needed. With the external challenges faced, there is a place for care and compassion for any employee, but there is limited excuse for non-performance. Allowing it is dangerous for all.

Workforce planners must also critically examine their assumptions around productivity, availability, and other workforce dynamics to reflect the work environment that COVID-19 has created. How have staffing levels and decision-making changed? How do new ways of working impact your numbers? All of these need to be regularly examined as we continue to navigate this environment.