What's New In Workforce Planning?

Workforce planning programs have grown in popularity. One reason they are so popular is to bring systematic thinking to the need to drive down labor costs while maximizing productivity. This webinar will describe new approaches to workforce planning and how to use it to address the comprehensive labor force needs of an organization.

Workforce planning is a systematic approach to determining the quantity and quality of people needed to achieve the organization’s strategic objectives over time. This session will examine new ideas and approaches to workforce planning.

• Introduction
• What is workforce planning, and how does it relate to work planning?
• What are some new approaches and issues in workforce planning, and how can they be addressed?
• Conclusion

Few organizations have systematic workforce planning. More organizations have position-by-position workforce planning in which managers decide on a case-by-case basis whether to fill vacancies as they occur. That is not workforce planning. Large, sophisticated companies often have workforce planning programs that focus solely on so-called “full-time employees,” defined as those who work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 50 weeks a year and 40 hours a week. But newer approaches to workforce planning include attention to contingent workers, consultants, and others on the periphery of the organizations with which they work. This session will examine new approaches to workforce planning that focus on the work to be done rather than the headcount or salary costs alone.

• Operating managers
• HR practitioners
• Training directors
• OD directors
• Line managers
• Supervisors

William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPLP Fellow is President of Rothwell & Associates, Inc. He has worked in HR for more than 40 years and has also worked as a consultant for more than 50 multinational corporations--including Motorola China, General Motors, Ford, and many others. In 2012 he earned ASTD’s prestigious Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award, and in 2013 ASTD honored him by naming him as a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) Fellow. (ASTD is now called ATD.) In 2014 he was given the Asia-Pacific International Personality Brandlaureate Award.

He has authored, coauthored, edited or coedited 115 books since 1987. His recent books since 2017 include Virtual Coaching to Improve Group Relationships: Process Consultation Reimagined (Routledge, 2021), The Essential Human Resource Guide for Small Business and Start Ups (Society for Human Resource Management, 2020); Increasing Learning and Development’s Impact Through Accreditation (Palgrave, 2020); Workforce Development: Guidelines for Community College Professionals, 2nd ed. (Rowman-Littlefield, 2020); Human Performance Improvement: Building Practitioner Performance, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2018);  Innovation Leadership (Routledge, 2018), Evaluating Organization Development: How to Ensure and Sustain the Successful Transformation (CRC Press, 2017), Marketing Organization Development Consulting: A How-To Guide for OD Consultants (CRC Press, 2017), Assessment and Diagnosis for Organization Development: Powerful Tools and Perspectives for the OD practitioner (CRC Press, 2017). He also authored such books as The Leader’s Daily Role in Talent Management (2015), Effective Succession Planning, 5th ed. (2015), and Becoming an Effective Mentoring Leader (2013).