Building the Foundation for Strategic Workforce Planning at Bristol-Myers Squibb | People + Strategy

2019 Article: Strategic workforce planning (SWP) as a practice has been underway for over two decades. Since its inception, SWP has evolved into a more sophisticated discipline, integrating a plethora of capabilities to create value—strategy, data, and analytics, to name a few. Despite these advancements, more than a third of HR practitioners agree their organization is overwhelmed by the complexity of SWP—making it difficult to implement. The challenges to implementing SWP range from a perceived lack of technology, insufficient or inaccurate data, or not having the internal capability or buy-in to get efforts off the ground. For many, the first hurdle is simply trying to answer the question: How do we get started? As organizations continue to struggle to overcome these challenges, the full potential of SWP remains untapped. In spite of these obstacles, the opportunity for driving competitive advantage through SWP has never been greater. This article, based on work at Bristol-Myers Squibb, contains several insights for building a foundation for SWP, including 1) design principles, 2) approach, 3) results and next steps, and 4) advice to practitioners.