Scenario Planning: Strategy, Steps, and Practical Examples | Oracle Netsuite

As several organizations conduct layoffs and job cuts, it reinforces the importance of strategic workforce planning and one tool it relies on: scenario planning (SP). SP is a practice that helps organizations envision, describe, and plan for possible but uncertain and alternative futures they may face. These scenarios are informed by factors such as economic growth, labor market conditions, and the introduction of new technologies, to name a few. As this recent Fortune article points out, many organizations now announcing layoffs offer a similar reason for these cuts: “In the wake of the pandemic, we experienced growth in demand and increased our workforce to fulfill that demand. With a slowing economy and shifting market, we now see that we mistakenly hired too many, and we must correct that by letting some people go.” At the same time, a new article in The Wall Street Journal notes how Apple has “so far” been able to avoid layoffs that are hitting many of its peers. While it’s impossible to know all the reasons some organizations are now experiencing more job cuts than others, workforce and scenario planning is ONE tool that can help reduce the likelihood of an imbalance between an organization’s work demand and talent supply. With that as the backdrop, this Oracle Netsuite article provides helpful suggestions for how an organization can conduct SP. As a bonus, I am resharing this one-page editable PDF by XPLANE that helps organizations identify “what-if” scenarios they may face in the future, define the “conditions” that would trigger each, and develop a response for each scenario.