Workforce Planning: How to Use Technology to Support Planning Processes | Gartner

The COVID-19 crisis continues to place greater emphasis on workforce planning (WP) within many organizations. And given that WP can mean different things to different people, this Gartner article introduces five types of WP that can help organizations understand the distinction among each, the question that each tries to answer, and the required technologies. The five kinds of WP and questions they seek to answer are: 1) Workforce optimization: How do we optimize the assignment and distribution of tasks and processes to improve capacity utilization, productivity, and other business outcomes? 2) Workforce scheduling optimization: How do we optimize workforce schedules to meet compliance and fair scheduling needs while ensuring that we can hit business targets? 3) Operational workforce planning: How do we plan for the right number and types of workforce resources to hit projected business targets and make sure we are executing them? 4) Organization modeling and transformation management: How do we align resources with our new organizational structure following a significant transformation? 5) Strategic workforce planning: What are the workforce implications of our organization’s short and long-term strategy? For each of the five areas, the article provides the key features, limitations, and example vendors. This article is a useful resource as organizations refine or build their WP approach.