Workforce planning: Assessing the current and future workforce

Author: Wendy Hirsh, a researcher and consultant specialising in the future-oriented aspects of people management.

Overview

This series of Leading practice guides provides an introduction to and framework for workforce planning. The concepts and methods set out are applicable to all organisations, although they will be applied with differing levels of sophistication depending on the organisation's size and sector.

Here, we discuss the steps an organisation can take to understand how the business is currently resourced, before considering the future business needs for people (workforce demand) and how those needs can be met in terms of people who will do the work (workforce supply). This is the fourth in our series of five guides:

• Workforce planning: The fundamentals and getting started
• Workforce planning: Developing the capability for workforce planning
• Workforce planning: Understanding the business context
• Workforce planning: Taking action to address resourcing risks