What is Workforce Planning?

The Executive Branch Workforce Planning function is administered by the Minnesota Management & Budget, however, all entities within the Executive Branch play a critical role in this process.

Although there are many ways to define workforce planning, the following definition addresses key aspects of planning for the public sector HR professional:

Workforce planning is the strategic alignment of an organization’s human capital with its business direction. It is a methodical process of analyzing the current workforce, determining future workforce needs, identifying the gap between the present and future, and implementing solutions so the organization can accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives.As a process, workforce planning includes elements such as strategic planning (by both the organization and its partners), workload projections, legislative forecasts, turnover analyses, and budget projections. Workforce planning forecasts the numbers of people and types of skills needed to achieve success by comparing the available workforce with future needs to determine needs that may be unmet (gaps). Workforce planning is a management tool that affects the full life cycle and range of human resources activities including recruitment/selection, classification and compensation, training and development, performance management, and retention. Strategic Plan Chart

Who is Responsible for Workforce Planning?
It requires involvement of the entire organization in identifying its vision, goals and core business functions. The HR professional’s role is to examine how work and the workforce of the State are changing. By analyzing information from multiple sources to define current and future workforce needs, agencies can develop and implement strategies to fill in any gaps to be better positioned to meet stakeholders' increased service expectations. This dynamic, data-driven process is the core of workforce planning. Work planning is one aspect of overall strategic planning processes.
State Process Chart

Why are we doing it?
Workforce planning is an important activity that will enable agencies to determine the workforce needed for continued success; provide a foundation to actively train, recruit or restructure resources; bridge knowledge gaps due to attrition; and achieve maximum organizational effectiveness. It is the process by which the current workforce is transformed to meet tomorrow’s needs.