Workforce Planning

Workforce Planning is an annual and quarterly cadence of reviewing strategic business outcomes and ensuring the right teams, with the right capabilities, are focused on delivering the right work

Industry term wise, people often use the following terms: Tactical, Operational and Strategic when it comes to workforce planning. TeamForm primarily focuses on workforce planning as it pertains to cross-functional teams and within the next quarter and generally the same year.

Quarterly Planning

• Quarterly Business Review (QBR)

• Game Plans

• Memos

A quarterly process that reflects on business strategy and how the organisation can make any adjustments to how it executes

Role View

• Capabilities

• Skills

A current view of all the people and teams within an organisation, with an understanding of the roles, capabilities, and skills that they bring to the organization.

Line Management

• Home Base

• Chapters

• Chapter Leads

A current view of all the leaders of people. In cross-functional teaming structures, the role that tends to decide who will be allocated to a given Role request from a Demand.

You know someone should be included in Supply decisions if…

• They have accountability for people (e.g., line managers)

aka Leaders of People

Demand structure

• cross-functional teams

• multi-disciplinary teams

The needs of the organisation for the workforce that will flow into the cross-functional teaming structures that are accountable for the delivery of strategic outcomes.

You know if someone should be included in QBR Demand decisions if…

• They have accountability for “the work” (business outcomes, goals, etc)

aka Leaders of Work

Baseline

A view of all people and teams at a point of time, to be used during the planning process (not updated), and a clear view of what the organisation is trying to achieve

Baseline should be captured before Demand Leads make requests for people/teams and will be opened up

aka Planning Baseline

Actuals

A view of all people and teams at this point in time

Workforce forecasting

The practice of estimating how many people an organisation is going to need in order to meet its demands – tomorrow, next month, next year, three years into the future

Taxonomy

A shared language for how an organisation refers to their organisational structure and the work they do

Each organisation will have its own taxonomy depending on their contexts

Use the Taxonomy Builder to map each organisation’s unique taxonomy

Hatted role

A role that’s played by an individual that isn’t necessarily reflected in their formal job title (could be persistent or rotating)

Headcount

• members

Headcount is the total number, the count, of people present at any given point in time.

If we have 1000 employees and 500 contractors, we have a headcount of 1500.

Headcount is usually greater than Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) people capacity available for work.

FTE

• Full Time Equivalent

The measure of time that a person has for work, to a maximum of 1.0 which represents full time.

Represents both their available FTE (a person’s work schedule, eg 4day/week part time is 0.8)

FTE is a complex concept, and can be broken down into specific types.

FTE Target

• Target FTE

The number of FTE that the business requires at a specific point in time.

FTE Budgeted

• Budgeted FTE

The number of FTE that the business has allocated in a budget for a specific point in time.

FTE Contracted

• Contracted FTE

The FTE sum that is contracted (available and budgeted) for a given time period.

Eg if in a month:

• 10 people are contracted to work full time 1.0 FTE

• 20 people are contracted to work part time 0.5 FTE

• then the contracted FTE for the month is 20 (10x1+20x0.5)

FTE Financial

• Financial FTE

The realized FTE, based on what was actually worked. Takes into any additional effort, paid hours, or overtime.

• a 0.6 contracted FTE (3 day week) that works an additional 2 days in a week would be recorded as a 1.0 Financial FTE

FTE Forecast

• Forecast FTE

Informed by Financial FTE, shows the trend in actual paid hours, and used to forecast the coming FTE levels.

Typically calculated with different future horizons using best available estimates, typically 3 months (quarter), 12 months (year), 24 months, 36 months.

Different jurisdictions will assign different importances to forecasts. (eg UK differs from Australia)

FTE Planned

• Planned FTE

A plan that includes the effort that’s expected to be work by staff over a given time period. Typically includes additional/expected work, and excludes persons on annual leave.

Calculated with a shorter term horizon than a FTE forecast.