For an introduction to workforce planning, please see Team-Centric Workforce Planning
At TeamForm, we encourage an iterative approach to embedding and developing a team-centric workforce planning capability. Starting small within the organisation to really help build and embed the foundational muscles required to successfully plan at the scale of 100s of teams and 1000s of people.
Unlocking first team-centric workforce planning value with TeamForm
Before we can get started, there is a pre-requisite that you already have a single source of truth of your current workforce, work and delivery team structures made in visible in Team Directory. This single source of truth visibility consists of completing all the activities highlighted in the mandatory 2 phased approach outlined in the https://teamform.atlassian.net/l/cp/mvmBzzKq.
NOTE: If you have a need of a secondary supply structure, please make sure this has been established in Directory prior to continuing with team-centric workforce planning.
Workforce planning piloting scope
Based on our experiences with various customers, we have found that starting small with a subset of teams makes it a lot easier to design, test and iterate on the intended workforce planning process than to try to onboard everyone. We recommend targeting 1-2 cross functional Business Units to start is a good size as it allows effective testing of the designed process, lower change management effort and easier to get targeted feedback on improvement areas.
Value achieved when completed
Ability to regularly review whether delivery teams and capabilities are aligned to priority work
A way to coordinate resourcing between delivery teams and providers of capability
When resource needs are raised and assessed, it can be done with linkage to work priorities to ensure the right capability has been allocated to the right delivery teams at the right time
Ability to understand high level cost estimates of each delivery team
Ability to allow leaders to plan against a point in time reference point otherwise known as baseline
Activities you will need to complete in order to achieve the values articulated above
How to set up TeamForm
Category | TeamForm Business Design Decisions and Associated Configuration Activities |
|---|---|
People Data | Business design decisions:
At TeamForm, we recommend the following additional data is brought into the platform from HRIS system:
Configuration step(s): |
Business design decisions:
If your organisation is only ready to apply the use of actual costing of people then a blended rate card is not recommended to be brought in as it will cause confusion on what the numbers present vs what Finance provides them. Configuration step(s):
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Define when you want to refresh the baseline reference point. At this stage we recommend you either do it at the start of every month or whenever the team is about head into a form of a planning cycle. Configuration step(s):
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Demand Requests and Approval Workflow | Business design decisions:
Configuration step(s):
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Work Linkage | All teams submitting a capacity request must provide a linkage to the work that they are requesting the raised capacity to complete |
Automated Notifications | Business Design Decisions:
Configuration step(s):
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Planning cadence | Set up the planning cadence so that the raising of capacity needs can be done throughout the quarter. This is otherwise known as continuous planning where this planning cycle has limited formalised alignment with company cadences |
How TeamForm will be used by users during workforce planning once configured as outlined in the table above
Delivery team leads uses Planner to lodge all capacity requests throughout the quarter
Supply team leads uses Planner to review and approve all capacity requests and then uses Team Builder to assess allocation of team members against requests
Team Builder is also used to track discrepancy between agreed FTE vs allocated FTE
Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:
Next steps to iteratively mature and realise further team-centric workforce planning with TeamForm
How do you know you’re ready for this phase:
- Demand and supply leaders are comfortable with the use of Planner and Team Builder to triage and manage capacity requests
- Directory team allocation data is as accurate as it can be close to real-time reflecting people movements
- The blended rate is understood by all participating users on how to interpret the data and can use it to provide a high level estimate of team cost
Value achieved when completed
A clear workforce planning process is established with clear roles and sequenced activities defined to help establish a workforce plan that will achieve business objectives in the upcoming 3-4 quarters
A clear tooling ecosystem established to help define the flow of data between platforms and systems so that workforce insights can be extrapolated holistically
Cross functional and non-cross functional teams have been enabled to workforce plan following a single process within TeamForm
High level estimation of team financial costs are provided to users
80% of planning activities are done in alignment to the organisation’s planning cycle with continued support and process in place for in quarter / continuous planning to capture ad hoc movements
Area | Activity |
|---|---|
Baseline Refresh | Recalculation of the baseline is done at an agreed frequency generally aligned to the company’s planning cycle Baseline refresh is done once at the end of quarter and once after the completion of all planning cycle activities |
Planning periods are established for the next 4 quarters Transition from current planning period to the next planning period in alignment with the organisation’s start of planning cycle | |
Future planning for the following 3-4 quarters enabled for delivery team leads to indicate how much capacity they will need moving forward | |
Financials | Where possible, budgets or financial constraints are brought into the system |
Demand Requests and Approval Workflow | Specific requirements and/or skillsets are mandated to be documented in the tool when raising capacity requests |
Reports | Comparison report made available to show insights on people movement throughout the quarter to know whether teams were persistent |
Planning Cadence | Both continuous planning and quarterly planning anchored to the organisation’s planning cadence i.e we start to introduce a set period approval workflow process |
Piloting Scope | All cross functional and non-cross functional teams OR 60% of the organisation |
Workforce Planning Process | Accountable owner(s) of the overall workforce planning process has been identified to help endorse and roll out the planning cycle activities Workflow process designed, signed off and embedded with guardrails established on what people need to follow across different planning scenarios including but not limited to:
Roles and responsibilities of who’s to do what across each step of the process and who is involved throughout the process such as Finance and HR are defined and socialised |
Tooling Ecosystem | Process of how all the different platforms such as work, finance, people, team and reporting tools will come together to support the end to end workforce planning cycle has been designed, signed off and socialised with the objective to achieve interconnected data flow and data insights extrapolation |
Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:
Final team-centric workforce planning value unlock with TeamForm
How do you know you’re ready for this phase:
- The end to end workforce planning process, roles and responsibilities, sequenced activities and tooling landscape are understood by all participating employees
- Participating users are proficient in using Planner, Team Builder and Forecast to complete workforce planning activities including knowing when to use what module
- Cross functional and non cross functional teams are clear of how demands between different teams will be raised and managed within or outside of TeamForm
- The relationship between the budget constraints and blended rates of team costs in TeamForm and how it plays to the impacts of the actual costing of the workforce is well understood by team leaders and Finance
Value achieved when completed
A single workforce planning process is followed and adopted by the whole organisation (especially the people in scope for cross-functional teaming structures with the need to leverage on non cross functional teams)
Ability to execute an enterprise cadenced planning without the need of in quarter / continuous planning, allowing the organisation to achieve true persistent teams
A planning process that can drive multi year workforce structure decisions based on long-term enterprise objectives, existing team insights on capability, capacity and principles alignment
Area | Activity |
|---|---|
Forecast | Multi year Forecast enabled with Principles insights leveraged to drive decision making Confidence indicator enabled for leaders to provide an early indication of how confident they are against forecasted numbers |
Demand Requests and Approval Workflow | Planner request and approval flow enabled and aligned to the different stages of the enterprise’s planning cycle |
Reports | Scheduled data export or API used for downstream reporting and analytics of data from various tools |
Planning Cadence | Removal of continuous planning as all planning activities are executed to the enterprise cadenced planning cycle |
Piloting Scope | Whole of organisation participating in process (usually the people in scope for cross-functional teaming structures) |
Workforce Modelling | Where required, separate workspace granted to allow future workforce modelling in Planner |
Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:
Optional: Additional Planner set up for better user experience
Use the table below to help you understand what other features can be done with your Planner! Remember they are optional and should only be brought into the platform when your organisation is ready for it or sees value in it.
Benefit(s) of enabling the functionality | |
Limit users from being able to view, action requests on their own teams only | While restricting certain people to have views of their own team, this limits transparency and collaboration between leaders to drive effective conversations. Instead we recommend the ‘trust but verify’ model in using the History functionality in TeamForm to trace who has performed what actions within teams if data looks inaccurate rather than introducing viewing and actioning restrictions as it will introduce more admin effort to maintain the access list and for someone to jump in and help if for example is going on leave. |
Automated notifications | Automated notifications and/or dedicated email distribution lists can be provided to you so that you can easily send customised notifications specific group of users. Examples of this may be reminding them to update allocation so that workforce insights can be extrapolated or to review demand requests so that any contentious resource constraints can be discussed and resolved at a Dependency Marketplace. This requires the specific notification content to be provided to TeamForm and the updated business logic to who should receive the notification, how and when. |
Ways of working principles | Giving TeamForm all your team archetypes from the start will allow you to:
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Additional resources:
Use the playbook below to give you step by step guidance on how to roll out Planner, Team Builder and Forecast modules into your organisation as you embark on each phased journey of unlocking workforce planning journey with TeamForm.