Posts Tagged ‘skills profile’
Workforce Development Plan
So what is workforce development?
It is an umbrella term for implementing strategies that help you bridge the gap between your current workforce and your target (future) workforce. Workforce development strategies address the gaps that you find when you undertake workforce planning and training needs analysis where the output is a workforce plan. The strategies could be about attraction, recruitment, retention, career progression, succession planning, job design, skills and competencies, values and behaviours, KPI’s and performance.
Generally when you write a workforce plan you cover the same time frame as the organisation’s strategic plan which could be 1, 3, 5, 10 or 20 years depending on your industry and budget cycles. The steps are reflected in the document itself starting with 1. Context and environment, 2. Current workforce profile, 3. Future workforce profile including forecasting demand and supply, 4. Gap analysis, priorities, implementation, 5. Review, monitor, evaluate.
Review your workforce plan regularly – about every 6 months or if there has been a major workforce change or refocus of the business. The workforce plan is a dynamic document resulting in a prioritised action plan identifying who will do what and by when – it’s not uncommon for organisations to have numerous updated versions of their workforce plan over the timeframe for which it has been designed.
As job roles change and you implement workforce development strategies, the framework that measures your workforce capability also needs to change to reflect the organisation’s structure and focus. You may want to build a capability framework to help you measure your workforce capability and capacity. Revisiting your demand and supply forecasting is important to see if you are on track.
The process is facilitated transparently, involving people from across your organisation to help identify strengths, development needs and issues. Communication, consultation and education is critical so you know what to do and what you are aiming for using a practical, straight forward approach – don’t over complicate it!
Evidence based approach to workforce and client demand
Increasingly you are being asked to provide evidence of demand for jobs and skills that are linked to your contracts, funding and proposals as well as your programs and services, and that reach specific outcomes and targets.
So how do you,
- Make sense of the data on business and industry (I), major projects and regional trends?
- Analyse demographics (D) information?
- Know who you should partner (P) with?
- Examine your client (C) profile?
AND
Marry all 4 areas to identify opportunities for new products and services, develop engagement and support strategies, and provide crucial evidence demonstrating how you can meet demand now and into the future?
Workforce BluePrint has developed a methodology and a process to help you quickly and simply understand the industry (I), demographics (D), partners (P) and your client (C) profile resulting in engagement (E), and support (S) strategies, this is what is looks like:
A skills profile (SP) that details foundation skills, transferable skills and industry specific skills plus a competitor analysis (CA) are options you may want to include.
Methodology
- Action research and collection of data for the specified regions, Local Government Areas (LGA’s) or Employment Service Areas (ESA’s)from a range of national, state/territory, local, major projects, regional and industry sources covering industry workforce demand and social demographics
- Analysis of your client profile for the location/s
- Comparison of industry workforce demand profile and social demographics with your client profile
- Identification of themes in the data and validation of analysis with team members working across the specific locations to value add with local intelligence
- Partnership map development with local team members
- Option of skills profile and/or competitor analysis
- Development of an action plan with priorities, engagement and support strategies and validation by team members
- Documentation of the whole process so it is repeatable and can be used across your organisation and at other locations/regions.
Outputs per region or location may include:
- Industry and business workforce profile
- Social demographics
- Partnership map
- Client profile
- Skills profile
- Competitor analysis
- Report and action plan
Get the evidence you need for your business case, tender submission, funding allocations, new program or workforce plan.
Send an email to wendy@workforceblueprint.com.au with the various components that you are interested in – I, D, P, C, SP and/or CA.