Workforce Planning - Business Unit - Comprehensive Plan

The Client

The responsible Senior Manager of a geographically dispersed Business Unit working throughout Queensland with complex operations covering commercial, regulatory, compliance, industry, policy and legislative drivers.

The Brief

HR Advantage was engaged to develop a five-year workforce plan to attract, retain and develop the workforce to meet current and future business needs.

Key drivers of the project to be considered in developing the plan included:  business strategy and priorities, changing work demands/mix, workload and resourcing pressures, labour supply challenges, a long-standing workforce with upcoming retirements, a legacy organisational structure, siloed management culture and practices, and a need to build capability throughout the business to adapt to change.  

Our Response

We worked closely with the Business Unit Head and key managers engaging them with the project at all stages.  This included individual and group consultations to understand current and future business requirements, concerns, issues and opportunities.

We analysed the workforce profile and composition (eg. classifications, distribution, length of service, diversity, mix) and considered information about business revenues and contracts, business plans, organisational structure and roles, staff feedback (survey and other inputs) and identified associated relevant improvement initiatives that were being pursued by the business.

Our analysis identified workforce related business requirements, concerns, opportunities and priorities.  We developed a summary snapshot of key issues with themes of workforce composition, structure, changing work demands, and leadership identified and validated with managers.  

Building on this analysis and the inputs received, we developed a five-year workforce plan with key objectives, strategies and implementation actions targeting areas that offered the most benefits in attracting, retaining and developing the workforce to meet current and future business needs.  The Plan included performance indicators to enable monitoring, review and adjustment of initiatives over time.

The Results

The Workforce Plan with objectives, key strategies and actions was wholly adopted, covering:

• Improved workforce awareness of business drivers and changing work requirements.
• Structural change.
• Leadership capability.
• Performance and development practices.
• Workforce development and skilling.
• Talent/succession management including to plan for retirements.
• Aligning recruitment practices reflecting changes in the labour market and changes in business needs, particularly for operational/field roles.

We provided a comprehensive report with supporting rationale and recommendations. This included implementation advice and requirements to take the plan forward.  It assisted the client to consider implementation planning and risk and to allocate resources to action the plan.

Arising from the analysis undertaken, structural change was identified as an urgent priority for the management group.  Our engagement was extended to work with managers to reconsider the business model and develop structural changes to address emerging business needs.  We worked closely with the management group to facilitate this review which led to an agreed new business model with whole of business structural changes.