Is your organisation ready for Strategic Workforce Planning?

Introduction

Today, strategic workforce planning (SWP) is no longer an option, but a necessity. This regulatory requirement could well become your strategic lever for addressing the current challenges facing your organisation.

Whether it’s the ecological transition, adaptations to climate change, disruptive technologies or the current economic context, these challenges could find concrete and sustainable solutions through better anticipation of the skills your organisation needs.

How about taking your GPEC to the next level? To that of Strategic Workforce Planning?

Perhaps you are wondering where your organisation stands on the Strategic Workforce Planning maturity scale?

Perhaps you are looking to identify areas for improvement to transform your talent management into a real competitive advantage?

You’ve come to the right place!

This article will guide you through the different dimensions of a successful skills-based approach, giving you the keys to assess your current level and progress effectively.

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Why it is more than necessary to invest in skills today

Before diving into the heart of the matter, allow me to ask a simple question: how many times have you found yourself recruiting in a hurry because a key talent had just resigned? Or realised that your organisation lacked the essential skills to seize a business opportunity?

These all-too-common situations are often the symptom of a reactive rather than proactive approach to skills management.

The self-assessment I am proposing today will enable you to:

• Gain a clear and objective view of your current practices
• Identify your strengths and weaknesses
• Define a concrete action plan to evolve your approach

Ready to embark on this journey towards excellence in SWP?

Let’s discover the six fundamental pillars to be assessed.

1. Strategy and Vision: alignment as the foundation for success

Why is this important?

As the saying goes, “A growing company must align its HR strategy with its business vision to avoid emergency recruitment and chaotic talent management.”

Imagine for a moment that you are the captain of a ship. Your mission is clear: to reach a specific destination. But what would happen if your crew didn’t know this destination, or worse, if they were rowing in a different direction?

This is exactly what happens when HR strategy is not aligned with the company’s business objectives.

Take, for example, an SME in the technology sector that defines an ambitious diversification strategy without integrating the HR dimension. This company wants to develop new products to attack a promising new market!

What would happen if HR were not informed in advance of this diversification strategy and therefore of the skills needed to respond to it?

The result?

Six months after the launch of new products, the company would find itself frantically recruiting, often at a high cost, skills that it could have developed internally with a minimum of foresight.

To assess your SWP maturity on this first pillar, ask yourself:

• Does your HR strategy stem directly from your strategic business plan?
• Do you have a clear vision of the skills needed in the short, medium and long term?
• Are business decision-makers involved in defining your skills management strategy?

SWP maturity in terms of strategy and vision is characterised by an integrated approach where HR and business decisions are one and the same, and where skills are considered strategic assets in the same way as financial or technological assets.

2. Sponsorship and resources: management commitment as a catalyst

“An effective SWP must be supported by management and have the right resources.” This statement may seem obvious, yet how many ambitious HR projects fail due to a lack of support at the highest level?

Sponsorship is not just a question of funding; above all, it is a question of legitimacy and priority.

Let’s take the example of an industrial company that wants to embark on a Strategic Workforce Planning project.

The HR team decides to start by mapping employees’ skills. Despite a competent and motivated HR team, their skills mapping project has been stalled for months. The reason? No member of the executive committee had made it a strategic priority, and managers therefore viewed this work as an administrative burden rather than a performance lever.

Now let’s suppose that the CEO, faced with major recruitment difficulties for positions that are key to the company’s development, decides to make SWP a real priority. Within a few months, the company will have completely transformed its approach, moving from reactive management to truly anticipating needs.

To assess your SWP maturity in terms of sponsorship and resources, ask yourself the following questions:

• The direct involvement of your management committee in HR strategy
• The resources (human, financial, technological) allocated to your SWP approach
• The visibility given to initiatives related to forward-looking management of jobs and skills

Management support is not a luxury, it is a prerequisite for success. Without this active sponsorship, even the best initiatives are doomed to failure.

3. Mapping & Skills: the compass for your transformation

“Without effective skills mapping, it is difficult to anticipate future needs and optimise internal mobility.” I see this reality every day in the organisations I work with.

Skills mapping is to your talent management what a map and compass are to a navigator: essential tools for understanding where you are and deciding where you want to go. But beware, effective mapping is not limited to a simple static inventory. It must be dynamic, scalable and, above all, actionable.

Let’s take an example: very (too) often, companies invest considerable sums of money in an ultra-detailed skills framework. Then, a few years later, this framework is still not being used in day-to-day HR processes. Why? Because it was too complex, disconnected from the realities of the business and, above all, because no one had been trained to use it.

On the other hand, if you opt for a pragmatic approach— a simplified framework, built with managers and directly integrated into recruitment, development, and mobility processes—this framework will be more likely to truly serve you and meet your business challenges.

To assess your SWP maturity in terms of skills mapping, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have a clear picture of your employees’ current skills?
• Have you identified the skills that are critical to your future success?
• Is your mapping actually used in day-to-day decisions (recruitment, training, mobility)?

A mature mapping is not the one that contains the most details, but the one that is truly useful and used on a daily basis.

4. Tools and Technologies: levers for efficiency in your approach

“SMEs that manage their HR with the right tools gain in efficiency and decision-making.” This is especially true today with the rise of digital solutions accessible to all organisations, regardless of their size.

Tools are not everything, but they can significantly amplify the impact of your SWP approach.

An example: How many companies still manage their skills using Excel files scattered across different departments? The time spent consolidating information is such that strategic analysis is reduced to a bare minimum.

Now suppose that these companies invest in the implementation of HRIS solutions that include a skills management module. Imagine the time saved on data collection, freeing up time for analysis and high value-added actions.

But beware, technology is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. I have also seen organisations invest fortunes in sophisticated tools that remained underused because they were not embraced by the teams.

To assess your technological maturity in terms of SWP, ask yourself the following questions:

• The suitability of your current tools for your actual needs
• The integration of your skills management solutions with other HR systems
• The effective adoption of these tools by your teams and managers

Once again, the ideal tool is not the most sophisticated one, but the one that precisely meets your needs and that your teams actually use on a daily basis.

5. SWP culture and adoption: changing mindsets to ensure lasting change

“A good SWP only works if teams understand and adopt it.” This simple truth is often overlooked in HR transformation projects.

The cultural dimension is probably the most complex to change, but also the most decisive for long-term success. An organisation where skills management is perceived as a mere administrative obligation will never achieve excellence in SWP.

For example, you can support your approach with ambassadors. Rather than imposing a top-down approach, build a network of ambassadors in each department. These ambassadors, trained and empowered, will be responsible for bringing the approach closer to the ground.

The result? Easier adoption and genuine ownership of the approach by all employees. Discussions about skills will become natural, integrated into team rituals and key moments in professional life.

To assess your cultural maturity in terms of SWP, ask yourself:

• How is skills management perceived by your employees and managers?
• Do you have ambassadors or representatives to promote your approach in the field?
• Are skills a regular topic of discussion, beyond formal assessment moments?

A mature SWP culture can be recognised by the way in which the subject of skills is naturally integrated into everyday conversations, without being perceived as an additional administrative constraint.

6. Integrating SWP into processes: moving from project to daily practice

“An effective SWP should not be a one-off project but a continuous process, integrated into HR and business practices.”

This dimension is often the last to reach full maturity, as it requires all the others to be well established.

Integrating SWP into daily processes is what makes the difference between an isolated HR initiative and a true organisational transformation.

Take, for example, an organisation that wants to develop a sophisticated SWP approach but continues to manage recruitment, training and mobility as separate, unconnected processes.

By working to integrate these processes around a common vision of skills, this organisation would not only gain consistency but also agility. Recruitment decisions would now be informed by a clear view of available internal skills, training plans would be directly aligned with identified gaps, and internal mobility would be facilitated by greater visibility of transferable skills.

To assess your maturity in terms of SWP integration, ask yourself the following questions:

• The effective use of your skills approach in recruitment, training and mobility processes
• The consideration of skills data in performance reviews and strategic decisions
• The existence of regular processes for updating and enriching your skills mapping

Mature SWP integration is characterised by an approach where skills are naturally at the heart of all HR decisions, without additional effort or parallel processes.

Conclusion: turning assessment into action

At the end of this self-assessment, you now have a clearer view of your level of maturity across the six fundamental dimensions of Strategic Workforce Planning. But assessment is only the first step; what really matters is what you do with it.

My advice?

Don’t try to transform everything at once.

Identify the dimension where progress would have the greatest impact on your organisation, and focus your efforts on that first. The quick wins you achieve will give you the momentum you need to tackle the next dimensions.

Remember that SWP is not a destination, but a journey. A journey that requires perseverance, adaptability and a clear vision of where you want to go. But it is also a journey that can profoundly transform your organisation, turning skills into a real lever for performance and differentiation.

So, are you ready to move from assessment to action?

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