Workforce planning is the strategic process of aligning a company's current and future talent needs with its overarching goals. ِAs mentioned in workforce planning policy, it involves analyzing the existing workforce and forecasting future demands to identify and bridge any skill gaps or employee shortages.

The proactive approach of workforce planning and analytics ensures the company has the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles, at the right time and cost.

Benefits of workforce planning includes enabling sustainable performance and informing key HR functions like recruitment, succession planning, and talent development.

The 7 R's of workforce planning aim to align a company's workforce with its long-term talent goals. These "R's" ensure the organization has:

• Right people: New hires who fit the company's culture, values, and needs.
• Right skills: Employees possessing the necessary work experience and skill sets.
• Right shape: A workforce configuration with the optimal competencies for short and long-term needs.
• Right size: The correct number of employees and job roles, avoiding understaffing or overstaffing.
• Right time: New or promoted employees who can immediately contribute.
• Right place: Hires located strategically to support current and future operations and growth.
• Right cost: Employees who are fairly and competitively compensated within budget.

Workforce planning typically involves four main steps:

1. Understand the company and Environment: Analyze the current organizational structure, future plans (e.g., productivity increases, technology updates), and the operating environment.
2. Analyze the Current Workforce: Identify existing knowledge, skills, talent profiles, attrition rates, and employee sentiment, including demographic and contractual differences.
3. Determine Future Workforce Needs: Pinpoint future skill and capability requirements, predict timeframes, and use scenario planning for adaptive strategies.
4. Identify Gaps and Develop Action Plan: Pinpoint discrepancies between current and future skills, then create an action plan for recruitment, development, or outsourcing to build a change-ready workforce.

The five steps of succession planning are:

1. Identify Key Areas and Positions: Determine critical roles whose vacancy would hinder business objectives or public safety.
2. Identify Capabilities for Key Areas and Positions: Define the essential knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies needed for these key roles, and communicate them to employees.
3. Identify Interested Employees and Assess Them Against Capabilities: Find employees with potential and interest in these roles, assessing their readiness or developmental needs, while ensuring diversity.
4. Develop and Implement Succession and Knowledge Transfer Plans: Create learning, training, and development strategies, linking them to required capabilities and facilitating corporate knowledge transfer.
5. Evaluate Effectiveness: Monitor plans to ensure timely filling of key positions, and effective performance of new incumbents.

The "5 D's" of succession planning represent critical unexpected life events that resilient businesses plan for to ensure continuity. They include:

• Death: The sudden loss of a key leader or decision-maker.
• Disability: A health issue that incapacitates a key leader, preventing them from performing duties.
• Divorce: The divorce of one or more business leaders, potentially impacting ownership or operations.
• Disagreement: Conflicts among business owners or between owners and other stakeholders.
• Distress: Situations where the business faces operational or financial strain.