Building a consistent and comprehensive approach to strategic workforce planning will continue to be a key differentiator for organisations who want to win in today and tomorrows’ marketplace.
Having a robust strategic workforce planning model in place is certainly a basic pre-requisite however are you sure you’re gaining the right insights by asking the right questions?
Unlike professionals such as lawyers, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.
Whether this is surprising or not, unless strategic workforce planning practitioners learn the value of consistently asking and answering the right questions, they risk not adding the right value. Over the years we have seen a great many approaches. Investing the time to create good questions, which have the potential to guide and release worthwhile inputs, is something that is often missing.
Our advice is to think carefully about the relevance, logic and significance of the issues you are aiming to resolve. Then when this is clearer think carefully about the depth and breadth of the questions that must be answered in order to better serve the needs of the business. Above all keep them simple and straightforward without dumbing down the substance.
We know this isn’t easy, but it is absolutely necessary to ensuring you are keep yourself, and others, firmly anchored in the purpose and outcomes that the organisations are striving to achieve. Without this simple foundation you are exposing yourself to the risk of not addressing the real issues and wasting a lot of effort in the process. Moreover, this groundwork is fundamental to constructing meaningful HR analytics and innovations in workforce planning.
Contact us now for more information on how you can use our expertise and access our strategic workforce planning framework and tools.
