Workforce Analysis

Recruitment strategy depends on an organization's current and future needs. An organization can't effectively make staffing decisions without a comprehensive view of the existing workforce and its ability to achieve organizational objectives. Due to this reason, the HR function consciously moves towards workforce analysis and basing recruitment, learning, and development decisions on data-backed insights.

But what is workforce analysis, and how exactly can it be done for your organization? This article will cover all this by answering three simple questions.

What Is Workforce Analysis?

Let's begin by understanding what workforce analysis is. Workforce analysis entails collecting and analyzing data regarding the current state of the workforce to derive relevant insights. The existing workforce and talent availability are assessed compared to the organization's current and future work needs. 

The process reveals workforce demand, supply gaps, and skill gaps that the organization needs to fulfill for core and non-core job roles. In addition to taking people analytics into consideration, the organizational ROI is also used to determine the workforce quality and the measures needed to meet future needs.

What is the Need for Workforce Analysis?

Your organization may either have a shortage of required talent or an excess workforce. You may also be managing a poorly skilled or unprepared workforce that may not handle changing market environment, evolving customer demands, new products, emerging competition, or any other future contingencies. Staying unaware or unprepared can cost you a competitive advantage and sustainable growth.

You can avoid this with regular and systematic workforce analysis. You can stay on top of information like:

• Staff costs in comparison to organizational productivity and ROI
• Excess or shortage of employees for all job roles
• Skill gaps and training needs for core and non-core roles
• Effectiveness and ROI of training, learning, and development activities
• Workforce status in terms of engagement, potential attrition, and resource demands
• Essential characteristics of top-performing and non-performing employees
  

With so many incredible benefits, workforce analysis becomes not only an HR need but an organizational need.

How to do workforce analysis for your organization?

Once you have realized the potential that workforce analysis holds for your business, it's wise to get started at the earliest. To conduct a workforce analysis for your organization, you can follow a five-step process.

Step 1

Start by defining the problem statement to which you want to address or find solutions. This statement can guide your investigation and analysis, ensuring that all efforts are aligned with a specific objective. 

For example, if you want to determine your future staffing needs based on a new product launch, your problem statements can be - Do we have sufficient employees with the required skill set to manage the new product line. Is sufficiently skilled talent available out, or will there be a resource shortage? If not, should we train internal talent and deploy or hire from outside.

Step 2

Now, to find answers through scientific data analysis, you need to define a suitable analytical method. Key variables and study scope can be established based on the analytical process for data collection. For instance, if you wish to do trend analysis or predictive analysis, you will need to collect quantitative data for multiple periods and compare them to search for trends.

Step 3

Next, you need to collect data relevant to the problem or challenge you wish to resolve. Commonly collected workforce data includes demographics, employee skill set, training and performance records, engagement level, etc. While some of the data may already exist in your recruitment and performance management records, specific parameters may need to be collected afresh.

If your problem statements also require a study of external market conditions and the supply side, your workforce analysis can increase the data collection scope.

Step 4

Once the data is collected, you can perform workforce analysis using the pre-determined analytical method. Various statistical and analytical tools facilitate workforce data analytics in real-time. These tools allow you to present the analyzed data in customized reports accessible via a dynamic dashboard.

Alternatively, you can also conduct the analysis manually using spreadsheet tools and prepare personalized reports for strategic decision-making.

Step 5

Based on the data findings and insights, answers to the problem statement(s) defined in the first step can be explored. For example, suppose your data analysis reveals an attrition trend that would leave your organization understaffed in the next 12 months. In that case, you can invest in setting up a recruitment pipeline. 

Data-based insights can thus guide every strategic workforce-related decision. What is needed is a proactive approach towards data collection and analysis while keeping an eye on the core issues of your workforce and organizational needs.

To read more such informative articles, visit the Cogent Infotech website.