Dear
Engineer Turned Analyst:
This is a very difficult scenario. Lay a foundation before diving into numbers and
spreadsheets. Ask a few of your fellow business managers and human resources
executives to provide advice and help when developing this plan.
Start by determining the organization’s attitude or philosophy toward talent. Is
the company primarily interested in developing talent from within, acquiring
experienced talent or in some hybrid of both approaches? Is it important to
retain people or is turnover acceptable? What amount of turnover is acceptable?
Does the organization want to
hire college grads
or only experienced people?
There are lots of other questions, but asking them should prompt your senior
management to think about how people need to be regarded in your organization. The
attached diagram
illustrates this.
The next step is to match this philosophy to your business needs, which in your
case is achieving proper staffing levels for a given level of revenue within a given
time span. Experience with other functions in the organization should give you some
baseline targets, or at least an idea of what number you will need to achieve. You'll
have to factor in the time element and determine baseline minimal staffing levels as
well as optimum levels.
Leave it to the business heads--although you can solicit input from them--to
determine the amount of revenue each unit must generate. Once this is figured out,
you can use past data regarding revenue per employee (assuming your organization has
it) to extrapolate the number of people you'll need to hire. You'll need to make
assumptions based on changing demographics, the impact of new technologies and the
expense of recruitment and development when determining final numbers and costs.
Success is possible if you collaborate with others on the management team and use
past data and experience to make projections. This should be a team effort.
SOURCE: Kevin Wheeler,
Global Learning Resources, Fremont, California, July 13, 2005. The graphic is
copyright Kevin Wheeler.
LEARN MORE: How to
quantitatively
measure whether your workforce is too large, too small or just right. Also:
three items every
organization should measure.
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful
information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a
legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.
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