Workforce planning approaches is the longest list in Workforce Management, and the exam tests both membership in the list and which concept a scenario describes.
The list
The BASK names: forecasting; build, buy, borrow and bridge strategies; attrition; gap and solution; supply and demand; workforce profile; upskilling and reskilling; redesigning jobs; robotics; and identifying high-potential and high-performance employees.
Arbitration and grievance procedures are Employee & Labor Relations. A bring-your-own-device policy is Technology Management.
Telling the concepts apart
- Workforce profile: the composition of the current workforce — job family, skill set, tenure, location. Planning starts here.
- Gap and solution: the difference between competencies needed in future and those held today, and the action to address it. Profile feeds it.
- Supply and demand: supply is the labor available, demand is what the organization requires.
- Attrition: loss of employees over time.
- Robotics: automation as a workforce planning factor.
Profile versus gap is the pair to watch: current composition versus the difference from future need. And supply and demand describes the labor pool against requirements; build and buy are the responses once a gap is known, not the description of it.
When automation changes the tasks required of 40 roles, two concepts apply together: robotics, and upskilling and reskilling. Automation that changes job content triggers both.
The judgment pattern
A software firm expects 30% of engineering work to shift to a new platform within two years. Engineers are experienced and loyal; the external market for the new platform is expensive and thin.
Keyed action: build a reskilling plan for current engineers and redesign affected jobs around the new platform. Upskilling and reskilling and redesigning jobs are both named approaches, and they fit a known future skill shift in a thin market.
Buying externally pays into a market the scenario calls expensive and thin while discarding experienced staff. Waiting until the shift completes forfeits the two-year lead time. Contract workers indefinitely make a permanent capability dependent on contingent labor.
Carry this: a known gap plus lead time plus a thin market equals build, not buy.