Workforce planning: world gets away from us

AUSTRALIA was once a global leader in workforce planning but it is fast losing pace with the rest of the world.

Australia was once a global leader in workforce planning but it is fast losing pace with the rest of the world.

Our reduced capacity to compete in the global labour market is evident, as is our arrogance in believing we can still attract and retain the workforce we need.

The Mandarin — an influential website for public service leaders and executives — recently said in a commentary: “The Australian Public Service’s capability and capacity have fallen behind the United Kingdom and worldwide benchmarks after failing to heed 10 years of warnings about inadequate workforce planning.”

It went on to say the APS had been seeking, for more than 10 years, to build workforce planning capabilities to position itself to better manage its people, but last year’s State of the Service Agency survey showed workforce planning capabilities remained problematic, with 69 per cent of agencies covering 92 per cent of the workforce reporting that they were seeking to improve their workforce planning capability.

Australian Medical Association vice-president Stephen Parnis said last December that the AMA was concerned medical workforce planning in Australia had stalled since the abolition of Health Workforce Australia in the federal budget.

“Workforce planning is falling dangerously behind, and it is patients and communities who will miss out on the highly trained doctors they need in the future,” Parnis says

The demand since 2007 from Australian industry for stronger workforce planning will result in the 2015 launch of the Australian Standard on Workforce Planning by Standards Australia.

The International Standardisation of Organisations has identified workforce planning as one of the most significant issues for org­anisations globally and has established a global working group to write an ISO standard due for release next year.

More than 40 workforce planning experts from 13 countries — Australia, Canada, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, India, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, Britain and US — are drafting the ISO standard.

I convene the ISO working group and am lead writer of the inaugural Australian standard.

There is no argument that workforce planning is fundamental to determining current and future people requirements of an organisation.

It is closely linked to human governance as most aspects of corporate governance have a human element, and workforce planning is about assessing and mitigating workforce risk.

The problem in Australia is the level of delegation for workforce planning. It is generally far too low on the corporate priority list, ­resulting in unsophisticated methodologies and systems, inade­quate resourcing, limited capability and disparate activities in government, regions, industries and across sectors.

It is time for a whole-of-government, industry and strategic workforce planning approach underpinned by predictive diagnostics and managed by skilled, strategic workforce planners foc­used on achieving meaningful workforce plans.

The world is embracing the hard skill of workforce planning and creating chief workforce planner positions to sit alongside chief finance and chief executive officers to predict, manage and account for workforce risk. Australia has a lot of catching up to do.

Julie Sloan advises international and Australian companies on workforce planning