Using consumer trends for workforce planning

Citation

Rhidian Hughes, D. (2013), "Using consumer trends for workforce planning", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2013.37212aaa.002

Using consumer trends for workforce planning

Article Type: Strategic commentary From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 12, Issue 1

Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its direction for the future

Consumer behavior and consumer need determine the market in which businesses operate, and the market determines the labor demand. Identifying consumer behavior and needs, sometimes referred to as “consumer insight” provides key intelligence and analytics to position businesses within the marketplace, as well as ensuring they are equipped to deliver with the right configuration of human resources.

An intelligent approach to workforce planning

Market leadership and consumer-based analytics provide two key approaches to enable organizations to put their workforce planning on the front foot. Managing workforce supply and demand is the bedrock to human resource management, and anticipating workforce requirements is contingent on intelligence on the future demands on businesses. Workforce planning is the process of ensuring the right people, are in the right place at the right time.

Alongside this, market leadership, in whatever area of business, is crucial to business success. To develop market leadership there is a wealth of market intelligence available – from in-house purchasing trends to how businesses are performing locally, nationally or even globally. These analytics alongside strategy, insights and solutions provide the key to understanding the market environment and provide the key to making good workforce planning decisions. This “looking around corners” is a leadership challenge for all organizations and cannot be achieved by reacting to changing circumstances, but rather should be informed by long-range high quality data and intelligence (Sullivan, 2007).

Identifying leading indicators

Leading indicators refer to measurable variables that enable accurate predictions to be made about the future. They are normally used to measure economic performance to anticipate changes before particular economic trends emerge, however they can also be applied to human resource management. Sullivan (2007) illustrates how the fire service may predict future fires by examining undergrowth and humidity, and how water management organizations monitor snowpack to predict runoff water. These approaches can help to determine current and future need for services and help to better inform workforce configurations.

In this way leading indicators are an essential part of proactive human resource management and involve the following:

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  Identifying key early warning signals.

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  Using data to identify spikes or downturns in demand and correlating this to workforce data.

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  Looking across the data to identify trends and anticipate future changes.

Harris et al. (2011), for example, describe how a credit card company reduced its operating costs by scenario planning for future headcount and skills mix using a number of different planning assumptions. They conclude: “Human capital analytics can help direct resources towards the people and programs most essential to high performance” (Harris et al., 2011, p. 12).

Creating a framework for the future

Looking to the future, we need to develop frameworks for capturing, managing and modeling high quality data on which to base workforce planning assumptions. Tailoring these locally will provide a resource for all organizations to make better informed workforce planning decisions – both for the human resources required today as well as in the future. Improved workforce planning and management can help to avoid swings of under- or over-supply and offers an important opportunity to better manage staff and resource costs.

Dr Rhidian HughesCentre for Workforce Intelligence.

About the author

Dr Rhidian Hughes was educated at the University of York. He works at the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (and Mouchel Advisory and Project Services) as well as being a Visiting Professor at Buckinghamshire New University and visiting academic at King’s College London. He has lectured widely and is well published. Dr Hughes is the author, co-author or editor of over 160 articles, books, chapters and reports. Follow him on twitter: @rhidianhughes. Dr Rhidian Hughes can be contacted at: rhidian.hughes@mouchel.com