Top 5 Best Workforce Planning Tools to Expand Your Company

Did you know that 32% of organizations strategize around swapping full-time workers with contingent employees for cost efficiency? At the same time, 78% of companies slowed down the pace of their hiring activities. [1] Apparently, workforce planning heavily steers the trajectory of your business and helps you adapt to the current trends and challenges. Without solid workforce planning in place, you may face obstacles like overstaffing, understaffing, skills gaps, and high turnover rates, which lead to a decline in your productivity. Understanding why workforce planning matters is essential, as this is where workforce planning tools come into play. For a more comprehensive understanding, refer to our Workforce Planning Guide. But what is it and how do you use it? In this article, we will dive deeper into workforce planning tools as well as solid workforce planning strategies to help you scale your organization. Let’s get started!

What Are Workforce Planning Tools?

Workforce planning tools are software applications that help you plan, manage, and optimize your human capital. They enable you to align your workforce strategy with your business goals, identify skill gaps and talent needs, create and execute hiring plans, monitor and measure performance, and anticipate and respond to changes in the market.

Workforce planning tools are used for:

• Strategic alignment: Workforce planning tools help you align your workforce strategy with your business strategy. You can define your vision, mission, values, and objectives and translate them into specific workforce requirements. You can also align your organizational structure, culture, and processes with your strategic goals.
• Demand forecasting: With workforce planning tools, you’ll be able to forecast the future demand for your products or services and the corresponding workforce needs. You can use historical data, market trends, customer feedback, and scenario analysis to estimate the quantity and quality of talent that you will need in the short-term and long-term.
• Supply analysis: You can also use workforce planning tools to help you analyze the current supply of talent in your organization and the external labor market. You’ll be enabled to assess the skills, competencies, experience, performance, potential, and availability of your existing employees and potential candidates. You can also identify skill gaps and surpluses and plan accordingly.
• Hiring planning: Workforce planning tools help you create and execute hiring plans based on your demand and supply analysis. You can set hiring targets, budgets, timelines, and criteria for each role or department. You can also track the progress of your hiring process and measure the effectiveness of your recruitment sources and methods.
• Performance management: Through the use of workforce planning tools, you can monitor and measure the performance of your employees and teams. You’ll be able to set goals, KPIs, metrics, and feedback mechanisms for each individual or group. In addition to that, you can also evaluate the results, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide coaching or training as needed.
• Succession planning: Workforce planning tools can be used to help you plan for the future leadership and talent development of your organization. You can identify critical roles and high-potential employees and create succession plans for them. You can also design career paths, learning opportunities, mentoring programs, and recognition schemes to retain and motivate your talent.

Strategic Workforce Planning Map

9-Box Grid

The 9-Box Grid is a popular tool used in strategic workforce planning to assess and manage talent within an organization. This grid helps you identify high-potential employees, as well as those who may be at risk of underperformance or turnover. The grid is typically divided into three categories – high potential, high performance, and high risk. Placing employees in the corresponding boxes based on their performance and potential helps you better understand your talent pool and make informed decisions about talent development, succession planning, and retention strategies.

HR Dashboarding

HR Dashboarding involves using data visualization tools to track key HR metrics and KPIs in real-time. These dashboards provide a comprehensive view of workforce data, such as employee turnover rates, recruitment metrics, training and development effectiveness, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. You’ll be able to identify trends, spot potential issues, and make data-driven decisions to optimize workforce planning processes and outcomes by regularly monitoring these metrics.

Compensation and Benefits Analysis

Conducting a comprehensive analysis of compensation and benefits within an organization is essential for strategic workforce planning. By comparing salary and benefits offerings to industry benchmarks, evaluating the effectiveness of incentive programs, and analyzing the overall cost of total rewards, you can ensure you are competitive in attracting and retaining top talent. Also, a thorough analysis of compensation and benefits helps identify areas for improvement and investment to enhance employee engagement and motivation.

Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning involves creating alternative future scenarios based on different variables and factors that may impact workforce planning decisions. Developing multiple scenarios with varying levels of uncertainty enables you to anticipate potential challenges, opportunities, and changes in the external environment that may impact your workforce. This proactive approach allows your company to develop contingency plans, adjust strategies, and build resilience in the face of unpredictable events, such as economic downturns, technological advancements, or shifts in market demand.

While strategizing around workforce planning, you have to juggle between tasks. Using a recruitment tool can make things easier and ensure everyone is on the same page. You can leverage Manatal’s Applicant Tracking System to keep everyone in the loop, allowing hiring managers to make notes, and timely communicate with all stakeholders, making sure the recruitment plan is going into execution via the Collaboration & Activities feature. You can also use Manatal to monitor your success and see areas of improvement in your workforce planning strategy with Manatal’s Reports & Analytics function.

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Best Workforce Planning Tools

1. Runn

Runn is a workforce planning tool designed for knowledge workers, such as consultants, agencies, and software developers. It helps them manage their team workloads, understand which roles are most profitable, and forecast future needs.

Some of the key features of Runn’s workforce planning tool are:

• It enables you to compare capacity with confirmed workload and gain visibility into everyone’s bookings.
• It allows you to track project budgets, revenue, and profitability in real-time.
• It can be integrated with popular tools like Harvest, Slack, and Zapier, etc.

Price: The price of Runn’s workforce planning tool starts at $10 per user/ per month. You can visit Runn’s website for more information.

2. Workday

Workday is a cloud-based Human Resource Management (HRM) software that helps you manage your entire employee lifecycle from hire to retirement. It also offers a comprehensive workforce planning tool that helps you plan, manage, and optimize your human capital.

Some of the key features of Workday’s workforce planning tool are:

• It allows you to link your strategic plans to your corporate financials and align your future workforce composition to your business goals.
• It helps you optimize your people resources to meet current and future business demands by allocating the right people at the right time across operating units and projects.
• It enables you to model skills capacity by location, ramp time, cost of workforce, and more, and compare multiple what-if scenarios to pinpoint the best mix of talent.
• It supports continuous and agile workforce planning with up-to-date headcount plans and related costs and allows you to monitor and adjust your hiring plans as business conditions change.
• It integrates with any HR system and provides a unified data core for planning, analytics, and reporting.

Price: The price of Workday’s workforce planning tool is not publicly available. You can visit Workday’s website for more information.

3. Visier

Visier is a cloud-based people analytics software that helps you understand and improve your workforce performance. It also offers a robust workforce planning tool that helps you plan, manage, and optimize your human capital.

Some of the key features of Visier’s workforce planning tool are:

• It allows you to combine people data and business data, wherever it lives, and share insights securely with the context that people leaders need to make better decisions.
• It enables you to use scenario planning and modeling via Visier’s analytical insights and compare different outcomes for your workforce composition, skills capacity, headcount plans, and related costs.
• It supports collaborative plan creation and real-time visibility that drives accountability and helps accelerate planning cycles. It also provides intuitive dashboards and ad-hoc analyses that make it easy to share plans and guide impactful discussions.
• It integrates with any HR system and provides a unified data core for planning, analytics, and reporting. It also offers a 360° view into your workforce by extending analytics beyond the core to explore the full experience and impact of employees as they apply, onboard, develop, and someday leave your organization.

Price: The price of Visier’s workforce planning tool is not publicly available. You can visit Visier’s website for more information or to request a demo.

4. SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud-based software that provides human experience management (HXM) solutions for organizations of all sizes and industries. It helps businesses optimize their human capital by aligning their strategic plans, people performance, recruitment, and learning activities with their business goals.

Some of the key features of SAP SuccessFactors’ workforce planning tool are:

• It helps you to scenario-based model your future workforce demand and supply, and predict future gaps (shortages and surplus) in the workforce along planning dimensions (e.g. org. units, job classifications.)
• You can use SAP Analytics Cloud to create collaborative plans and compare different outcomes for your workforce composition, skills capacity, headcount plans, and related costs.
• It can be integrated with any HR system and provides a unified data core for planning, analytics, and reporting.

Price: The price of SAP SuccessFactors’ workforce planning tool starts at $8 per user/ per month. You can visit SAP SuccessFactors’ website for more information.

5. PeopleFluent

PeopleFluent is a cloud-based talent management software that helps you attract, develop, and retain your talent. It also offers a workforce planning tool that helps you plan, manage, and optimize your human capital.

Some of the key features of PeopleFluent’s workforce planning tool are:

• It allows you to see your whole enterprise from any angle, through any lens, and get all the information you need to make plans, decisions, and adjustments.
• It helps you to map your talent to inform your decisions, see your whole workforce on one screen, and sort and color code the data the way you want.
• It enables you to use OrgPublisher org charting software to create collaborative plans and insights into your people's needs, skills, and talent, and compare different outcomes for your workforce composition, skills capacity, headcount plans, and related costs.
• It supports real-time visibility that drives accountability and helps accelerate planning cycles. It also provides intuitive dashboards and ad-hoc analyses that make it easy to share plans and guide impactful discussions.

Pricing: The price of PeopleFluent's workforce planning tool is not publicly available. You can visit PeopleFluent's website for more information.

Conclusion

Workforce planning is the key part of scaling any organization and ensuring its long-term success. Utilizing workforce planning tools can significantly streamline the process and help achieve your goals more effectively. However, it is important to recognize that workforce planning is a complex task that involves various stakeholders and requires thorough preparation. Before initiating workforce planning, it’s a good idea to gather relevant data, identify key objectives, secure leadership buy-in, and communicate effectively with all parties involved.

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Citations:

1. LinkedIn