Businesses still focusing on functions rather than skills when it comes to workforce planning

These are the main findings from this year’s 10th edition of the HR Barometer, an annual survey conducted by Vlerick Business School and HR consultancy Hudson, part of Randstad Group Belgium, among 124 of Belgium’s 250 largest employers. The study was conducted by Professor Dirk Buyens and Researcher Sarah Quataert, both from the Strategic Talent Management Centre, together with Ellen Volckaert, Senior Manager for Hudson’s Research & Development Department.

Training and development are a top priority

The top three priorities for Belgian HR departments over the past year are Leadership Development, Selection & Recruitment, and Training & Development. While Selection & Recruitment remains an important consideration, it has now given way after two years at the top. Training & Development in turn moved up five places, making it the biggest climber in the list of 32 HR domains surveyed. The biggest drop was the New Way of Working, which has now become the new normal.

Ellen Volckaert, Senior Manager R&D at Hudson: “Training and (leadership) development, together with Selection & Recruitment, have dominated the top three spots for years. However, the influx of new talent is now being bolstered by an increased focus on developing individuals, and keeping them ‘employable’ once they are on board. However, this focus on finding solutions to current business needs also means that HR departments have less scope to prioritise potential game changers, such as HR Analytics or Strategic Workforce Planning. While HR departments often find it difficult to implement these, in the long term, strategic analyses could provide the answer to today's everyday HR challenges. Timely research into which talents the organisation will need in the future, where they can find them, and whether they can train and support internal potential for this may just be the way forward for HR.” 

Strategic workforce planning appears to be more of an ad hoc exercise

Strategic workforce planning (SWP) means thinking strategically as a business about future, long-term workforce needs – how to ensure you have the right people, in the right place and at the right time to achieve your organisational goals. While SWP has never been considered a top priority throughout 10 years of HR Barometer research, the current survey reveals that the issue is very much alive within HR departments:

• 65% of respondents consider SWP essential for business survival, while only 13% are satisfied with the results of actions taken in this regard.
• While over 75% of companies deploy SWP in some form, this is mostly on an ad hoc basis (36%).
• Responsibility for SWP is poorly formalised, even fragmented: only 8% of respondents have somebody with this formal remit, with the majority (79%) having no formal responsibilities or ones that are not clearly assigned.
• HR departments appear to be the driving force: 90% see themselves as responsible for the further professionalisation of SWP. In 56% of businesses where there is some form of formalised responsibility, their HR director is considered ultimately responsible.
• The main drivers for engaging in SWP come primarily from the business itself (86%), as well as from any overarching business strategy (76%).

Actions mainly target quantitative shortages          

Some 29% of respondents indicated that SWP is limited to being a theoretical exercise without concrete action. Among businesses that do actively engage in SWP, demand forecasting – identifying future needs in terms of talent (91%) – proves the most popular. In addition, 82% also look at the available supply of talent inside their own business. Actively working out scenarios for internal business and external geopolitical or market shifts happens the least. Also not so popular is the analysis of external talent supply (i.e. current and predicted labour market shortages).

• Some 44% of respondents look one year ahead when analysing workforce needs, with 36% having a horizon of 2-5 years.
• In terms of specific positions, 52% primarily focus on key positions within the organisation, while 32% also do SWP for bottleneck professions.
• Respondents appear to focus on possible shortages (over 70%) rather than surpluses (37%) or a possible mismatch (40%) in personnel, making little distinction between present and future.
• To close this gap, the most commonly employed talent strategies include hiring new personnel (85%) and focusing on retention to keep current employees on board (80%). Investing in technology (57%) and removing redundant job categories (30%) are then less of an issue.

According to Dirk Buyens, Professor of Human Resources Management at Vlerick Business School: “It is striking that 77% of respondents are mainly looking at traditional functions, while we are seeing a trend towards a so-called 'skills-based' organisation. This organisation of the future is more about individual competencies, interests and attitudes. This move away from defined functions implies more project-based work centred around specific tasks. At the same time, this allows organisations to be more flexible with their workforce, which is needed in a competitive and turbulent labour market landscape. Whether this trend actually continues remains to be seen. However, our survey already shows that 78% of respondents want their organisation to prepare more when it comes to skills. Businesses that are already doing this tend to be further along in their strategic workforce planning journey."

The complexity and need for better SWP skills are bottlenecks

Asked what holds them back, respondents cited the complexities of implementing strategic workforce planning and related actions, lacking the skills to undertake this themselves. SWP ranks at the very bottom when it comes to competencies that HR managers feel they have mastered. Finally, only 23% of respondents also indicated that they use specialised technology or mapping tools to collect SWP data.