Workforce planning includes these five steps in order and briefly describe what is done to address:

The workforce planning process, typically includes the follow- ing five steps:

1. Identify the firms business strategy. A firms strategic vision, mission, and strategy affect its current and future staffing requirements by influencing the types and numbers of employees needed.

2. Articulate the firms talent philosophy and strategic staffing decisions. As you learned in Chapter 2, firms differ in their commitment to things like promoting workers, retaining workers, and their preferences for hiring people with certain skills or training them after they are hired. Because these factors influence the nature of the firms future labor supply and the type of workers it will need, they are important to understand when forecasting and planning.

3. Conduct a workforce analysis. Forecast both labor demand and labor supply and iden- tify any gaps between the two.

4. Develop and implement action plans. Develop action plans to address any gaps between labor demand and labor supply forecasts. The plans should be consistent with the firms talent philosophy, and can include both short- and long-term recruiting, retention, com- pensation, succession management, and training and development plans. For example, addressing the issues related to an aging workforce or a workforce with many employees who are roughly the same age might require longer-term action plans.

5. Monitor, evaluate, and revise the forecasts and action plans. Evaluate how effective the firms workforce plan has been in terms of meeting the companys recruiting and hir- ing goals. As the business environment changes, the firms forecasts and action plans may need to change, too.