Since the mainstream adoption of AI tools in the last few years, businesses and the average consumer have been actively exploring the uses and benefits it brings this new wave of technology brings to the table. While the technology itself is rapidly accelerating in terms of capability and functionality, it’s clear that there’s still question marks from some business leaders on how best to utilise the power of AI in their everyday strategic workforce planning. Corporate Modelling Services’ OPX platform harnesses the power of AI for strategic workforce planning, and many other workforce agility-based benefits.
Is your business still languishing in terms of a manual approach to operations and divisions of labour? Here are 3 ways you should consider using AI to bring your strategic workforce planning into the 21st century.
Expansive Scenario Planning
Such is the nature of modern business strategy that the best laid plans can often go awry. Even with the best planning and most detailed research, things can happen beyond your control. With this in mind, scenario planning is of paramount importance. Any change on the supply and demand front has a direct impact on current and future capacity requirements for organisations, and while there’s no crystal ball to keep business leaders ahead of the curve, it is possible to document the main potential outcomes from the information you have, and build an operational model scenario from that.
The Capacity Planning feature of the OPX platform allows for businesses to create and customise their scenario planning to optimise workforce agility. The feature is fully bespoke to any organisation. The forecasting methods can be as simple or as complex as you need, from simple top-down calculations to complicated bottom-up KPI and benchmark based plans. Regardless of the challenges and opportunities your organisation faces, generative AI-based productivity modelling on capacity allows for optimisation of workforce deployment, and builds confidence at senior leadership level to prop up wider business strategies.
Embed Strategic Workforce Planning into BAU Business Operations
While it can be tempting only to change tact or reforecast in times of difficulty, it’s far more beneficial for organisations to build Strategic Workforce Planning into regular BAU operations. Regular weekly, monthly, or quarterly review points internally allow for businesses to respond to immediate challenges as well as long-term strategic goals. By introducing a regular cadence, organisations can effectively align talent with the future needs of the business, without the risk of being derailed by the ever changing business landscape.
The OPX Capacity Planning and Core functions work seamlessly with any desired cadence and flexibility of scenario planning to ensure there’s never a ‘what now?’ situation when it comes to effectively allocating resource to the tasks and requirements from the organisation.
This type of expansive planning as part of your BAU outlook builds long term agility and resilience within the business which underpins future growth and success. The generative AI utilization allows for strategic changes to be planned ahead of time, and to work with the dynamic markets you find yourself in. By embedding strategic workforce planning as part of BAU, companies will secure talent advantage as well the elimination of unforeseen inefficiencies taking a toll on the workforce.
Long-Term Data Driven Workforce Management Planning
Regular cadence of strategic workforce planning revisions will help keep on top of the here and now, but in order to truly grow as a business, there must always be one eye on the horizon. The scenario planning and BAU integration data captured over time can serve as a foundation for business planning as far in advance as the next 5 years.
The data capture and analytics functions within OPX neatly house a plethora of insight over time, allowing you to learn from seasonality, project launches, and reforecasting requirements. Mid to long term business planning can come in many forms. Supply & demand, talent acquisition and development, product development, and market placement to name but a few. In order to best position an organisation for strong performance in the years ahead, a broad approach on scenario planning must be taken into account. The further into the future you look, the more variables you’ll face, and the less certain things become.
To create scenario plans which are truly robust, a data-driven approach must be taken. Historical trend analysis from KPIs and change management documentation create a clear understanding of cause and effect decision making in the business. The day to day challenges will always be front of mind for many, but only with long-term data driven planning will the organisation truly thrive.
To find out more on how OPX can transform and supercharge your strategic workforce planning, click here.