MANPOWER PLANNING: The Key To A Successful New Year

2023 is now approaching fast… but are you ready for it ?

At this time of the year, we are usually so busy wrapping up everything to close the year on a high, that we tend to forget to take the time to prepare for what’s coming ahead. And without doing that, you'll spend next year running behind short-term goals and trying to catch-up for whatever we are behind with.

Set yourselves for success for 2023:

2022 is over. What matters now is to get ready for what’s coming ahead. And to do that properly you need time to pause and think.?

Otherwise you’ll end up doing just like this… and this is not how we build high performing organisations!

I’m not saying the teams should drop everything, but leadership definitely needs to use the coming month to plan their overall capability needs for the next year to optimise their chance to actually seeing it come true.

MANPOWER PLANNING TIPS ??

1/ It starts from the top

The? manpower planning exercise is only one part of a broader capability needs assessment. The objective this month is to define what are the capabilities you need to deliver next year’s business plan and by when.

The best people to define what capabilities are needed to deliver the plan are the managers. Because they are on the ground, they know what it takes to get you where you want to be, and they know what is already in place or not.

BUT, they cannot evaluate their needs if the top management has not done their part. Defining what the business objectives are for the next year and communicating it clearly to the managers is absolutely essential... but not that easy to do.

First, the CEO (together with their closest advisors) needs to define the business objectives for the next year. The outcome should be a detailed description of what the company is delivering as of December 2023 in terms of revenues, products and services, markets, # of clients served, etc.

This clear picture of the future will help managers project themselves and identify the capability gaps.

Second, the CEO needs to bring the leadership team together to go through this plan with them, take their questions, hear their potential concerns, clarify the priorities, etc.

It is only once this is done that the manpower needs exercise can start!

2/ Define the overall capability needs

As you go down to the managers and ask them to escalate their manpower needs, take this opportunity to also review other capability needs such as tools, systems, processes, etc. People alone will most often not suffice if you do not have the right tools and processes. And these are elements that need to be accounted in your budget and planned for to ensure they are in place on time.

These are the questions your managers have to consider:?

Based on your understanding of what the company will be delivering as of December 2023 and in order to deliver accordingly,?

• What capabilities does your team need to increase? (These are capabilities already existing in the team but not sufficient to operate at the scale expected next year)
• What capabilities does your team need to build? (These are capabilities that do not exist yet in the team and that will be necessary to operate at the scale expected next year)
• What capabilities do you need other teams to develop? (These are capabilities that needs to be increased or built by other teams for your team to operate at the scale expected next year)

3/ Define the sourcing strategy

Not all capabilities require hiring or buying. A very effective way to build capabilities is to develop them within. This is cheaper for instance to train your teams than hiring externally, and on top of that it will boost engagement in the teams as employees get to grow in the organisation and take on new responsibilities.?

But again, it takes time. So you need to plan enough in advance to build the capabilities in the teams on time.

Once you have done that exercise, you can start listing the new roles that need to be hired in your manpower plan and send it to HR for them to build their plan to deliver those on time.?

4/ It is an annual exercise

Building the capabilities that will allow you to deliver your business plan for next year takes time: Hiring takes time, developing employees takes time, implementing new processes and tools takes time !

When you think that hiring someone, which is the fastest of all the above, takes AT LEAST 2-3 months from the moment you identify the needs, you get why planning just for 3 months ahead means that you are already late!

I hope this was helpful! Feel free to share your thoughts or reach out to me if you want to find out more about how to define your People Strategy in your startup ;-)

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About the author:

Anne Caron is an international speaker, author and People Strategy expert. Drawing on her 10 years' experience as a senior HR executive at Google, she set up her consulting practice in 2015 to support leaders in building high performing and positive organisations that scale. Through her experience working with entrepreneurs, she developed a practical methodology for startups to grow the right organisation and teams, which she describes in her book?From Zero to 1,000: The Organisational Playbook For Startups.

Find out more about Anne Caron:?www.annecaronconsulting.com