Finding out where the organization is standing and its readiness to implement and sustain workforce planning is the initial critical step to start the SWP process. The importance is about the alignment of functional strategies within the captured external contexts and pre-determined internal situations.

How about the learning of strategic workforce planning? Those who are working in management roles should learn, but it can hardly say that high-performing and high-potential HR leaders and practitioners are not pivotal learners of SWP. The learning reinforces the sense of effectiveness in identifying critical roles and competencies, contributing to the development of organizational agility and alignment of workforce planning with integrated HR and business strategies.  Profoundly designing, critical sessions thought to be acquired are:

• Background and context of strategic workforce planning including externalities; and internal incentives and requirements. VUCA environment is the critical factor in consideration.
• Strategic alignment matching HR agility and rapid changes in business practices.
• Obtaining buy-in to reach actional S strategic workforce planning, delivering business values.
• Basics of workforce planning with interactive strategies adapting dynamics of labor supply and demands within the circle of controllability of HR and risks being identified and mitigated.
• Integration of strategic workforce planning and other HR interventions, that are embedded into particular practices, raising adjustments in basic disciplines of high potential planning, succession planning, learning & development.
• Workforce segmentation and current state analysis
• Scenario planning and demand forecast of labor force adapting new capacity of business performance.
• Gap analysis and action planning with integrated HR interventions
• Review and monitoring by both qualitative and quantitative measurements

Any within the list could reflect a part of the SWP process, and counting the dynamics of business practices and organizational contexts. Hence, additional items should be integrated into the process to maximize the effectiveness of SWP delivering business values.  Often, a workforce plan is composed and approved in tandem with the organizational strategic planning to achieve the highest consistency of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage.