An internal environmental scan assesses the business strategy to identify its potential impact on the workforce into the future.
During this stage, interviews are conducted with stakeholders and other business leaders to understand the future direction set by the business strategy, an assessment of the existing workforce is also conducted and scenario planning workshops are held to identify and assess a range of potential options to deliver the business strategy.
Engage business leaders
- Identify the key stakeholders and engage them early.
- Partner with business leaders to understand the business areas.
- Understand the the future direction set by the business strategy.
- Connect their plans to the potential impact on the workforce.
- Understand the timeline for those plans.
Case study
Example for a fictional European Bank entity:
Business objective 1 - Increase the number of Gen Z customers savings accounts to build potential for the home lending through brand loyalty.
Growth Driver 1 - This strategy is expected to grow the customer facing workforce by 2% per annum.
Business objective 2 - More than double the size of the Home Loans book in ten years. This equates to 8% YoY growth for the next 10 years.
Growth Driver 2 - The impact on the client-facing teams is expected to be half of the home loan growth – 4% per annum
Understand your talent needs
- Review your workforce and the skillsets.
- Determine future critical roles.
> How to use the platform's filters to identify future critical roles - Understand the impacts of emerging technologies on your workforce.
> Learn how to use the Job Impact chart for technology impact insights - Consider additional jobs that may be required.
> Learn how to use the Jobs Added chart to identify potential additional jobs
Conduct scenario planning
- Identify the key drivers of change in your organisation.
- Identify the critical uncertainties - the potential and unknown factors.
- Develop feasible and potential scenarios for the future by using a 2 x 2 matrix template below.
- Consider the implications of each scenario with an outline of all pros, cons and actions.
Example:
Next: Steps 3 & 4 - Supply and Demand & Gap Analysis
All steps:
An introduction to strategic workforce planning
Step 2 - Internal Environmental Scan