By leveraging data, HR needs to replace the relative certainties of supply and demand forecasting with “Workforce Shaping.”

Workforce shaping helps to provide a structured approach to answer the difficult questions related to appropriate work layers, the span of control, and what are the strategic steps that you must take to achieve your workforce of the future. As such, it is essential that workforce shaping be closely aligned to business strategy.

Through workforce shaping life cycle, 5 phases will closely tackle business concern and gradually transfer data to decision making:

Scenarios: Consider the possible business futures, including strategy and disruptive themes

Strategic Levers: Apply strategic levers to scenarios, including markets, customers, channels, propositions/products/offerings, processes, data, geography

Rules & Assumptions: Define a set of rules and assumptions to apply to the given scenarios

Insight Generation: From scenario analysis output, identify workforce implications (cost, capacity, capability, …) and generate actionable insights

Insights to Action: Translate insights into short- and long-term roadmaps to aid in strategic workforce decisions (e.g. capability, reskilling, talent management)