Name: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Strategic_Workforce_Planning_05142025_4915774
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T06:25:28.482Z
Duration: 37 min 43 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Strategic_Workforce_Planning_05142025_4915774

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Strategic_Workforce_Planning_05142025_4915774": Hello everyone, and welcome to today's event, Build the Team to Power Your Goals with Strategic Workforce Planning. My name is Rob Parsons, and I'll be your moderator today. So before we begin, I just want to cover a few housekeeping notes. First, note the audio is going to be coming through your computer. No dial in, so make sure you've got your speaker set up correctly. Sometimes you also have to reload or refresh your browser. You can see the key commands here on your screen to show you how to do that. And of course, if you experience any technical issues during the webinar, just click the help icon on the console dock, and we've got some people in the back end who can help you out there. So let's take a closer look at some of the other important features. You'll be able to download and print a copy of today's content for future reference. We also have additional resources for you there. Just refer to the files and resources window at the top right of your console. You can get that at any time, and we'll be sending a follow-up email too with a recording of the event, and you can get the resources through that recording as well. Also, if you have any questions during today's webinar, just send them via the ask us a question window, or there's an ask us, ask us widget located at the bottom of your webcast screen. You just enter your question, click submit, and we'll get to the move as we can. We're going do the best we can to get to all the questions. We can't get into deep specifics, but it's an exciting topic, so I do want to make sure we cover as many questions as we can. And please note, this presentation does not constitute legal advice. It's for informational purposes only, so we'll only be able to be very general here. But we'll do our very best to give you some great information. So now I'd like to introduce today's speakers. Joining us today are Jessica Vitus and Kelly Tagomas. Jessica is a talent enablement partner at Paychex's HR Service Center of Excellence. Throughout her career, Jessica has held various HR and leadership positions, and over the past sixteen years she's been instrumental in shaping corporate cultures, fostering employee development and creating initiatives that balance the delicate relationship between employee engagement and productivity. Her passion lies in helping organizations achieve optimal performance while ensuring employees feel valued and empowered. Jessica has her PHR and resides in Pittsburgh, PA. Kelly is also a Talent Enablement Partner in the HR Service Center of Excellence with Paychex. She is a dynamic HR professional with a passion for driving efficiencies and leveraging technology to enhance organizational performance. With extensive experience in HR, specializes in creating streamlined processes that empower teams, improve workflows, and ultimately foster a more productive and collaborative work environment. A firm believer in the power of innovation, Kelly is dedicated to helping others navigate and implement technological solutions that optimize HR practices and support organizational growth. She has her HR Management certification from Villanova University, and she is SHRM certified. Welcome to you both, you great experts. We're going get a lot of great content today. So, Jessica, why don't I hand it off to you here? Walk us through the agenda for the webinar and what we're going to learn. Thank you, Rob. So effective workforce planning is more than a strategy, right? It's essential to stay competitive in today's fast moving market. So today, you're in for an actionable session packed with insights on boosting productivity, predicting workforce capacity, and aligning employee output with business goals. We will be covering why you should focus on workforce planning now, then we'll discuss strategic versus operational workforce planning, and then we'll talk through the four step workforce planning process. And then lastly, we'll outline how paychecks can help you. We don't want you to feel alone in this. So in short, you're gonna learn how to harness data, streamline operations, and make smarter decisions to help your business become a place where great people wanna stay and grow. So let's kick off with creating a baseline understanding of what workforce planning is and why you should focus on it right now with purpose and intention. So, what is workforce planning? Workforce planning is a long term strategy to align staffing with future business needs. It involves forecasting labor demand, identifying skill and staffing gaps, and it also includes planning to recruit, train, and retain your employees. Workforce planning differs from workforce management, which is more of your staff oversight, more on a daily basis and includes, so the workforce planning piece includes planning, which this is where you want to think big picture, be strategically focused. You also want to focus on goal setting. So, your goal setting, we want this to include getting the right people into the right roles at the right time. So, when we think about the different types of workforce planning, we have operational workforce planning and strategic workforce planning. Operational workforce planning is your day to day focus on filling vacancies, managing seasonal staffing swings, and ensuring coverage for routine operations. And then when you think about strategic workforce planning, this is, again, that big picture focus that looks ahead to future business targets, identifies the skills and capabilities needed, and creates a road map to hire, develop, and retain talent. Kelly, do you wanna explain the why behind this process? Because I'm sure our audience today is curious of that why. Absolutely, Jess. I would love to. So you may be wondering why should you be focused on workforce planning now. Leaders tell us the top priorities they are grappling with in their business include economic uncertainty, workforce productivity, attracting and recruiting talent, staying ahead of the competition, managing employee performance, employee engagement, and retention. So why is workforce planning important? It identifies skills gaps in your current team, helps develop targeted training and development plans, improves talent management, aligns staffing with business goals and vision, and builds teams that support future growth. Next, we're going to populate a poll because we want to hear from you. All right. So thank you, Kelly. Our poll question is going be popping up on your screen now, and we'd like to hear from you how much experience do you have with workforce planning? I know I've been on the other end of it where it seems like the bosses were always reacting. The managers were always reacting after the fact. They weren't getting ahead of it. They were always been surprised. So I'm curious. Have you done a lot of workforce planning? Have you dabbled in a couple initiatives that kinda sound like workforce planning? Or is this all new to you? It certainly makes sense to get ahead. It certainly makes sense to try to forecast, to be ready instead of always trying to play catch up ball. But I'd be interested to see what our attendees are thinking. We're seeing the form fills come in. I'll give it just another minute here. Got about half of us, submitted some answers. Let's give it five more seconds. Let's see who else wants to come in and give us an answer. And I feel pretty good about this. Now let's see what we've got for experience. Okay. We've got a very few number have done a lot of this. People have dabbled and people it's all new. So, Kelly, it's really generally, I know workforce planning is important or I get the need for workforce planning, but I haven't really got there. So is that consistent with what you've been hearing and seeing? Yeah, definitely, I'm not surprised. All right. So let's take a deeper dive into how strategic workforce planning can really transform your business. Workforce planning plays a critical role in business growth and stability by proactively identifying and addressing future staffing needs. This ensures that an organization has the right people with the necessary skills to meet evolving business goals, adapt to market changes, and maintain operational continuity. Ultimately, this prevents talent shortages and enables sustained growth while minimizing costs. So let's discuss each of these roles in more detail, starting with anticipating future needs. By analyzing current workforce demographics and market trends, workforce planning enables businesses to predict the future talent requirements and proactively address potential gaps through targeted recruitment, training, and succession planning. This proactive planning allows a business to scale their operations as needed without encountering staffing bottlenecks. Next up is aligning talent and strategy. Workforce planning ensures that the workforce is aligned with the company's strategic objectives, identifying the skills and competencies needed to achieve business goals and deploying talent accordingly. With talent and strategy aligned, businesses can be confident that they have the right skills and expertise in place to run a successful operation and maintain competitiveness in the market. Now let's discuss cost optimization and efficiency. By forecasting staffing needs, businesses can avoid over staffing or under staffing, resulting in optimized labor costs and improved resource allocation. Hiring and training new employees incur expenses, and having to downsize due to misalignment with business needs is not only costly, it can also damage employee morale and the company's reputation. This obviously ties right back to talent and strategy alignment that we just talked about. Workforce planning also ensures that a business can adapt to change. In today's dynamic business environment, change is constant. Whether it's technological advancements, shift in market demands, or unforeseen crises like a global pandemic, businesses must be agile. An adaptable workforce can readily embrace new technologies and processes, fostering innovation and agility within the organization. Next is employee engagement and retention, A well planned workforce strategy that considers employee development and career progression can enhance morale, resulting in higher retention rates and increased productivity. Lastly, we have succession planning, identifying and developing future leaders within the organization. In addition to career training and development, ensure smooth transitions and continuity when key employees retire or leave the company. Succession planning plays a major role in the future success of your business. Jess, can you provide us more insight into the workforce planning process? Thank you, Kel. Yes, of course. So, we've covered a lot so far today, right, So, I'd be happy to do that. So, now that we have a better understanding of what workforce planning is and why it's important for the overall success of your business, let's discuss the planning process. So, several factors must be considered in a workforce planning process, external factors, such as labor market trends and technological advances, and internal factors, including growth plans and turnover rates, tend to influence this process. However, we have broken it down into those four general steps for today's presentation, So each step is crucial in building a workforce that aligns with your company's long term objectives. So let's start with step one, assess business goals and gather data. So your first step is to consider what your current team has to offer, and while you can't predict the future, examining market trends, new projects, products, and technological changes closely can help you anticipate your upcoming workforce needs. So for your future workforce plan, ask yourself, where do we wanna be in the next three to five years, and what kind of talent do we need to achieve that goal? From there, you'll want to move on to step two, which is predicting work capacity. So once you've got a clear picture of your current and future workforce needs, it's time to pinpoint the discrepancies. Are there glaring gaps in technical skills, leadership capabilities, or industry expertise? As a part of your workforce planning process, look at upcoming retirements, turnover, and changing business priorities that could widen the gap. Now on to step three. We want to gauge performance. So developing an action plan starts with prioritizing the most critical differences and setting clear, measurable goals to address them. Evaluate options such as targeted recruitment, training, and succession planning to maintain a steady pipeline for future employees. And now to the last step in the workforce planning process, evaluate employee output. So the workforce planning process isn't a one and done deal. It's continuous. Regularly monitor key metrics such as time to hire and retention rates, and then gather feedback from both managers and your employees. If the plan isn't yielding the desired results, be prepared to adjust and refine your approach. So, let's break this down just a little bit further and discuss each step in a little bit more detail. As mentioned, the first step in the workforce planning process is to assess your current workforce and forecast future needs. So this involves collecting and analyzing data on your employees' skills, performance, demographics, and engagement levels. This is often done through reviewing data from employee records, job descriptions, employee surveys, performance evaluations, and exit interviews. I also want to add that utilizing technology such as Paychex Flex can be beneficial in this context, so having this data readily available will make your workforce planning process more efficient and accurate. It's also important to note that data accuracy is crucial in this context. Forecasting future needs is certainly not an exact science, but it's still important in the workforce planning process, so staying ahead of the curve is crucial for businesses to maintain a competitive edge. As you consider your assessment of your current workforce along with forecasting future needs, we do suggest using a SWOT analysis for this process. You may be wondering what a SWOT analysis is. So a SWOT analysis is a strategic tool to keep you organized through your workforce planning process, especially during assessing your current workforce and forecasting future needs. We've made a SWOT template available to you today as a part of the resources in your Console tools panel. So, SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So, using a SWOT analysis will help you to evaluate your business' internal strengths and weaknesses as well as the external factors that could support or threaten them. So here's how it works starting with your strengths. For your strengths, you wanna identify the strengths of your current workforce. So this could include skills, experience, strong leadership, high employee engagement, or a positive organizational culture. Based on workforce data collected, you can identify the strengths throughout your workforce, and you may want to consider the following questions. So what aspects of your workforce make it more likely to succeed? What experience and skills are present in the current workforce that makes our operations successful, and what separates us from the competition. Then you want to go to your weaknesses. So, weaknesses are areas where the business needs to improve in order to stay competitive and may hinder an organization from performing to its full potential. So, when considering weaknesses throughout your organization, identify internal areas where your workforce may be lacking. This may involve skill gaps, high turnover rates, low employee morale, or inadequate training programs. So consider what qualifications may be lacking or what necessary experience you may still need that you currently lack. Next on to the opportunities. So, look for external opportunities that could benefit your workforce. This could include industry growth, technological advancements, or favorable economic conditions. And then lastly, for threats, identify external threats that could negatively impact your workforce. This could include economic downturns, increased competition, technology advancements, or changes in labor law and regulations. By conducting a SWOT analysis, you can develop strategies to leverage your strengths, address your weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and mitigate threats. Now, Kelly is gonna review step two, predicting workforce capacity. Thanks, Jeff. That was great information. So the next step, step two of the workforce planning process involves identifying any gaps that may exist within your organization, specifically with your workforce by predicting workforce capacity. So are there glaring gaps in technical skills, leadership capabilities, or industry expertise? Similar to the SWOT analysis tool, a gap analysis can assist you here can assist you. Here are some things to consider for the skill set of your current workforce. A skills gap analysis involves comparing the current workforce skills and capabilities with the future needs of an organization. This analysis helps identify skill shortages and surpluses, guiding the development of targeted strategies to address these gaps. Again, we have made a gap analysis template available to you in the webinar console. A skills gap analysis contains five essential steps. The first one, confirm business goals with leaders. You want to clearly articulate the purpose and advantages of conducting a skills gap analysis to line managers and executives. Engage with stakeholders to understand the company's strategic direction and future needs. Next, determine what is needed for organizational success. Identify the specific skills and competencies required to achieve current and future business objectives. This aligns with competency modeling, which identifies the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required for success in specific roles. Define the key skills and milestones that indicate a new hire is progressing effectively in their role using the principles of performance management. Then identify the skills the key skills to measure. Identify and list the essential skills for individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. Consider both hard and soft skills. Rank these skills based on their importance and the level of proficiency required. Use a consistent grading system to ensure clarity and uniformity, applying the principles of job analysis and evaluation. Now you wanna identify skill gaps within your organization. Evaluate employees' current skill levels using key performance indicators or KPIs, and gather feedback from managers and team members. This involves the use of the three sixty degree feedback and other assessment tools. Analyze the collected data to identify any skill gaps that may exist within the organization. And finally, conduct accurate analysis. Employ various methods such as performance reviews, employee interviews, and assessments to gather comprehensive and accurate data. This aligns with the principles of data driven decision making in HR. Consistently compare the required skill levels with the actual skill levels of employees, maintaining a standardized rating system to ensure accuracy and reliability. The third step in the workforce planning process involves taking the data from the previous steps, including the SWOT and gap analysis results, and using it to develop action plans to gauge performance for your organization. Developing an action plan starts with prioritizing the most critical differences and setting clear, measurable goals to address them. Evaluate options like targeted recruitment, training, and succession planning to help you keep a steady pipeline of future employees. As a general guide, you will want to consider the following when developing your action plans. Identify any crucial issues. These are issues that require action to address the results of your SWOT analysis and or skills gap assessment. Consider any weaknesses, threats, and areas of opportunity along with any identified skills gaps. Next, we wanna brainstorm and prioritize possible solutions. The goal is to find solutions that are realistic, effective, and suitable for your organization. You can also involve your leaders and employees in the process to get their input and feedback and to foster their engagement and ownership of the solutions. And lastly, you will define specific actions and goals. Consider factors such as cost, benefits, risk, time, and quality to evaluate and compare the solutions. The goal is to choose actions that are aligned with your team's objectives and that can address the key issues in the most efficient and effective way. There are a few additional considerations in developing action plans. Ensure your action plans align with your organization's strategic objectives and long term vision, and clearly communicate the action plan to all stakeholders and encourage collaboration across teams. I'm going to pass it over to Jess, who's going to walk us through step four. Take it away, Jess. Thank you, Kelly. Yeah, so the fourth and final step in the workforce planning process is to evaluate employee output based on your action plans. So workforce planning is not a one time activity. It requires ongoing attention, regularly tracking key metrics, gathering input from both your managers and your employees, and reviewing outcomes are essential. So, if the plan isn't delivering the desired results, adjustments and refinements may be necessary. To effectively monitor and evaluate your action plan, establish a routine to assess progress. This includes analyzing key performance indicators, also known as KPIs, aligned with your goals, tracking the completion of each action step, collecting feedback from your stakeholders, and revising the plan as needed to respond to changes in the market or internal performance trends. Setting specific evaluations in your action plan, so you want to schedule those regular reviews, define how frequently you will evaluate your plan. It could be quarterly, semi annually, or annually based on its complexity and external factors, but choose relevant metrics. So, for each action item, identify measurable indicators that align with your goals and address your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, gather meaningful data, so collect information from diverse sources such as sales trends, customer feedback, market analysis, employee surveys, and internal performance dashboards. You'll want to compare against benchmarks, so use the baseline data from your original SWOT analysis to identify areas of progress, opportunities for improvement, or potential challenges. And then you'll want to engage stakeholders, so regularly consult with your stakeholders to gather insights on the plan's effectiveness and uncover any emerging issues or opportunities. Next, evaluate performance, so analyze collected data to identify successes and areas requiring improvement. Adjust as needed and modify the plan based on findings, such as updating priorities, reallocating resources, or revising strategies to stay on track. Workforce planning isn't about predicting the future perfectly. It's about looking ahead, spotting gaps, and preparing talent to build a team that's ready for anything. Remember, the workforce planning process is ongoing, so continue to monitor and adjust your plan as your business evolves. So let's share a few examples of how paychecks can help you with smart workforce planning. Your HR professional would be able to help you with the following strategies. So, first, recruiting strategies. So, this is a core initiative to meet current and future operational needs, productivities, and strategic goals. Small market businesses face adding hiring pressure due to inflation and economic shifts. A strong recruiting strategy helps target the right candidates and boost applications. To start with strategic alignment, HR must align with executives, managers, and business units, so know the company's direction. This could include expanding development. You may need to hire more engineers. Is the business growing internationally? Look for international or regional leadership that can assist with that. You may need to outline your one to five year business goals and align your recruiting to support them. Next is talent mapping. So, this is a strategic tool for long term hiring success, which helps you to forecast future talent needs, evaluate the current team's ability to meet them, identify external high potential candidates, and create plans to close those skill and talent gaps. Benefits include faster time to hire, develop and retain your top talent, optimize hiring resources by focusing on roles that drive growth, and ultimately, stronger ROI. So long term goals equals successful hires, which then moves on to better return on investment. Then we have talent development, which offers professional development opportunities to your employees, which is key to their engagement and retention. So training and development are crucial components of the talent management cycle as they help to develop the skills and expertise necessary with your business and are essential in cultivating your organization's future leaders. Benefits may include increased productivity. So procedural training and training on new technologies can help increase efficiency in processes, especially in today's hybrid work environments, which can lead to increased productivity resulting in financial gain. And then next, lower turnover. So, employee training and development programs can increase job satisfaction, motivation, and engagement, which may result in lower employee turnover, and this directly impacts your bottom line. Next, reduce risks. So employee training offers the opportunity to arm your staff and ultimately your business with the tools and information needed to reduce the risk of injury or potential legal disputes, both of which can come at a high cost to your business and not just monetarily. And then lastly is succession management. So uncertainty about the future of your business can be a source of stress. A formal employee succession planning process can help companies identify key performers and their future leaders and work with them early to build long term trust and loyalty. So having a plan in place can also help set an employee's expectations for their future career track and can ensure that everyone is working towards achieving the company's overall strategic plan. So, as we wrap up today's presentation, let's summarize what we've discussed. First, we discussed the role of workforce planning, and then we shared a four step plan to build a sustainable workforce strategy for your business, including tools that you can use to identify workforce needs and gaps, and then we discussed why it's important to have a recruiting strategy in talent mapping hiring goals. We discussed the role that talent development and succession planning play in the workforce planning process. And now I'm gonna turn it over to Rob so that he can close us out. Thank you so much, Jessica, and thank you, Kelly. If we could go back a slide, Jeff, I want to expound a little about what you learned. We covered a lot of great content today. I really appreciate the insights. Workforce planning can be profound and far reaching in terms of impact. I encourage you all to invest in effective workforce planning. You're going be able to enhance employee retention. You're to be able to improve productivity. You're going be align your business resources with your actual strategic goals and you're to mitigate any of the risks associated with workforce disruptions. As I had mentioned earlier, I've been in many situations where things got ugly before the owners and the leadership reacted. So in a world where talent is often the difference, the most critical asset, understanding and implementing workforce planning could be the difference between thriving or just surviving. Through proper workforce planning, you will be prepared to face challenges more effectively, quickly identify opportunities for growth, and capitalize on those opportunities effectively. So now, let's get to some questions here that came in. First, actually, this one's actually from me. We brought up this topic, workforce planning. Is it more important now than it was in the past? What's our feeling about that? Rob, I can take this one. So as we know, the environment's ever changing. Right? So, with economic shifts, rapid tech advancements, and changing workforce expectations, companies can't afford to be reactive right now. Right? So, strategic workforce planning helps organizations stay ahead by anticipating staffing needs, closing skill gaps early, and aligning that talent with their business goals, even in uncertain times. Excellent. Excellent. This one's from Rachel. Makes sense. We have a small but growing business. How can we implement workforce planning without a big HR team? I can take this one, Rob. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, it really doesn't have to be complex. You you really wanna start with what you know, right? Maybe it's your business goals for the next one to five years. Then look at your current team, establish where are the gaps, right? Let's use those simple tools like the skills inventory, the cross functional input from managers, really getting those targeted hiring plans. It's really about being intentional and not perfect. And this is definitely a place where you can lean on your dedicated paycheck HR business partner for their expertise and proactive assistance. And that's a great point. If you are a client of ours who has an HR business partner, you're ahead of the curve already. You're already ahead of the game, which is great. This one is from Jeff. His question is, My business is very stable. Why would I need workforce planning rather than just hiring when needed? I'll take that one. So hiring when needed is more of a reactive approach. So workforce planning is your proactive approach. It ensures you're building that talent pipeline before roles are even open, which shortens time to hire. It can boost retention, and it improves overall team performance. So, it's the difference between scrambling and scaling. And then, Rob, something I was thinking too is it's also you're not settling. If you have a plan in place, you're not settling. You're not just hurrying up and hiring. You're planning it out. You have your ideal candidates. So you want more of that proactive approach. I think that's a great point, Jessica. You're not just looking for a body, you're looking for a good employee who maybe you can keep around for a little bit and who will help your business succeed. So that's an excellent point. Another question from me here as we come close to time here and getting ready to wrap up. What is the one key trend we should look for in workforce planning in 2025? Well, I will tell you, Rob. There is one big trend is really skill based planning. It's really focusing more on the skills your business needs rather than the traditional job titles or degrees. So this opens the door to internal mobility, nontraditional candidates, and better alignment between talent and evolving business needs. So Kelly, you're talking about really hiring not based on a title and not based necessarily on experience, but really looking for a specific skill set that you can then plug and play with? You got it. Perfect. Fabulous. Well, excellent. Thank you all. That's it for questions from everyone. Thank you, everybody, for the questions you submitted. Before we wrap, I'd love you all to respond to a quick poll. Once again, if you have a Paychex HR business partner, I really recommend you bring this topic up to them. If you don't, I would love for you to talk or get the opportunity to talk to a Paychex sales representative about improving your company's ability to conduct workforce planning. I also want to remind everybody, maybe who's not a Paychex client, Paychex Flex, our software platform, has great analytical tools, great data tools, so you can get these kinds of numbers you need to do this planning so that you can be more successful. So everybody, thanks again for joining us today. Really appreciate you. As a reminder, you can download and print a copy of today's presentation in the files and resources area. Just click the PDF to save it. We'll also be sending a follow-up email. You can watch on demand whenever you want and share it, with people that you think might find this content useful. We are going to have a closing survey pop up at the end. Take a minute to complete it just so we can use your feedback, make sure we continue to deliver resources and content that your business needs. Thank you everybody once again and have a great day.