The millennial generation, born between 1980 and 2000, make up 25 percent of the workforce in the United States. By 2020, millennials will form 50 percent of the global workforce. To engage and retain this new generation of talent, it’s important that you have a solid workforce plan in place. Workforce planning is a process used by businesses in all industries to align the needs of an organization with those of its workforce to maintain employee efficiency, maximize profits, and maintain long-term success. As you develop your workforce plan, consider how it appeals to millennials and what improvements can be made to retain talent.
Purpose of Workforce Planning
In today’s economy, a business’ workforce is its most important asset. As so, it’s critical to carefully plan and optimize to ensure that your business is aware of both current and future workforce gaps that could interfere with operations. In short, the purpose of workforce planning is to ensure that a business has an adequate supply of workers with the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to achieve strategic objectives effectively and efficiently, both short-term and long-term. Creating a link between workforce requirements and other business plans can help businesses strengthen and grow.
Benefits of Planning for the Millennial Generation
Strategic workforce planning usually includes a forecast period of 3 to 5 years. Knowing how your business may evolve and what type of workforce you’ll need to accommodate your growth can help ensure that you’re prepared for whatever life throws at you. After a thorough analysis, executives are better able to study the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities that could be facing their business in months or years or come. Workforce planning also allows businesses to look more closely at various aspects of the workforce, such as turnover rates and types of exits from the business.
Workplace planning can also provide other benefits and forms of useful insight. Retirement forecasts allow businesses to forecast potential exists and possible shortages in skilled workers. Forecasts can also be performed on salaries to meet changes in the cost of living. As executives analyze information, they are more equipped to weed out low performing employees and find potential talent gaps in critical positions in the company. Proper workforce planning helps to control unplanned costs associated with hiring and can highlight issues that could affect employee productivity. Having a solid workforce plan also looks good for your business’ image.
Workforce Planning Strategies
A major component of your workforce planning should consist of ways to appeal to and retain millennial talent. First it’s important to determine your rate of turnover and the reason behind employee exits. Are you actively listening to employees’ needs? Are you providing too little training or feedback? Do your employees feel unrecognized or undervalued? Are there too few advancement opportunities? Turnover can be costly due to lost productivity, severance, recruitment, and other factors. Providing employees with the incentive to stay with your company long-term can keep turnover low and help you retain valuable, talented workers.
Recruiting new talent can be time-consuming, stressful, and expensive. It pays to keep the talent you already have. To do that, you must recognize what attracts a candidate to a specific job and what keeps them there. Of course, a competitive salary is important but money alone doesn’t retain jobs. The millennial generation looks for other job perks, such as a comfortable company culture, a climbing career path, and a healthy balance of life and work responsibilities. Building an appealing career package with benefits such as DBA insurance can help show your employees your commitment to their health and wellbeing.
There are a number of strategies that can be used by employers to maximize retention. At the start of a job and at the beginning of new or unfamiliar duties, provide training to your employees. Through training, employees are better able to understand their job requirements and gain more confidence in their position. Along with training, consider a mentoring program. This type of program allows employees to obtain goal-oriented feedback that helps create strong relationships between employees and the business. Most importantly, a business should establish a positive workplace culture based on honesty, respect, teamwork, and excellence.
Communication is paramount in a business. Not only does it help build credibility between employers and employees, but it also helps workers feel more comfortable expressing their needs and concerns. Employees want to know that their employers are really listening to what they have to say and will respond in a respectful and effective way. Employers can also show appreciation in the form of compensation and benefits. In addition to salaries, a business may offer profit sharing, pension, bonus programs, paid time off, health plans, and tuition reimbursement. Offering these types of benefits to your employees shows that you appreciate their efforts which will ultimately boost retention.
Retain Millennial Talent
While providing employees with appealing benefits can be helpful in retaining talent, it’s important that your workforce strategies align with your business objectives. Workforce planning is an organizational process that allows businesses to plan ahead to avoid the common pitfalls of employee surpluses or shortages. It’s not just about having a good quantity of employees but good quality employees. With the right team, a company is able to run more efficiently and will have a lesser need for panic hiring and layoffs. Business cycles have ups and downs. Staying ahead of the curve can prevent a major loss in operations and profits.
Implementing a workforce plan that aligns with your business objectives can help you build and retain a talented team that grows with your company. That is why you need to obtain the right number of staff who possesses the proper skills, knowledge, and motivation to help your business succeed in both the short-term and long-term. As workforce planning can be lengthy and complex, it’s wise to seek assistance from someone who can help you reach your workforce planning goals. The Business Benefits Group has an experienced team of Benefits Consultants who provide insightful benefits consultation services to organizations of all sizes. Request a consultation today.