Dow Chemical has evolved its workforce planning over the past decade, mining historical data on its 40,000 employees to forecasts promotion rates, internal transfers, and overall labor availability.
Dow uses a custom modeling tool to segment the workforce and calculates future head count by segment and level for each business unit. These detailed predictions are aggregated to yield a workforce projection for the entire company.
Dow can engage in “what if” scenario planning, altering assumptions on internal variables such as staff promotions or external variables such as political and legal considerations.