Like all plans, personnel plans require some forecasts or estimates. In this case, the forecasts involve: personnel needs, the supply of inside candidates, and the likely supply of outside candidates. The basic workforce planning process is to forecast the employer’s demand for labor and supply of labor. Next, identify supply-demand gaps and develop action plans to fill the projected gaps.
Trend analysis means studying variations in the firm’s employment levels over the last few years.
Another simple approach, ratio analysis, means making forecasts based on the historical ratio between two variables. One example might include some causal factor (like sales volume) and the number of employees required (such as number of salespeople).
A scatter plot shows graphically how two variables—such as sales and your firm’s staffing levels—are related.
Markov analysis involves creating a matrix that shows the probabilities that employees in a chain of feeder positions for a key job. “Feeder” positions are those to which a job incumbent may likely be promoted. For example a junior engineer is a feeder position for an engineer. An engineer is a feeder position for a senior engineer who might be promoted to engineering supervisor, and so forth.