Workforce planning is necessary for companies to ensure that their critical staffing needs are met in a timely and efficient manner. Effective workforce planning involves evaluating the various business goals a company may have, forecasting demand and the supply of talent, and ensuring that the company will incorporate these variables into a plan that will not only be in step with its long term strategic goals, but will also be an active force in helping the company achieve those goals.

In order to effectively and efficiently implement successful and sustainable workforce plans, companies must anticipate the strategic needs and long term goals of a business and develop a plan to meet the staffing levels necessary to achieve those goals. From the executive suite to the human resources department to the manufacturing floor, company leaders must work together to develop a set of best practices for long term workforce planning that are flexible enough to be quickly and effectively modified as the company’s strategic plan is adjusted.

Most executives now realize that an effective workforce plan that results in a constant and sustainable talent supply is absolutely detrimental to their organization’s long term success. As such, leaders in workforce planning like Capital One, Inc., have broken down the task to a science, creating teams of hundreds of executives, analysts, line managers, and human resources generalists to build workforce planning models and develop the metrics required to evaluate them. Accountability for the workforce plan flows upward, ending directly with the CEO.

Such blended teams of leaders in a company’s workforce work together to integrate strategy, budget and workforce planning in such a way that each business unit can meet its talent needs for a two to three year period going forward, which results in a significant cost savings to the bottom line.

When effectively created and integrated into a company’s strategy, workforce planning will not only allow company leaders and mangers to see how effective talent management affects their business options and how they can improve performance, but it will also open their eyes to new approaches that may help leaders more effectively reach their strategic goals.