MVDC conducts a comprehensive and proactive Workforce Planning exercise every year.
Through this exercise, Executive Heads and their Business Managers have an evidence led discussion on how teams are working in practice. The process provides a service-led view of challenges and opportunities within teams, before the annual Business Planning process.
Just after the close of the financial year, the HR and OD team provides the Executive Head/Business manager with data relating to each of their services.
Each Business Manager then has a targeted Workforce Planning discussion with their Executive Head. This will review patterns or trends illustrated by the data, as well as any anticipated service changes informed by completion of the annual Performance and Development Reviews across the business unit.
There are many potential areas of focus that can be targeted, some examples (non-exhaustive) could include: advice/support on recruitment options, job or service changes, coaching, performance or absence management, and identification of additional or alternative training and development offerings.
The Workforce Planning discussion therefore provides the ability to have a holistic overview of how the service is functioning in practice, from a people perspective, and in particular how to support and facilitate any:
· Individuals who have been identified as willing/able to progress their career further and who would therefore benefit from skills enhancement
· Individuals who are looking to retire and/or change their working arrangements
· Areas of risk in terms of resilience for the service which may in part be informed by the above
This process is contingent upon completion of PDRs across each relevant Business Manager’s service. PDR completion is therefore an essential management tool required to be completed by all managers, accountable to each Business Manager, and in turn to their own Executive Head.
PDR completion is logged on all i-trent records and is actively monitored by SLT and audit as part of our Corporate Governance Review.
Through the PDR and workforce planning process there may be identification of specific learning objectives so that individuals can continue to develop in order to keep up with changing external and/or internal environments.
In some instances therefore additional learning will be identified as most applicable to targeted individuals particularly if it avoids the need for restructuring or redundancy and will not, in these situations, be appropriate to be offered out to a wider cohort.