Strategic workforce planning

Workforce architecture

Faced challenges

The project aimed to increase the profitability of service lines by designing new workforce architectures with increased leverages.

We developed for CMS a strategic planning model to simulate business and workforce changes on the service lines’ profitability.

During the project, we identified the gaps based on future workforce demand and developed talent-management measures to transform the workforce in the most efficient way. One of the challenges was to determine required recruiting and development targets to monitor the change.

„HRForecast enabled us to translate future business scenarios into workforce scenarios, making the levers impacting performance plannable and controllable. HRForecast showed a high level of domain expertise, professional workshop moderation and profound analysis and presentation of the results, including clear recommendations for our planning units.“

Hartmut Papenthin, COO/CFO at CMS Germany

Questions to be clarified:

How does the workforce architecture need to modify to match the changing market environment (digitalization, etc.)

How can the workforce architecture be improved to increase profitability?

How high is the future workforce demand and which transformation scenarios are feasible?

Which are the most critical areas and elements of the talent-management for future business success?

How can we monitor the transformation of the workforce?

Project approach

1. Architecture optimization

At first, we evaluated future market requirements on the operating models. In the next step we optimized the composition of the workforce architecture and designed two architectures to match the operating models.

2. Architecture shaping

We identified and evaluated gaps between the future workforce supply and demand. Different scenarios were evaluated to detect which gap-closing measures would be the most efficient.

3. Architecture scenario simulations

Afterwards, we conducted simulations to identify the future workforce demand based on the business development and the defined operating models.

4. Architecture transformation

Finally, we defined targets for the talent-management areas, particularly for recruiting, development, and promotion activities to track the transformation yearly.

Key insights & value-adds for CMS

CMS received two scenarios of how to transform the workforce. Through the conducted project the client gained transparency to optimize internal career paths and develop new career paths.