Managing your staff: workforce planning

Workforce planning is the process of forecasting your workforce needs to ensure sustained business success and growth.

The downloadable resources on this page are referred to in Your Workforce - a workforce planning guide. 

Read about how to use the workforce templates to customise the documents for your business.

A workforce plan will help you undertake expansions, restructures, reforms or downsizing, ensuring that the right staff are recruited or retained to achieve your goals.

For example, if your business objective is to expand production by 20 per cent, your workforce plan will set out the staffing requirements you need to achieve that goal, and how you will recruit, manage and retain those staff.

Workforce planning is divided into the three following stages. 

1. Conduct a workforce gap analysis to provide data evidence

Your workforce gap analysis will help you understand your current and future workforce needs and form the basis for developing strategies to attract and retain the right staff.

• 1.1 Create your workforce action plan checklist DOCX (52.6 KB)
• 1.1 Create your workforce action plan checklist PDF (60.6 KB)

• 1.2 Workforce documents checklist DOCX (46.3 KB)
• 1.2 Workforce documents checklist PDF (49.4 KB)

• 1.3 Current workforce profile form DOCX (47.0 KB)
• 1.3 Current workforce profile form PDF (54.7 KB)

• 1.4 Employee feedback survey form DOCX (47.6 KB)
• 1.4 Employee feedback survey form PDF (58.7 KB)

• 1.5 Future workforce profile form DOCX (45.2 KB)
• 1.5 Future workforce profile form PDF (56.2 KB)

2. Develop and implement a workforce plan

Your workforce action plan will identify the workforce planning and development areas to focus on and specific initiatives to bridge those gaps.

• 1.6 Workforce action plan form DOCX (50.0 KB)
• 1.6 Workforce action plan form PDF (49.3 KB)

3. Review the workforce plan

The workforce action plan should be reviewed and updated each year. Changes in personnel and the intentions of staff need to be reflected in the workforce plan.

• 1.7 Succession planning factsheet DOCX (45.4 KB)
• 1.7 Succession planning factsheet PDF (54.2 KB)