8 Best Workforce Planning Software and Tools in 2024

As the corporate landscape becomes more and more competitive, it's crucial for companies to keep up with the competition and remain adaptable. As a result, there is a growing demand for innovative tools and software that can streamline workforce planning processes. These tools are essential for optimizing resource allocation and anticipating future staffing needs, ultimately shaping the workforce strategy of modern businesses.

In this blog post, we will delve into the realm of workforce planning tools and software, highlighting the seven best options available in the market. As organizations recognize the importance of aligning their workforce with strategic goals, these tools offer a wide range of features that promote data-driven decision-making, foster collaboration, and ultimately drive success. Whether you are a large corporation looking to scale efficiently or a growing business aiming to stay ahead of the curve, this curated list is for you. It will help you discover top-notch solutions that can revolutionize your approach to workforce planning.

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What is Workforce Planning Software?

Workforce planning software is a fantastic tool that organizations can use to effectively manage their human resources. Unlike traditional HR management systems, this specialized software offers a complete solution for forecasting future workforce needs, assessing current workforce capabilities, and aligning them with company objectives.

By utilizing data analytics, automation, and collaboration features, this software simplifies the entire workforce planning process. From recruitment and onboarding to talent development and succession planning, it covers it all. With real-time insights into workforce trends, skills gaps, and performance metrics, businesses can make well-informed decisions, improve operational efficiency, and adapt to the ever-changing demands of their industry.

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Workforce Planning Process

Before we talk about the best workforce planning software, it's vital for you to understand the workforce planning process and parts of the strategic workforce planning model in detail. Let's have a look:

The strategic workforce planning framework usually consists of several interconnected stages. The process goes beyond mere headcount management, delving into the intricacies of talent acquisition, skills development, and long-term workforce sustainability.

• To begin with, organizations carefully analyze their current workforce, taking note of skills, competencies, and any potential gaps. This often involves evaluating the performance of existing employees, understanding turnover rates, and predicting future talent needs based on strategic goals.
• Next, organizations engage in forecasting, predicting the future requirements of the workforce, and aligning them with business objectives. This step involves scenario planning, considering factors like market changes, technological advancements, and industry trends. By using data analytics, organizations gain valuable insights into possible shortages or excesses in skills, enabling them to make effective workforce planning strategy.
• After completing the forecast, organizations move on to the next step: action planning. This phase involves creating strategies to address any gaps that have been identified. Whether it's through targeted recruitment, training programs, or succession planning, the goal is to bridge those gaps. Collaboration among HR, department heads, and leadership is crucial during this stage to ensure a comprehensive and well-coordinated approach.
• The final stages of the workforce planning process involve continuous monitoring and evaluation. This ensures that organizations regularly assess the effectiveness of their strategies, make necessary adjustments based on evolving business needs, and update their workforce plans to remain adaptable in a dynamic environment. This cyclical process ensures that the workforce remains aligned with organizational goals, ultimately contributing to sustained success and adaptability in an ever-changing business landscape.

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Benefits of Investing in a Good Workforce Planning Software

Some of the major benefits of having reliable workforce planning software are as follows:

1. Strategic Alignment

With the help of strong workforce planning software, organizations can ensure that their workforce is in sync with their strategic goals. By gaining insights into the skills and competencies needed for future success, businesses can take proactive steps to bridge any existing gaps in their current workforce. This will ensure that they have the right talent in place to effectively achieve their objectives.

2. Talent Acquisition and Retention

Investing in the right workforce planning software is key to strategic talent acquisition and retention. With this software, you can identify high-performing employees, pinpoint potential skill shortages, and develop effective recruitment strategies. By attracting and keeping top talent, your organization can gain a competitive edge in the market.

3. Making the Most of Our Resources

It's important to make sure that we're using our resources in the best way possible to get the most done. By using workforce planning software, we can make sure that we have just the right number of staff members, avoiding any problems with having too many or too few. This not only helps us save money, but it also makes our whole team work better together.

4. Scenario Modeling and Predictive Analytics

Advanced workforce planning tools often include scenario modeling and predictive analytics features. This allows organizations to simulate various scenarios, such as changes in market conditions or workforce demographics, enabling proactive planning and mitigating potential challenges.

5. Improved Collaboration

Workforce planning is a team effort that brings together various stakeholders from different departments. To enhance this collaboration, a reliable workforce planning tool serves as a centralized hub where data, insights, and action plans can be shared. This creates a transparent and collaborative work environment, enabling the organization to achieve better outcomes collectively.

6. Strategic Workforce Development

In the world of workforce development, having the right tools is key. That's where workforce planning software comes in! This nifty software helps organizations identify what skills their employees are missing and then create personalized training programs to fill those gaps. By investing in the growth and development of their existing employees, organizations not only increase their skills but also create a culture of always learning. This smart approach to workforce development means that organizations are prepared for whatever challenges or industry changes come their way!

7. Compliance and Risk Management

When it comes to running an organization successfully, making sure you follow labor regulations and reduce risks related to managing your workforce are key. A dependable workforce planning software often comes with features that help you stay compliant with labor laws, industry standards, and internal policies. This not only lowers the chances of legal problems but also boosts your organization's reputation. By keeping up with regulatory changes and using data analysis to predict potential risks, the software becomes a valuable tool in protecting your organization's interests and creating a positive workplace atmosphere.

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Top Strategic Workforce Planning and Analytics Software

In this section, we will delve into the top seven software tools that truly shine in the field of strategic workforce planning. These tools offer a wide range of features that can assist businesses in aligning their human resources with organizational goals, making well-informed decisions, and staying ahead in the highly competitive market.

Let's look at each of them:

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1. Workforce Planning Template

Using a Workforce Planning spreadsheet template for Excel or Google Sheets offers a cost-effective solution for workforce planning. It allows organizations to start their workforce planning journey without the need for expensive software. With this template, you can track headcount, analyze skills, and forecast future staffing needs. It provides a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of workforce analysis and planning.

Whether you're a small business on a tight budget or a larger organization looking for a simple yet effective way to kickstart your workforce planning efforts, the Workforce Planning Template is a valuable tool that won't strain your finances. It offers a practical approach to workforce planning, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes.

By adding the Workforce Planning Template to your arsenal of workforce planning tools, you can take your first steps towards data-driven decision-making and aligning your workforce with your strategic goals.

Pricing: Free

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2. Visier People

Visier People is a powerful tool for workforce planning and analytics designed to give organizations valuable insights into HR metrics. What makes Visier People stand out is its focus on predictive analytics, which allows businesses to not only understand their current workforce dynamics but also predict future trends.

This software excels in helping organizations improve talent management and optimize workforce planning strategies. The user-friendly dashboards provided by Visier People simplify complex data, making it accessible to users at all levels of the organization. This unique ability to transform intricate data into understandable strategic workforce plans positions Visier People as a valuable asset in the field of workforce management.

Pricing: Pricing details are available upon request.

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3. SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors is a crucial part of contemporary human resource management, providing a comprehensive suite for managing the human experience. In addition to its renowned talent management features, SAP SuccessFactors also offers powerful tools for workforce planning and AI-based insights. This software is designed to seamlessly align talent strategy with overall business goals.

Notably, it includes functionalities for thorough skills assessment, optimizing the workforce, and planning for succession. The platform operates on the cloud, ensuring accessibility and scalability for businesses of all sizes. With SAP SuccessFactors, organizations gain a strategic advantage by fostering a holistic and data-driven approach to managing their workforce.

Pricing: Pricing information is only available upon request.

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4. Anaplan

Anaplan is revolutionizing workforce planning by going beyond just financial considerations and incorporating dynamic and complex workforce planning. By promoting collaboration and providing real-time scenario modeling, Anaplan is helping organizations create flexible and adaptable workforce plans.

With Anaplan, workforce planning seamlessly integrates with the company's strategic, operational, and financial initiatives. This software allows you to effortlessly integrate finance and business data, as well as external sources, to effectively plan and visualize various workforce scenarios.

For example, Anaplan enables HR teams to accurately forecast attrition rates based on historical data, strategically plan workforce movements, establish and track headcount targets, and identify any gaps in talent.

Pricing: Pricing details are available upon request.

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5. Lightcast

Lightcast is a fantastic enterprise workforce planning software platform that is designed to assist large companies in achieving their hiring objectives. A great thing about Lightcast is that it leverages big data analytics to support your company in providing competitive wages and benefits when recruiting new employees. Additionally, it helps you in identifying the most suitable labor markets for specific job roles, enabling informed decisions about the locations for opening new offices.

The software also provides guidance for setting realistic diversity goals in recruitment. The software offers valuable data on the diversity statistics of peer companies and provides demographics for specific labor markets.

While Lightcast is indeed a fantastic workforce planning software, it comes with its set of disadvantages. For example, the software does not provide tools for onboarding new hires or assistance in planning your company's headcount needs. So, if you are looking for software that offers all these features too, make sure to consider some alternatives.

Pricing: Pricing details are available upon request.

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6. Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning cutting-edge strategic HR workforce planning cloud-based solution. It seamlessly combines financial and workforce planning, making it incredibly versatile for organizations. This software empowers businesses to align their workforce strategies with their overall financial goals. Its power comes from its strong analytics and advanced scenario modeling capabilities, which allow companies to predict future workforce needs based on different situations and factors.

The software offers top-notch data visualization, AI-powered insights, and robust reporting, so that your organization can make smarter decisions without wasting time.

The user-friendly interface of Workday Adaptive Planning makes it easy to navigate, while its real-time collaboration features encourage effective communication between teams. This ensures that decisions are not only driven by data but also made collectively with the input of everyone involved.

Pricing: Pricing details are available upon request.\

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7. Quinyx

Quinyx is one of the leading strategic workforce planning tools that can greatly benefit businesses. With its impressive array of features, data-driven approach, and scalability, Quinyx is a perfect choice for companies that are experiencing rapid growth.

One of Quinyx's main goals is to provide businesses with the most relevant and up-to-date insights concerning their recruitment needs. By using this workforce planning solution, companies can easily calculate and visualize different scenarios and understand the potential impact on their workforce. We tested Quinyx for our own workforce planning and discovered a number of fantastic features that exceeded our expectations.

Quinyx offers a wide range of features that have proven to be incredibly helpful. For example, we really liked the convenience of being able to create schedules using Quinyx's pre-built templates, which saves us a significant amount of time and eliminates any unnecessary complications. Additionally, Quinyx's AI technology automatically detects staffing gaps in the future and provides us with recommendations on how to address them. This proactive planning feature allows us to effectively manage training, outsourcing, or reallocating employees.

Pricing: Contact Quinyx's team to schedule a free demo and get pricing information.

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8. Planday

Planday offers a variety of features, including time tracking, employee scheduling, and messaging. One of the things that stood out to us about Planday is its shift planner. It's incredibly handy because it allows you to easily assign employees to their shifts. It helps you reduce overtime costs and allows you to schedule workers based on their qualifications.

You can access features like shift swapping, time tracking, and attendance management. This helps you adjust to changing demands while staying compliant with labor regulations. The software's user-friendly interface promotes seamless collaboration within teams, making communication between managers and employees a breeze.

Plus, employees have the ability to assign their time entries to specific projects, which is pretty impressive.

Pricing: Planday's pricing starts from €2.99 per user per month.

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How Can HiPeople Help?

While HiPeople is not a workforce planning software, it is a reliable talent assessment solution that can help you identify and hire the right people in your organization.

At HiPeople, we understand the importance of assessing candidates and employees effectively. That's why we offer a wide range of assessments in the huge Talent Assessment Library, allowing organizations to evaluate a variety of skills and competencies. Whether you want to test your candidate's Leadership Skills, Logical Thinking abilities, or Hard Skills, you can find the right test at HiPeople. Plus, with our AI-powered features, we take the assessment process to the next level by providing predictive insights into candidates' potential. This means businesses can make informed and smart hiring decisions.

But wait, there's more! One particular feature that really stands out is the Reference Checking capabilities. We know how important it is to get a deep understanding of a candidate's past performance and how well they would fit into your organization. That's why our platform streamlines and automates the reference checking process. Not only does this save time for busy HR professionals, but it also ensures a more comprehensive and data-driven approach to assessing talent. So you can trust that you're making the right choices for your company.

Consider signing up for HiPeople here!

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Conclusion

As businesses navigate the complexities of the modern workforce, using workforce planning solutions strategically has become essential for success. The seven highlighted tools showcase the diverse and advanced solutions available to organizations aiming to align their human capital with strategic goals.

These software solutions not only streamline workforce planning processes but also offer powerful analytics, scenario modeling, and collaboration features. Whether it's cloud-based platforms or predictive analytics, each tool contributes to a comprehensive approach to managing and optimizing the workforce.

In today's competitive landscape, where adaptability and efficiency are crucial, investing in the right workforce planning software is a strategic decision that can drive long-term success. These tools empower organizations to make informed, data-driven decisions that elevate their human capital management strategies, whether it's predicting future talent needs, optimizing resource allocation, or fostering collaboration across teams.