Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | R | Research Technology Management

Stay in front of the talent curve: strategic workforce planning can help companies forecast their future needs for scientists and engineers.

Article Excerpt
Innovation-based companies depend on having the right number and type of creative scientific and engineering (S&E) talent to generate and bring to market new products and services. This need to stay in front of the talent curve is becoming increasingly critical given the dynamics of the current global S&E labor pool. For instance, the National Science Foundation reported in its 2006 study (1) that:

* Companies are just beginning to feel the effect of the aging U.S. baby-boom generation. The number of individuals with S&E degrees who are reaching traditional retirement ages is expected to triple.

* S&E degree production in the U.S. is expected to sustain growth in demand, but at a lower rate than before.

* Entry into the US of highly skilled foreign talent is becoming somewhat more difficult while, at the same time, many countries are reducing barriers to entry in order to attract this talent to help build their own S&E infrastructure.

Over the past decade, many companies have extended their S&E infrastructure beyond their national borders. Asia, in particular, has seen a significant increase in S&E investments as companies seek to take advantage of educated workforces in India, China, Taiwan, and South Korea. This migration, combined with an increase in local demand due to the growth of local economies in these countries, is resulting in emerging S&E talent shortages (2). Qualified S&E talent is becoming increasingly harder to find while demand continues to grow. While some may argue there is not a shortage of this talent in the U.S., the demand for such talent beyond U.S. borders continues to grow and the battle for acquiring this talent only gets more difficult to win.

Human Capital Planning

What should innovation-based companies be doing to stay ahead of the talent curve? The first step is to improve their ability to forecast future talent needs based on their business strategies and innovation roadmaps. Human Capital Planning (HCP) is an approach that a number of companies have used to get and stay ahead of the talent curve (3). It is a four-step business planning process (Figure 1 ), conducted in conjunction with strategic planning efforts, that enables innovation-based companies to more effectively:

* Determine the type of S&E talent required to implement the business strategy by translating strategy into operational requirements and identifying and prioritizing the talent segments and roles that will be key to achieving these requirements (step 1).

* Determine the number of people required over the term of the strategic/operational plan by assessing the capabilities and capacity of the current talent pool, identifying capabilities and capacity required in the future, and examining potential changes in the pool that might impact the number of people needed in each talent segment (step 2).

* Identify and prioritize talent gaps and determine the best approach for closing the gaps by looking at the relative size, strategic value and urgency of each gap, and examining the costs (direct and indirect) of hiring vs. developing talent (step 3).

* Identify actions and investments required to align organization strategy, human resource...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!