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Silos are everywhere. Some are due to purpose or location, while others occur due to relationships and personalities across an organization. Even more are cause by a lack of connected planning, like leveraging a workforce planning software to coordinate. In all cases, they are detrimental to a business’s ability to lay out a comprehensive and informed strategic plan.

In one corner of the office an Operations Director is making estimations regarding retirement attrition, historical unexpected attrition, and assuming where critical role replacements will come from to create a 5-year staffing plan. This employee will develop a plan that benefits their department, as is expected and their job.

Two offices down the hall, the Engineering Director is evaluating their suite of Engineers to determine a list of “ready-now” candidates for department leadership positions. Again, this plan services the individual who created it and the department they work in.

The Engineering Director and Operations Director will have a collective impact on the site’s workforce plan, O&M plan, Capital plan, and Outage plan but will not inform each other of what strategies they have in place. This gap leads to a lack insight for the larger organization to plan strategically and collectively.

Silos naturally occur among departments, sites, and operating companies. The silos stem from disparate data sources without connected planning platforms. When it comes to developing a strategic workforce plan, the common outcome is:

  • Slow, manual data controls resulting in laborious reporting periods
  • Inconsistent and inaccurate data utilized between departments and sites
  • Reduced visibility into the future causing fewer effective decisions and frequent churn in long range staffing plans

Additionally, workforce plans are foundational to developing an effective O&M budget for the short-range planning years.

The information transfer from HR to Business Operations is often accomplished with manual data manipulation which results in long financial close times, along with version control hurdles between the two siloed departments.

Training, Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering departments’ long-range workforce plans need to ensure coverage of required qualifications, which often includes lengthy training programs to replace exiting talent. This is oftentimes left in a manual process that doesn’t include the accurate data other departments operate on.

Businesses are large, mechanized instruments with components that technically can ‘function’ separately, but the value derived from working in tune, all gears in place, and planned accordingly is incalculable.

To reach this in-unison, harmonious state, organizations must break down silos and connect all departments with effective, empowering, strategic workforce planning software.

Empower Your Decision-Makers with Workforce Planning Software

To become the organization that effectively defines a future state by empowering its leaders with accurate and connected information, you need a single platform that connects all your planning decisions.

Cloud-based solutions, like Anaplan, house activities in a manner that enables cohesion between the Engineering Director’s strategic staffing plan and the Operations Director’s plan.

The powerful calculation engine within workforce planning software such as Anaplan automates the collection of all plans company wide. This allows leaders to see in real-time how their planning inputs affect the organization as a whole, not just within their department’s silo.

By transforming planning capabilities using technology to break down silos, companies are finding success in refreshing organizational planning activities.

Engineering Directors, Operations Directors, Maintenance Directors, and other site based senior leaders can develop their departmental workforce plans on Anaplan, a platform that is fully customizable to include all the concerns they have within their department and the agility to connect the common threads to other departments.

The outcome is an automated (in real-time) long-range plan which grants leaders clarity into the future, enabling them to make effective decisions.

The New Normal with Workforce Planning Software, Anaplan

Now, consider the same Operations Director from before, but as they sit down to evaluate their 5-year staffing plan they can see the impact of two Ops Supervisors that are slated by the Engineering Director as the “ready-now” candidates. The Engineering Manager positions will be opening due to known retirement attrition over the next 12 months.

Use workforce planning software to see the development of employees around the company and prepare for future staffing needs.

The platform allows the Operations Director to be strategic, not reactive, to personnel movements, and empowers them to define when their candidates need to be ready to be the next two Ops Supervisors.

The silo has been broken!

The business is able to act strategically on insight into how all the departments plans work together. Leaders are informed when plans are connected. Future challenges present themselves earlier in planning cycles, and insights to long-range plans enable strategic decision making around resources (both human and financial).

Spaulding Ridge & Anaplan: Your Workplace Planning Software Solution

Spaulding Ridge, as a Global Strategic Partner for Anaplan, has a proven record of accomplishment and the industry experience to implement solutions like this at companies across the globe. This transformation is not just a digitization of existing data, but a true transformation that is as elegant as it is simple. We are the go-to partner for you to connect your organization across department, across sites, and across operating companies!

Want to hear more about moving your workforce plans to a platform that readily connects siloed groups? Contact Eric Maloni today to discover a more united, consistent, and strategic organizational state with workforce planning software.

Eric Maloni
Director, Spaulding Ridge
About the Author

Eric focuses on providing financial transformational solutions to companies in the energy industry driving strategies to deliver more effective planning solutions. Eric has an extensive background in various capacities in the energy industry, most heavily in the commercial nuclear space. Prior to his civilian profession, Eric served in the United States Navy on nuclear submarines and received his Bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering and holds an MBA from the University of Iowa.