Developing Workforce Planning Skills in Human Resource Management Courses: A Data-Driven Exercise

Workforce planning is prevalent and recognized as a good strategic practice in many organizations. However, business students may have little experience with workforce planning or workforce analytics. The purpose of this article is to present a workforce planning exercise for use in a face-to-face or online classroom setting. In this exercise, students practice applying workforce planning concepts to calculate internal employment data, find and collect external employment data, and combine multiple, sometimes conflicting, data to make workforce predictions and recommendations for a hypothetical organization. This exercise is designed to help students develop career-relevant skills and is intended for use in human resource management, talent acquisition, talent management, staffing, and/or selection classes.