Whether you’re a site HR manager or a plant manager, you’ll see your most skilled operators retire, and it will be difficult to find replacements. A new production line also changes the positions you need to fill.
The strategic workforce planning (SWP), or workforce planning, forecasts the skills you will have available and those required by your strategy over several years, and then determines how to bridge the gap. In a factory, it identifies who is qualified for each position and schedules each training session based on the time it takes to train a replacement.
What is strategic workforce planning?
Strategic workforce planning compares, over a three- to five-year period, the supply and demand for skills. Supply refers to what your teams will be able to do; demand refers to the people your strategy will require.
The action plan then bridges the gap to ensure you have the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time. At an industrial site, we typically work on a two- to five-year timeframe, in step with your investments, so that you can anticipate retirements and new production lines with reliable projections.
What is counted in a factory?
In a workshop, you plan to people who can work independently in this position, valid authorization, team by team, because a position that no one is qualified to fill slows down or stops the line.
A headcount that meets the budget can thus mask a night shift that has only one operator left who is capable of restarting the line. The number of employees doesn't tell you who knows how to do what.
What is the difference between SWP, GEPP, and planning?
The PPIM is a mandatory negotiation in companies with at least 300 employees, whereas The SWP is a voluntary initiative, which breaks down item by item the amounts allocated by the GEPP.
| Approach | Horizon | What it cuts |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment Schedule | The day, the week | Who will be in which position tomorrow morning? |
| Staffing Planning | From 3 to 18 months | How many people should we hire this year? |
| Strategic workforce planning | 2 to 5 years, reviewed quarterly | How many self-employed workers per position, and in what year? |
| GEPP (formerly GPEC) | 3 years, up to 4 years by agreement; mandatory for companies with 300 or more employees | How can we help jobs and career paths evolve? |
Do you already have a GEPP agreement? We recommend linking your SWP to it; the variances by position in the SWP will provide you with precise figures for negotiations and for consultation with the CSE.
Workforce planning determines the staffing levels for the year, and the assignment schedule says who will be in which position tomorrow morning.
Why is workforce planning becoming increasingly urgent in the industry?
By 2030 in metropolitan France, Nine out of ten open positions are to replace departing employees at the end of their careers, according to the study Jobs in 2030 from France Stratégie and Dares.
You can anticipate these departures years in advance. Offsetting them through hiring is less reliable, as nearly one in two industrial recruitment efforts is considered difficult (BMO survey by France Travail).
9 out of 10
Job openings between now and 2030 will replace employees who retire at the end of their careers
nearly 1 in 2
industrial hiring that employers find difficult
France Stratégie and Dares, “Occupations in 2030” (Metropolitan France, 2019–2030); France Travail, “Labor Force Needs Survey 2026.”.
Is your site affected?
- From critical skills depend on one or two people.
- Retirements are expected within the next three years in skilled positions.
- A production line or automation system is selected.
- Your competency matrix is more than a year old.
If several of these situations sound familiar to you, start training your internal replacements in pairs, because it takes weeks to pass on rare expertise.
Are you worried that an SWP might lead to job cuts? It's used to decide who to train—and when. Exxelia, a group of 12 plants, is thus monitoring the skills that are at risk due to retirements in order to plan training and versatility goals.
The 5 Steps of Strategic Workforce Planning
An SWP follows five steps, then start over, because an industrial plan can change along the way. Start by inspecting your most vulnerable workshop.
Figure 2
A Five-Step Cycle
The fifth step ties back to the first: the plan is revised when the business plan changes.
1
Start with the business plan
2
Mapping Job Skills
3
Forecasting Supply and Demand
4
Date each action in reverse chronological order
5
Management Review Quarterly Report
↺ 5 → 1Every quarter, and as soon as there is a change in an investment.
Steps taken from the article.
1. Start with the business plan
The demand for skills stems from decisions regarding the industrial plan, such as a new product line or a certification required by a customer.
Involve production from the very beginning. Its managers know which positions cannot remain vacant, and they are the ones who will implement the necessary measures.
2. Map the skills required for the position
The so-called inventory who holds each position, at what level, with what authorization, and until when, in a skills matrix shared by your teams.
Without her, each team leader counts in their own way. Iris Philips, HR manager at the Isover plant in Chalon-sur-Saône (Saint-Gobain), explained this in his testimony.
«We have five managers with five different work methods […]. »
Next, check the following four points.
- Skills are rated on a common scale, such as ILUO, which has been adapted for your positions.
- The «autonomous» threshold is set, for example, at level U, where the operator manages startup and routine issues on their own.
- Each evaluation and each authorization is dated, because an expired authorization revokes the right to hold the position.
- A photo of the matrix is taken on the same date every year.
3. Forecast supply and demand, year by year
Demand is based on the number of open positions. Supply is calculated by taking your current independent contractors, subtracting known and likely departures, and then adding the qualifications that will lead to.
Do this calculation year by year, because an overall three-year difference masks the critical year, and compare at least two scenarios: one with no action and the other with your plan.
4. Date each action in reverse order
A training program is launching at the date of the requirement, minus the qualification period.
In a sample of 210 industrial sites, the median duration of a validated process is 8 days in the automotive industry. In the cosmetics industry, it takes 57 days.
If you're short on staff, hire or reassign employees. If you're lacking a skill, provide on-the-job training in pairs and rely on the versatility of your teams.
5. Conduct quarterly reviews
The plan is being revised every quarter, and as soon as an investment changes. The review brings together production and HR, the management team that makes the decisions, and the finance team that crunches the numbers, focusing on four key metrics.
- The gap between actual and target figures is tracked on a critical position-by-critical position basis.
- The versatility rating shows how many positions each team can play.
- Expiring authorizations are identified before an assignment is blocked.
- Each training program is compared to its estimated duration.
You present these guidelines to the Social and Economic Committee (CSE), which is consulted on the strategy and its effects on employment, job roles, and the use of temporary workers (Article L2312-24).
When should training sessions begin in a workshop?
In the exercise below, the gap closes if The first pairs will begin in late 2026, before the first retirements. If the workshop waits for those retirements, it will be short 7 independent drivers in 2029.
The third line increases the demand from 8 to 11 autonomous drivers. If no action is taken, the night shift—which is losing two drivers—is the most vulnerable.
| End of the Year | Need | No action | With the plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 2027 | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| 2028 | 11 | 5 | 11 |
| 2029 | 11 | 4 | 11 |
The gap remains at one person until 2027, then widens suddenly in 2028, when the line opens and two drivers leave.
With four pairs—the last of which will not be completed until 2029—one redeployment, and two new hires, the plan will bring the workshop’s headcount to 11 independent workers by 2029, provided that each initiative begins on schedule.
- The first retirement is scheduled for October 1, 2027. The person taking over must start no later than April, and the mentor will step down at the end of 2026, allowing the future retiree to take over.
- The third line opens on July 1, 2028, so the reassigned employee and the two new hires will begin training in January, with recruitment completed beforehand.
What if your training period is shorter? The calculator below recalculates the figure using the values for your most exposed position.
Figure 4
In what year will your department face a shortage of independent workers?
Default values: the example workshop. Replace them with the values for your most exposed workstation.
Per year
The gap is widening in 2028.
To ensure coverage for 2028 starting January 1, begin the training sessions no later than July 1, 2027. If you know the exact departure date, count backward from that date.
| End of the Year | Required Autonomous Vehicles | Self-sufficient if nothing is done | Difference |
|---|
Target = (teams + 1) × divisions, plus (teams in the new division + 1) starting in its inaugural year. Supply = current independent teams, minus departures, plus qualifiers. The calculation is performed in your browser; nothing is sent.
Mistakes That Cause an SWP to Fail
An SWP is doomed to failure when it calculation of total headcount based on static data, and that it is developed within HR once a year.
- A total headcount hides which team is most at risk—such as the night shift in the example. Count by position and by shift.
- Mapping everything out before taking action delays the plan when there are hundreds of skills to account for—as is the case at Sekurit (Saint-Gobain), which tracks more than 200. Start with the critical positions.
- Failing to keep track of qualification deadlines leads to training starting too late, especially since a mentor can only supervise a few pairs at a time.
- An evaluation that is two years old still counts as a separate entry in the file. Date each evaluation.
- A plan developed solely by HR and then set in stone once a year becomes inaccurate as soon as an investment is delayed.
All of these boil down to losing sight of who is in charge of the position—and when that begins.
What ROI can you expect from an SWP, and which tool should you use?
The return on investment for an SWP can be seen in four areas, from production to compliance, provided that Set the metrics before you begin.
The benefit comes from decisions made early on. First, calculate the downtime avoided by not using autonomous vehicles, since you know the hourly cost of your production lines.
| Where Value Is Created | What Can Be Measured | How to calculate it |
|---|---|---|
| Production | Stops Due to Lack of Independent Personnel | Avoided downtime hours × hourly cost of the line |
| Managers | Time spent on scheduling and substitutions | Hours saved per team leader |
| HR | External Hiring, Temporary Work Days | Cost of Hiring vs. Promoting from Within |
| Compliance | Expired certifications, audit preparation | Audit preparation hours, avoided discrepancies |
At Richemont, the ROI study focused on a site with 100 employees. The measured time savings—more than 1,000 hours per year—are attributable to automated scheduling, not to the SWP itself.
Is a spreadsheet enough for an SWP?
A spreadsheet is all you need for a pilot workshop, and has reached its limits with multiple players, across multiple sites, or when an audit requires you to provide a history of evaluations.
Every copy modified by a team leader results in a discrepancy and distorts the proposal. Software, on the other hand, falls into three categories.
- The planning modules in HRIS and financial suites model headcount and payroll.
- Talent management platforms map self-reported skills.
- Field tools are based on the skills required for the position and the necessary authorizations.
For a factory, choose a tool that tracks the number of independent workers per position and per shift. We built Mercateam around position-specific, validated skills, which your team leaders update.
Where should you start with your SWP?
Start by the workshop where a departure would have the greatest impact, and look for the year when the gap begins to widen. This first quantified gap speaks volumes to an executive committee.
Next, roll out the method site by site, as Saint-Gobain did from Chalon-sur-Saône to its other insulation sites, Eurocoustic and Placo. To view this calculation for your workstations, request a demo.
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