The headline numbers each month from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics focus on the number of net jobs added to the economy—and the unemployment rate, job openings, wage growth, and inflation.

Don’t get overly distracted, however; that’s the statistician’s world. It’s a look in the rear-view mirror. But those who run or manage companies need to focus on the future, and a big part of that future will be workforce needs: making sure, through strategic workforce planning, that you always have (or have ready access to) people with the most-critical skills your organization needs, even as those needs change.

The big question marks are: What will those skills be a year, two years, or five years from now? And where will the talent come from?

Strategic Workforce Planning

That’s where strategic workforce planning comes in.

Strategic workforce planning is not “Part II” of your overall strategic plan. It doesn’t come after your strategizing and planning are completed; it needs to be part of the process. The workforce component should help inform other critical decisions; without it, strategic planning easily can become wishful thinking.

As the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based Academy to Innovate HR explains, strategic workforce planning is the ongoing process of evaluating an organization’s talent needs, “identifying gaps … and developing a methodical people plan” to ensure the organization has “the employees, skills and knowledge needed to meet current and future business goals” based on its long-term strategy. The plan, of course, also needs to be agile enough to accommodate “unexpected events and changes.”