CALL centre operator Loveena Sharma was finding it tough remaining in the workforce after having her two children, now aged 3 and 6.

Presenteeism is outdated in the knowledge economy, says Elizabeth Broderick

In addition to predictable costs such as childcare, the daily commute took two hours.

"It affected me physically, because I was very tired with all the driving," she said. "It also affected me mentally because I was frustrated with the traffic by the time I got to work, and when I came home I didn't want to talk to anyone."

That all changed when her employer, NRMA Insurance, offered its call centre employees the opportunity to work from home. Trialled successfully in 2007, the program has now become a permanent arrangement for almost 50 employees and, with a large number of people expressing an interest, that figure will continue to grow.

NRMA Insurance spokesman John Hallal says the program offers benefits to both employers and employees -- and that it is essential to "think outside the square" in order to retain existing staff and attract new employees. "We're confident that an increase in workplace flexibility will improve employee job satisfaction, and even lead to improvements in productivity," he says.

But flexible work arrangements such as this are more the exception than the rule.

Recent research from a Konica Minolta Life in Colour Thought Leadership Program found that 35 per cent of companies do not allow employees to work flexible hours -- although 85 per cent of employees say they would like to.

The study also found that 82 per cent indicated more flexible working hours would increase their productivity, and 92 per cent would be more likely to stay with their current employer if they could just break free of the 9-to-5 shackles.

But anecdotal evidence suggests that many managers still subscribe to the belief that "if I can't see you at your desk, then you're not working".

"There are a lot of closed minds out there -- my view is that the blockage to quality workforce planning in the Australian labour market is often at the top," says Julie Sloan, director of JSM and Workforce Planning Australia.

Sloan says many people want to work different hours or under different working arrangements -- and that there is scope to redesign jobs to match this supply.

"If managers didn't get so worried about working arrangements they could look at supply differently," she says.

She points out that many women currently underutilised in the labour market are keen to work -- but on terms that suit them and their families. "They think, 'I can do that in the middle of the night if I have to, but I can't do that in the middle of the school run'."

To tap into previously untapped but highly skilled talent, employers have to think laterally, says David Reynolds, executive general manager consulting with Chandler Macleod.

"Work-life balance is about finding ways to allow workers to accommodate the many demands they face in their daily lives. There is a huge repository of skills sitting at home underutilised because employers have not known how to accommodate their needs and have not been willing to be flexible to provide working arrangements that enable this talent supply to be released and activated.
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."I love it, I'm not stressed at all, and I don't think I will ever leave," says Sharma. "I'm a stay-at-home mum, but I still have a job -- I can't think of another company that gives you the same benefits and framework."

Public sector departments concerned about an exodus of ageing staff over the coming decade are calling in experts from a fresh discipline - workforce planning. Workforce planning aligns business needs with those of the workforce, using evidence-based data to retain and recruit, says Julie Sloan, director of JSM and Workforce Planning Australia.

Workforce planning, once seen as a luxury, is now considered crucial to combating the effects of "crunch time", when the number of people retiring is expected to outweigh the number of new employees.

"It's important for every sector, but particularly so the public sector, whose capacity to deliver services that they are legislatively required to deliver would be adversely impacted without it," says Sloan.

Sloan will be one of several speakers at the upcoming Public Sector Workforce Strategy & Solutions 2008 conference in Sydney from 3-4 December.
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Sloan says that workforce planning knowledge and capapbilities should be strongly based on getting the figures right.

As the author of the book An Introduction to Workforce Planning - are you ready for crunch time? and the principle author of Standards Australia's Guidelines on Workforce Planning, Sloan has developed a range of strategies to assist the process.

These include supply and demand gap analysis, workforce risk assessment procedures and supply source identification techniques.

Workforce profiling, collecting data on staff by actually asking them for their opinions, is a key element in her aproach. "My view has been that the workers have got the answers and they can play a key role in workforce development strategies, if only they are asked," she says. "If organisations ask their employees, "why do you come, and why do you walk away?", then they have their retention strategies right there.

"But they do need to listen to people when they say, 'I would stay with you but the spread of hours you require are just not working with the demands of my other life'."

The business community is vulnerable in the current war for talent. It needs to develop accurate workforce data to retain and recruit the required workforce.

In South Australia the issue has a level of urgency above other states as the demographic is skewed to older workers.

Organisations need to implement quality and proven workforce planning methods to ensure they are making decisions on accurate, and not anecdotal, workforce data.

The value and importance of skilled workforce planning is increasingly being recognised and as a result it is rapidly emerging globally as a specialist discipline.

Workforce planing is a process which enables evidence-based decision making about workforce supply and demand.

It assists in aligning the needs of a business with those of its workforce, seeking a balance between both.

It can be used to expand, reduce or better utilise a workforce and for restructures, mergers and acquisitions.

It requires specific strategic and operational skills and knowledge.

With "crunch time" gaining momentum - that is, when the number of people exiting the labour market is greater than the number entering - employers are strongly advised to have workforce planning intitiatives in place by 2009 as the initial impact will be felt as early as 2010 in many industries.

A Handbool on Workforce Planning - Are You Ready For Crunch Time? - can be viewed at www.workforceplanning.com.au from April.

COMPANIES which ignore recruitment and staff development strategies do so at their peril.

The warning chorus is getting louder as jobs growth, low unemployment and baby-boomer retirements exacerbate skills and worker shortages.

"Workforce planning is like global warming," says Adelaide workforce planning specialist Julie Sloan.

"Everyone knows it needs strategic and operational management, but few are taking responsibility for it."

In the past year, skilled vacancies have jumped by 12 per cent in South Australia - with growth evident in a wide spread of industries.

SA and the Northern Territory (up 17 per cent) led the skilled vacancies ratings in the year to December in surveys by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

The DEWR skilled vacancies index rose almost 9 per cent in Queensland in 2007 - but finished down 14.6 per cent in Western Australia, 12 per cent in New South Wales and 1.7 per cent in Victoria.

SA also featured strongly in the latest employment figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with 6100 new jobs and unemployment easing to 4.8 per cent in November.

Ms Sloan says thorough, evidence-based workforce planning is not common.

"The business community is not ready for crunch time - when there will be more exits from the workplace than incoming," she says. "They need to have workforce planning processes in place by 2009."

Employers worried about the ageing of their staff are turning to workforce planners for help, reports Wendy Taylor.

EMPLOYERS and industry bodies are anxious that mass retirement of their older workers will coincide with a dwindling supply of younger workers. The result is the growth of a specialist area of human resources with a long history of being seen as a luxury: workforce planning.

Australia has only a handful of HR or management consultants who call themselves workforce planners, and Julie Sloan, director of JSM Workforce Planning, is one of them.

Ms Sloan has carried out workforce planning assignments for more than 50 companies throughout Australia, and has accumulated data on more than 100,000 public, private and not-for-profit workers in the process. This year she has managed three planning projects in the aged care, dental, and transport, storage and logistics sectors.

Growing interest in her approach has led to her addressing social policy and development staff at the United Nations in New York; a businesswomen's forum in Toronto; and Public Sector HR Conventions in Melbourne, Hobart and next month in Sydney.

Ms Sloan is "thrilled that workforce planning is now firmly on the agenda" after working in isolation for the past 10 years.

Her challenge lies not in finding work but in convincing organisations to move beyond the traditional marketing-with-glossy-brochures approach to solving staffing problems.

"My view is that there is too much focus on recruitment to address the issues and that there needs to be more focus on retention," she says. Most solutions to labour shortages "are totally reactive," she says. They usually focus on pay and are based on managers' personal perceptions of the problems rather than on hard data.

Collecting data on staff through workforce profiling is critical, she says. "My view has been that the workers have got the answers but no one ever asks them."

Through workforce profiling it often emerges that employers' worst fears will not be realised, particularly in relation to older workers.

Although there is widespread fear that everyone will take early retirement, Ms Sloan's data suggests many such workers can be enticed to stay. "The reality is that most people that I interview say: 'I'm really happy to stick around, but I want to leave this particular job. So if you offered me something that was attractive for me to stay, of course I would hang around."

Ms Sloan recently worked with an aged-care provider which feared there was a skills crisis around the corner because it lacked "the numbers, skills and knowledge" to meet demand for its services, particularly among the growing numbers of elderly indigenous people and migrants.

However, workforce profiling revealed such fears were exaggerated. The managers believed that because they had few indigenous or migrant staff they would be unable to provide specialised services.

"But you just need staff who are sensitive or understanding of their issues or have a willingness to learn," says Ms Sloan.

"And when I asked workers, 'Do you have an interest in working with this population?' we had a huge number saying, 'Yes, I'd love to'. I think we had 130 people."

Workforce profiling also revealed that 30 per cent of staff wanted to work more hours.

When examining workforce planning matters affecting young people Ms Sloan often challenges employers to consider how the jobs and training are structured, then ask young staff to help with the redesign of such jobs.

"You focus on what people like about their jobs and what keeps them there rather than only why they leave," she says.

Peter Howes, chief executive of HRM Consulting, the largest provider of workforce planning services in Australia, has been running workshops for HR staff for 25 years.

Mr Howes believes it will be the "incredibly severe competition for entry-level people, school-leavers, trainees, graduates and apprentices" that will fuel the demand for workforce planning expertise, rather than concerns around the ageing workforce.

Like Ms Sloan, he has seen his company's workforce planning division flourish in recent years. "Workshops participants have increased by 50 per cent in the past three years, but the consulting services even more so. We used to do one or two major consulting assignments every year and now we do six or seven," he says.

Mr Howes considers workforce planning an increasingly important part of HR. "It's going to become even more so because it's going to become more visible.

"Doing poor workforce planning in the past affected productivity, but people didn't visibly see it because they always had a body to fill a job. But as you get towards physically not having bodies to carry out the jobs, the need for workforce planning become self-evident."

Julie Sloan is presenting at the Public Sector HR Convention NSW in Sydney on Friday, September 23. For details visit halledit.com.au. For information on workforce planning workshops for HR professionals visit www.infohrm.com.au.