Slow and steady wins the race! Long-term resource planning is the key to a stable business that stands the test of time.
Just how far ahead should a long-term plan look?
Some organizations keep it cautious, looking the next five or ten years into the future. But on the other end of the scale, you've got a company like IKEA, which plans for a whopping 200 years ahead.
While planning for the next couple of centuries might be pushing it (who knows what technologies we'll develop in the next two decades, let alone centuries), for efficient resource planning and a staffing strategy that serves the business plan, a long-term perspective is paramount.
But that's not to say that we should be overly wary. There's a place in long-term planning for strategy, ambition - and a little optimism.
In this article, we're explaining what long-term planning means in resource management, why it matters so much, and how you should approach it for the best results.
Long-term resource planning is the process you start when looking into weeks or even months of work lying ahead for the company.
Just as short-term planning, long-term planning is an essential element of successful operations. It's a matter of analyzing future projects and evaluating them in relation to your resource capacity and the type of human resources you have available.
Needless to say, long-term planning can be tricky. Some projects are fairly predictable than others, while others may include complex, tentative elements. But whatever comes from them, planning in advance gives you certainty and visibility.
And by planning resources on those projects in advance, you can make sure the team has the capacity needed to cover demand.
Doing without long-term resource planning is a risky choice.
Long-term planning gives you the chance to zoom out and look at the bigger picture to understand what it will take for the company to hit its goals. And from this perspective, you can also see all the hindrances, challenges, and threats your projects might run into.
On top of that, long-term resource capacity planning and resource allocation help you uncover gaps in resource availability and capacity so you can trigger strategic hiring when it is most relevant.
Long-term planning is, therefore, crucial when you:
Before we go into the tricks of the trade, there is one thing to set clear: doing long-term resource planning in Excel is not sustainable. With this type of management, you are bound to be planning resources for multiple projects, with tons of deadlines, dependencies, and variables.
Starting with a good resource management tool is, therefore, a must.
A tool like Runn gives you the ability to plan resources across portfolios of projects up to a year ahead of time. This way, you can see exactly how your resource pool works with the projects you have in the pipeline - helping you anticipate risks, uncovering gaps, and creating a streamlined process for requesting additional resources to fill those gaps.
Take a look at some more resource planning tools ➡️
But once you've equipped yourself with the best toolkit for long term resource planning, here are the best practices you need to consider:
It's important to draw a clear line between short-term resource planning and long-term resource planning. The former is a lot more granular - it deals with individual tasks and project milestones. The latter is more strategic and high-level, it chases overall company goals rather than specific timelines.
Long-term resource planning efforts need to be directed at identifying prospects and vulnerabilities without getting too bogged down in the detail of every project.
On top of that, there's also the question of frequency and time investment required. Long-term planning is one of those exercises you do only a few times per year by leveraging all the data gathered over a long period of time. Resource managers need to consider what is possible, what isn't, and what needs to be done or adjusted.
Some of the best resource management tools will also help you create a resource plan for tentative projects in your long-term resource planning.
Otherwise known as "what-if planning", scenario planning shows you how the overall picture will change if certain variables change. For example, if you add or remove specific projects or if your resource pool changes.
For long-term planning, scenario planning is more relevant than anything else. It helps you look into potential possibilities and find spots where your team is falling short. It will also help you prevent too much employee bench time, and signal if your current resource potential does not meet company demands or expectations from the coming year.
Planning for a whole year ahead can be difficult. There are always gaps to fill, and it leaves room for wishful thinking. For example, if you take on a project that has little alignment with your current capabilities, hoping that the resource pool will catch up, it could backfire.
After all, it's easy to misjudge the extent and range of skills required to tackle certain work, or to underestimate the time it takes to find and hire people with the right mix of skills.
There is a simple solution, though. With tools like Runn, you can easily use placeholders for demand planning in your project management. Placeholders help you pinpoint precisely what skills and expertise your resource pool is missing, as well as the availability required and the costs it would incur.
Runn also supplies you with a resource planning template for different types of projects so creating a resource plan has never been easier.
In short, this rule means that you should never book 100% of your people's time with billable work. Any resource planning guide will point out that it's important to always keep a little room for admin or non-billable work, unexpected leave, vacations - and even just changes in priorities.
There's a delicate balance to be struck here. Fail to maximize your team's potential, your teams will be underutilized, bored, and unmotivated. Get a little too ambitious, and you're looking at an overworked workforce.
And if you spread your resources too thin, you might end up expecting too much from what your resources can actually deliver - which will make your long-term resource planning inaccurate and unreliable.
So many companies start out with big ambitions but fail to understand the value of long-term planning. They spring out of the gate strong, but hitting roadblock after roadblock, weathering one disaster after another - it takes it toll. In fact, nearly two thirds of businesses fail within their first three years.
The best way to avoid this pattern is with long-term resource planning. This way, you can scope out what stable, sustainable growth would look like for your company over the course of years to come.
