A decision support system and a mathematical model for strategic workforce planning in consultancies

Abstract

Strategic staff planning in consultancies is a major problem that directly affects the firm's performance and capacity for dealing with projects appropriately. Furthermore, the decisions taken now will have long term consequences, because consultants are highly qualified workers who need very long learning periods to achieve enough expertise. In other words, the size and composition of the future workforce depends on the decisions taken today. It is important to underline that the system anticipates future capacity adjustment in response to forecasted demand requirements; therefore, it is flexible to plan the workforce in different scenarios and time horizons. This paper proposes a decision support system based on a mathematical optimization model for solving strategic staff planning, taking the company's strategies, policies and objectives into account and optimizing both the costs and the staff composition. The tool is tested by applying it in an office belonging to a multinational consulting firm.

A Framework for Capacity and Operations Planning in Services Organizations Employing Workers with Intellectual Disabilities

“…Li et al [26] identified two main types of approaches in the literature to tackle manpower planning problems: exploratory models and normative models. Generally, the approaches deal either with long-term manpower (strategic) planning [27,28] or short-term staff scheduling (see Van der Bergh et al [29] for a literature review), but integrated approaches or tools are even scarcer. Among them, Henderson et al [30] introduced an integrated approach for manpower planning in a post office in which a simulation model is used to size the staff.…”

A Cost Effective Mathematical Model for Strategic Workforce Planning

“…The numerical illustration proves the model efficiency. Strategic staff planning affects a firm performance [13]. An mathematical optimization model is proposed for solving staff planning.…”

Demand smoothing in shift design

“…By contrast, this paper considers workforce planning as a centralized decision-making process consisting of sequential steps which may be grouped into three main processes: demand modeling, shift rostering and disruption handling (Defraeye and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2016) Figure 1 provides an overview of these high-level processes with their detailed steps. Note that the strategic level of decision-making, primarily concerned with manpower planning, is also relevant in workforce planning (Llort et al, 2019). As discussed by Komarudin et al (2013), decisions at this level have a significant influence upon the others, and vice versa.…”