Work-Life Balance: A Critical Outcome of Strategic Workforce Planning

This article examines the role of workforce planning in organisations and notes the increasing importance of effective planning to ensure an organisation has sufficient staff required to meet both immediate and longer-term needs. A model is proposed that incorporates a number of internal and external factors that provide an holistic view of the process. The importance of workforce planning on work intensification is then examined. The field of work intensification and its impact on work-life balance is briefly explored. The importance of integrating family-friendly work practices into the planning process, an issue rarely considered, is emphasised. Its role in retaining staff is also discussed, with the view that, to maintain staff loyalty, effective organisational planning needs to be considered to meet the changing demands of workers. This is especially crucial in the current skills shortage scenario, existing in many industrialised countries