Workforce planning in IT companies: Strategic or not?
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Date
2024
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Mcode
Degree programme
mib
Language
en
Pages
129+6
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Abstract
Workforce planning is crucial for the success and sustainability of IT organisations due to the rapidly changing and constantly evolving environments surrounding the industry, especially in advanced and innovation-driven economies like Finland. Finland's IT sector has seen significant growth and development over the past few decades, becoming a crucial driver of the national economy. Despite this, as technological advancements continue to accelerate, Finland’s IT sector must navigate and face unique challenges and opportunities—including rapid technological changes and evolving skill requirements. Strategic workforce planning requires that companies adopt a methodical long-term stratagem which continuously and reiteratively identifies and responds to gaps in their workforce, adapting to shifting internal and external business environments. This helps IT companies anticipate and react to industry changes, maintain competitiveness, and drive innovation by aligning workforce capabilities with organisational goals. This study employs a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews (n=12) to gather data from a diverse sample of managers working at IT companies in Finland. Through reflexive thematic analysis, the research identifies four key themes brought up by interview participants: organisational operations, organisational team culture, workforce gap analysis, and employee engagement and development. This demonstrates the large scope interviewees consider about workforce planning as well as the impact that practices within each theme can have on how an organisation approaches workforce planning. The practices include, but are not limited to, performance tracking, gap analysis, and providing opportunities for employee learning and development. We find that companies are not approaching work-force planning strategically because their activities and initiatives are fragmented, focusing on addressing standalone, short-term issues, rather than cohesively addressing long-term strategic goals. We therefore build a theoretical framework, adopting Cotten’s (2007) seven-step workforce planning model, the Employee Lifecycle Model (ELM), and the Competitive Values Framework (CVF) with empirical insights from our interviews, to provide practical implications for human resources (HR) practitioners at IT organisations while suggesting avenues for future research.Description
Thesis advisor
Vuorenmaa, HerttaKeywords
strategic workforce planning, talent management, employee lifecycle model (ELM), competitive values framework (CVF), information technology (IT)