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The authors make the case for concluding that current workforce models stop short at workforce planning. These are not truly integrated approaches that take an inclusive approach to the involvement of stakeholders. Nor do current models put the service users first in terms of designing a holistic workforce development process driven by and for the service user. The authors go on to articulate the key features of such a service user‐focused approach.

The purpose of this APQC (American Productivity and Quality Center) research study is to understand which strategic workforce planning approaches are currently in use; whether these approaches are meeting business needs; and what workforce planning challenges organizations are facing today.

This study involved survey research with 236 valid respondents representing organizations from a wide range of industries, regions, workforce sizes and revenues. American productivity and quality center (APQC) identified 46 “best-in-class” workforce planners from among these organizations based on their consistent achievement of superior results from workforce planning.

Best-in-class workforce planners are doing more than closing skills gaps and reducing skills surpluses. They are optimizing talent. Leveraging technology, varied work arrangements and employee development, they assemble the optimal mix of talent to achieve business goals.

The findings provide insight into how best-in-class workforce planners build a strong foundation for effective workforce planning through the distinctive ways they use process, people, technology and time. Organizations that adopt the practices and approaches of best-in-class workforce planners can drive improvements in their own workforce planning process.

New Zealand is not alone in facing challenges for the building and sustaining of a future health workforce that can meet the needs of a diverse population. In this article, the author describes how New Zealand has begun to build on models developed from the UK and elsewhere to attend to workforce issues in the child and adolescent mental health and addictions sector. The workforce planning development model being implemented by the Werry Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health has a solid pedigree, with a very New Zealand focused process for implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and review the leadership challenges in workforce planning, paying special reference to adult social care primarily in England (UK) whilst raising leadership issues that have international resonance.

This is a viewpoint which presents a distillation of key issues, challenges and relevant literature spanning workforce planning, human resources and social care.

The paper finds that growing demands on services, rising expectations for personalised care and support, together with the provision of safe and effective joined up care are some of the key drivers facing social care and wider public services. Leaders need to ensure a robust data and evidence base, sound interpretation of intelligence as well as building integrated approaches to workforce planning both within and between services.

Workforce leadership provides the bedrock to ensuring social care builds the workforce required for the future. As services undergo redesign and transformation the workforce planning task is more important now than ever and is a key responsibility for every organisation's leadership, including chief executives, commissioners and workforce specialists.

Workforce planning in social care is afforded relatively little attention and the analysis presented in this paper provides the stimulus for debate.

Information technology (IT) personnels’ technical, business and behavioral skills are critical enablers for generating IT value. In an increasingly digitalized working environment where non-IT employees participate in digital innovations, a focus on IT personnels’ skills only doesn’t meet researchers’ need for a framework to study digital skills and managers’ need to address digital skills challenges across an enterprise’s workforce. Nevertheless, the digital skills topic is complicated by conceptual ambiguity and a lack of theoretically derived and empirically validated model. The purpose of this study is to address this problem.

Theoretically, this study draws on human capital (HC) and resource-based view (RBV) theories. Empirically, it follows mixed method combining interviews and a survey.

The digital skills construct is a multidimensional second order reflective construct. While its development is influenced by an organization’s commitment and exposure to digitalization, it influences the value organizations obtain from digitalization.

This study conceptualizes the digital skills construct, identifying technology agnostic subdimensions that are meaningful beyond a particular digital domain [information and communication technology (ICT), information, Internet, Inter of Things (IoT)] and establishing a valid measure. Other researchers can improve both the indicators of the existing four conceptually distinct and managerially recognizable workplace digital skills dimensions as well as testing new ones.

Managers can use the instrument to assess the extent to which their non-IT workforces are equipped with digital skills and get strategic insights for specific interventions such as upskilling or buying in skills.

The main theoretical contribution of the paper is the conceptualization and validation of the digital skills construct for the non-IT workforce. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical framework to explain the factors that could influence the development of digital skills and demonstrate the impact that digital skills have on selected digitalization value indicators. This contribution provides the foundation for investigating the drivers, outcomes and the relationship of digital skills to other constructs such as digital transformation, innovation and firm performance.

In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a review, the chapter provided meaning to the concept of construction and workforce management. The chapter concluded that while the construction industry worldwide is important to the economic growth of the countries where it operates, the industry’s management of its workforce is challenged by several problems. These problems include the nature of the industry, skill shortage, unhealthy working environment, and poor image of the industry, among others. Also, while the construction industry is rich in diversity, this has been a major source of problems for workforce management. The chapter further revealed that to improve workforce management and attain better-performing construction organisations, careful recruitment, effective training, providing a safe working environment, putting policies to promote diversity, and ensuring innovativeness, among others, are essential.

The construction workforce plays a crucial role in the successful delivery of any construction project and, eventually, the performance of any construction organisation. Effectively managing these workforces becomes crucial. However, past studies have shown that workforce management within the construction industry has been on the back foot, with workers being seen as resources required to deliver construction projects. This situation begs the need for a construction workforce management model that can be tailored to an organisation’s situation and adopted to manage workers and improve organisational performance effectively. To this end, this chapter reviewed existing workforce management theories, models, and practices to develop a suitable approach towards managing the construction workforce. Ultimately, a strategic workforce management with a classical view using a soft workforce management approach that embraces employees’ empowerment and development through trust was proposed. Five major practices that best suit the soft workforce management approach were identified as key constructs in the proposed construction workforce management model.

This book aimed to conceptualise a construction workforce management model suitable for effectively managing workers in construction organisations. To this end, this chapter presents the conceptualised model, which consists of seven workforce management practices with their respective measurement variables. Drawing from existing theories, models, and practices, the chapter concludes that a construction organisation that will attain its strategic objectives in the current fourth industrial revolution era must be willing to promote effective recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, performance management and appraisal, employee involvement and empowerment, training and development, as well as improving workers emotional intelligence and handling external environment pressure. These practices can promote proactiveness, participation, and improved skills and can lead to effective commitment, better quality, and flexibility within the organisation.

Two major trends – demographic shifts in the working-age population, and the proliferation of web technologies – are having a profound and generally unrecognized effect on the nature and characteristics of work, and on opportunities for the mature workforce. Key features of the workplace point to seven broad work trends. These trends have significant implications for organizations and for older workers. Six interdependent organizational changes are central to the far-reaching effects on enterprises and operating approaches. These changing work characteristics require certain essential behaviors for mature workers to be successful in the contemporary work environment. Such a dynamic workplace provides opportunity to introduce new thinking and propose new models. Realigning organizational and workforce interests calls for developing solutions beyond the individual level, reorienting enterprise capabilities, and reframing of the organization development practitioner role as work ecosystem advisor. High-leverage strategies and systemic interventions, such as multiconstituent initiatives and action research, can be used to influence constructively the multifaceted world of work.