SHuRePlan

Workforce Supply and Labour Market Modelling

The conventional approach to modelling workforce supply has been the stock flow model. Essentially this treats the workforce as consisting of a number of stocks e.g. numbers by professional group and or grade. More sophisticated models allow the stocks to be broken down by age, length of service, sex etc. Future numbers in the stocks are modelled by predicting the flows into and out of them e.g. recruitment, wastage, promotion etc. Stock flow models normally fall into two categories 'pull' models (or renewal models) and 'push' models. Pull models show the recruitment and promotion flows required to meet a given level of demand and this is a common approach for setting commissioning levels for training. Push models show the numbers that will be produced for a given set of assumptions. Although 'pull' models can be used in some circumstances they are generally to be avoided since they tend to force a focus on a single input variable and obscure factors, which will constrain future supply and demand.

An alternative approach is to model the availability of staff in the labour market and the factors that will affect that availability.

The areas to be covered in this section will include:

• Stock-flow modelling
• Succession planning
• Labour market modelling