• What is Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP)?
    • Strategic Workforce planning is continual process of identifying and to aligning the needs and priorities of MoH with those of its workforce of and development plans to ensure that it can meet its legislative, regulatory, service and production requirements and organizational objectives. The goal of SWP is to make sure that the right people, with the right knowledge, skills and abilities, in the right  size are in the right jobs, and at the right time.
  • Why is SWP important? 
    • SWP provides a strategic basis for making human resource decisions, which in turn will help ensure the right people in the right job at the right cost. 
    • It allows anticipating change rather than being surprised by events, as well as providing strategic approaches for addressing present and anticipated workforce issues. 
  • What are the essential steps in SWP?
    • Definition of strategic plans which provides direction and measurable program goals and objectives.
    • Definition of job family groups which give a holistic overview all the possible job titles as well as the time it takes to potentially retrain employees from one role to the other.
    • Development of a SWP tool that can simulate the development of supply and demand with the input of different variables.
    • Estimation of future supply of workforce, which indicates how many employees from the different job family groups will be available when and where without doing anything (due to retirement, change in careers, etc…).
    • Estimation of future demand of workforce, which indicates how many employees from different job family groups would be needed when and where due to the prevalence of diseases (in the case of MoH).
    • Estimation of gap, which indicates the difference at any given time in any region due to the difference in supply and demand.
    • Definition of gap filler initiatives which are initiatives aimed closing the gaps of workforce (whether it’s a surplus or shortfall). There are a large variety of initiatives ranging from handing out university scholarships to "importing" experts from abroad.
    • Preparation of a roadmap, which consolidates all initiatives on a realistic timeline.
  • What is the impact of SWP on the organization? 
    • Allows more effective utilization of employees through efficient alignment of the workforce with strategic objectives.
    • Provides realistic staffing projections for budget purposes.
    • Provides better-focused investment in development, training and retraining, career counseling, and productivity.
    • Provides recruitment, development, and training, deployment, and retention decisions to organizational goals.
  • How can SWP be implemented?
    • At a first step, MOH will define the goals of the SWP derived from the Vision 2030 strategic objectives. This will define the standard and model of care provided which will influence the demand.
    • Second, MoH will need to develop a SWP tool, which is able to calculate the development of supply and demand and estimate the impact (financial, coverage, indirect) of government decisions (e.g. shift towards prevention focused healthcare). This will require rigorous data collection and collaboration from all regions on the current data (number/types of healthcare workers) as well as the demand (prevalence of disease cases). With the involvement of subject matter experts (doctors, nurses, allied health professionals), MoH will work out the forecasting methodology to arrive to future supply and demand from the current ones.
    • Third, based supply and demand, MoH will calculate the gaps, and with the involvement of the regions and the involvement of key external stakeholders (e.g. Ministry of Education, Private healthcare providers, etc…) will define initiatives to close those gaps.
  • What are the key challenges and success factors for SWP?
    • Ensure senior leadership endorsement and bring attention to the risks associated with failing in the process (such as increasing costs).
    • Running a pilot: SWP is a complex process which, if rolled out to the entire country, can lead to questions with regards the credibility. It is crucial to first run pilots to refine the model and establish credibility before it is used across the kingdom. 
    • Standardized data and technology: As the model requires the collection of vast amounts of data from many sources it is paramount to have rigorous data collection and cleansing process as well as one, integrated IT tool which is used.
    • Continuous improvement: It is important to realize that the SWP tool will not produce 100% correct forecasts at the end of the project. The tool will be a living thing that needs to be gradually improved over the years to make it better and better. 
  • What are the expected results of SWP?
    • Understanding of expected supply and demand of workforce in the future.
    • Ability to fulfill country strategy objectives by understanding where current shortcomings are and defining initiatives to improve on those.
    • Provision of overall improved quality of healthcare services through better access and higher skilled workforce at potentially lower costs.
    • Clarity with regards to the workforce gaps (resulting from the difference in supply and demand) expected in the future broken down to the regions of KSA, down to a detailed level of type of workforce (doctors, nurses, allied health professionals) as well the category and sub-categories (e.g. pediatric cardiologist).