Strategic Personnel Planning

Last updated on 27 March 2025

Strategic Personnel Planning (SPP) is an instrument with which you can steer the optimal staffing of a department or team.

What ambitions do you have as a team, and what competencies and skills do you need to be able to realise them in the future? Strategic Personnel Planning helps you focus on the future prospects of your team and the actions needed to allow your team to grow along with changes and developments.

Strategic Personnel Planning consists of a number of steps: a picture of the future perspective, an analysis of the current situation and a plan to achieve the desired future situation. For a good outcome, it is important to look at ambitions, team composition and expected developments from different perspectives. That is why you usually go through SPP with a number of managers of a department or unit, under the guidance of the HR Advisor.

The interpretation and sequence of steps may vary from one unit to another. For a faculty, the career paths and academic focus areas of Recognition & Rewards are a crucial subject of analysis, as are certain roles such as program directors and portfolio holders. A development like AI requires more development in competencies in some departments than others. However you approach it, the most important thing is for managers to take time regularly to review whether the current team is well prepared for the future in composition and competencies.

Step 1: Future perspective

In the first step, you look ahead. What developments do you expect in the next three to five years? Think about developments in your department's field, the job market or changes in the organisation. What ambition do you have for your team? How does this ambition fit into the strategy of your unit and of VU Amsterdam? What risks do you see? You can, for example, make a SWOT analysis. Translate this picture of the future roughly into the knowledge and competencies you need for a successful team in the future.
Step 2: Potential scan

In the next step you map the composition of your current team, for example in skills, experience and performance. Also use information such as age and years of service to factor in future changes. In this step, you take a “picture” of your team and each employee's position in performance and in development. Can an employee still grow in their position? Is it time for a career move now or in a few years? What outflow is to be expected? You discuss this picture with other managers. This creates a joint picture of the current team and its possibilities for the future.
You can visualise this step in several ways. Preferably use the Succession module in SuccessFactors, with a matrix that displays the chosen academic focus areas for academic staff through talent flags.
Step 3: Gap analysis

You then compare the scan of the current team to the ideal team of the future. If we do nothing, where will we be in five years? Are we realising our ambition or is action needed? For example, in development, advancement policy or attracting new talent. In doing so, look not only at individual employees, but also at function groups within your team and across teams. A talented employee might fit better into the ideal team in another department. In this way, Strategic Personnel Planning contributes to the sustainable employability of employees.
Step 4: Action plan
Step 5: Implementation and Monitoring

In this step, you will implement the measures. Discuss the outcomes of Strategic Personnel Planning with your employees. Main points can be discussed in a team meeting, individual outcomes can be discussed in the annual consultation. The plan of approach helps to steer the development of employees and to properly align individual development wishes with the future ambitions of the team.
Remember to regularly review the plan of action: circumstances change quickly and it is important to regularly adjust your plan accordingly. Some units therefore choose to conduct an annual potential scan in order to adjust the plan of action in time.

Frequency

How often you go through the steps of SPP depends on the speed and impact of developments. As a guideline, a department should go through the entire process once every three years. Some departments opt for variants in which, for example, the potential scan is gone through annually in order to adjust the plan of action in time. Typically, three to five years are looked ahead.

Learn more

Strategic Personnel Planning is initiated and supervised by the unit's HR Advisor. A Team Folder is available for the HR Advisors with formats and examples from various units.

Scouting guideline information

Background information Participation Act

Colourful Staff Action Plan

Strategic Personnel Planning

Step 1: Future perspective

Step 2: Potential scan

Step 3: Gap analysis

Step 4: Action plan

Step 5: Implementation and Monitoring

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