Impressions of the Health Workforce Planning Workshop
We are not workforce planning experts, yet it is one of our goals for the Capacity Project to develop user-friendly health workforce planning software specifically for low-resource countries. Last week, we brought together a group of workforce planning experts from all over the world, representing countries like Finland and Uganda and organizations like the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Asia-Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resources for Health. Our goal was to select a workforce planning model we could base our software on, specify features for the software and form a working group to advise on the software development.
Workforce planning expert Peter Hornby explains the complexities of workforce planning to workshop participants.
The most exciting aspect of the workshop for me was the conversation, which was constant, lively and collaborative. Everyone agreed that software was sorely needed. The greatest need for the software is to present a complex task in a simpler way so that planners and policy makers can easly analyze data about their health workforce and plan for the future.
The conversation revolved around the many complexities of workforce planning, such as ensuring that plans are affordable and balancing the needs of different geographical areas in a country, as well as the private and public sectors. Many issues we hadn’t even considered were raised by our group of experts. For example, I hadn’t realized that the data requirements for short-term and long-term projections are very different, yet both are crucial for effective planning. It was also important to consider how our software will help planners present their recommendations to decision makers in government, other stakeholders and even the media.
Finally, I learned that there is an art to workforce planinng, as well as a science. The planner must stand back and take a look at the set of assumptions made about the future of the workforce, and then fine-tune those assumptions to adjust for the context of that country. How can we support this artistic process in software? At this point, I’m not sure.
We walked away with a robust set of suggestions for how to start our first iteration of development, which is scheduled for piloting in Namibia only six months from now. And I learned more about the nuances and complexities of workforce planning than I ever imagined. Now the real fun begins as we start developing the software. But with this group of experts ready to provide suggestions, test prototypes and help write the documentation, I feel confident that we can produce an extremely useful tool. I, for one, am looking forward to the conversation continuing.
Workforce planning experts gathered together for a two-day workshop at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., to define specifications for workforce planning software.
Does workforce planning excite you? We are looking for contributors to help us develop our Open Source workforce planning software. We need help with documentation, testing and programming. If you’re interested, leave a comment or contact us.
Dear all,
In my thought,we can take a lot of way to make a plan including planning for Health Human Resources.
There are many methodes that we can used to make a HHR planning: 1.with gathering data (quantitavie analyze) or 2.without gathering data (qualitative analyze)
In a way of planning HHR with gathering data,we can use Ratio Methodes,ISN,WISN methodes,etc.
Some how,to gather all the exact HHR data has to take alot of source (money,workforce,time,etc). So,some time in many countries we can not collect all the data that we need precisely(amount/number).But we can use data from survey instead of cencus.
In the HHR Information System it is not matter, whether the data enter by the human health resources their own or enter by others (operator).The first and most important that we must analyze is how far one region develope their Information technology and infrastructure.Is the people in one region commonly use technology such computer,internet,handphone,etc or not? this is one of the problem too.
If in one region doesn’t have enough sources in the information system or technology,so there should be one organization to handle and responsible collecting/gathering data continuely(every months,every years,every five years,etc)so their can be use that data to process and make the output to be analyzed for the recommendation.
DONT wait to make a plan untill we have a precise or complete data.
and
DONT wait to collect data untill we need to make a plan.
Collecting data is needed,planning is needed too.
Have a nice day
Posted by prima on 1/15 at 5:31 am
Great points, especially the last two. If you wait for either of those conditions to be true, you will never plan. Rather, start planning as soon as you can with what you have and refine your plans as more data become available.
Posted by Shannon Turlington on 1/15 at 8:59 am
thank you for the feed back.
If I interest on the paper of Peter Hornby’s paper presentation in the workshop,How can I get the contact address of him?
thank you very much before.
Posted by prima on 1/15 at 11:41 pm
We will be posting the results of the workshop to the Capacity Project website (www.capacityproject.org) within the next few weeks. I’ll post an announcement on this blog as well. The results will include a copy of his presentation as well as a full participant’s list.
Posted by Shannon Turlington on 1/16 at 10:28 am
[…] software, iHRIS Plan. This proof-of-concept version was developed based on the results of the Workforce Planning Model Workshop held last December. It uses a simplified workforce planning model and will be piloted in Namibia […]
Posted by IntraHealth Informatics » Blog Archive » Announcnig iHRIS Plan and Upgrades to iHRIS Manage and Qualify on 8/18 at 9:06 am