Effective workforce planning supports early childhood services to address the long-term needs of their workforce. Comprehensive workforce planning is essential for supporting the delivery of high-quality early learning programs delivered by capable, confident and qualified educators.
Workforce planning is a continuous process of identifying:
- current and existing skills within the workforce
- desired future skills
- workforce gaps
- strategies and actions to address identified gaps.
Workforce planning strategies and actions may include, but are not limited to:
- training
- professional development
- recruitment
- attraction
- retention strategies.
A workforce planning online course containing 4 self-paced modules is available to assist staff to improve their existing workforce plans. The modules offer content scalable to staff new to workforce planning as well as more experienced practitioners.
In addition to the online course, the workforce plan template and guide to workforce planning are designed to assist early childhood services to implement effective workforce planning strategies.
The use of the workforce plan template is not mandatory, rather provides services with a sample tool for guidance in the development of workforce plans.
Through the development and implementation of a locally informed, service specific plan to meet current and future staffing requirements, early childhood education and care services will be best placed to operate efficiently and deliver high quality programs for all children.