What is a better method of planning for a shrinking market ? do you prefer an aggressive strategy in order to ensure the biggest share of the market when the market collapse ? or you just keep on growing slowly with the already customers you have?

Strategic planning in a changing, shrinking job market calls for forecasting that’s more method than magic.

HR-related policies and practices from each other. Customs is developing its own intergenerational employment proposition for a very mobile and multi-skilled workforce. Talbot, director, national human resources development, Customs, believes its increasing part-time and flexible work practices will help it compete for Gen X and Y and mature-aged workers. A key demand of tomorrow’s workers, be they 26 or 66, will be to have more flexibility combined with better work/life balance. New ways of engaging workers are emerging— job-share, and people doing important contingent work for multiple companies (worker-share!). Semi-retired people will maintain contact with their old employers and do occasional, casual or part-time work for them. The employer, not the employee, will have the biggest interest in ensuring that these “contractors” remain skilled, current and close to the organization—very different to the present contractor scenario. These and other ways of engaging workers will give a competitive edge in the talent market. The good news is that we can see the future coming, and the trends are manageable with strategic workforce planning. “Workforce planning” is used to describe roster optimization, competency modeling, e-recruitment and headcount budgeting among many other things. These do involve the workforce and are planning activities, but they are operational (or at best tactical), not strategic.

 meaningful profile of your workforce, including internal trends such as turnover

• A forecast of how your workforce will look if you don’t make any changes, based on known trends, internal and external

• One or more scenarios of the future, one of which is your targeted state

• An action plan

• Progress checkpoints and measures. Data collection on a current workforce profile and known trends is only a part of the process. Workforce analytics and measures of the past and present are valuable, but they don’t factor in future changes.

Data collection and handling is the workforce planning exercise most at risk of falling into analysis paralysis—when you end up with too much data to process. You do not need 57 ways to look at turnover, and you are unlikely to get a lot of value analyzing the entire Census. Rather, you need accurate data on your organization's critical measures, related to your own environment. Choosing wisely is half of the battle. Once you have selected the right data and indicators, it is relatively easy to apply trend data to your workforce profile for insight into where it is going if trends continue. While the picture you build in this way has shortcomings, it helps identify potential problems and vulnerabilities, such as workforce erosion through aging or midcareer turnover. It may also provide the burning platform you need to bring workforce planning onto I t is hard to summon the energy to confront a pressing problem that won’t really hit hard until about 2020 and beyond, but pressing it is. The problem is the workforce—or the lack of it.

Demographics of the workforce are changing in big ways too, and, , it might take 20 years to deal with demographics,  So companies must urgently address the impending workforce shortage because they have “a breathing space of about a decade in which the working-age population will be larger than ever before. They need to make changes quickly.”

Another part of the story is technological change. For instances Business Council of Australia chief Strategic planning in a changing, shrinking job market calls for forecasting that’s more method than magic. the strategic agenda. This is quantitative forecasting and, like data collection, an important step. However, it still doesn’t look at what might be. For that, you use scenario planning. Most workforce planners struggle with the scenario aspect. It involves a level of educated guessing and a degree of gamble that many people are uncomfortable with. They see it as a crystal ball and claim that forecasting the future is impossible. Well, step back for a minute and look around. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is forecasting, universities are forecasting, “gurus” are forecasting. Futuring is a valid and growing tertiary discipline. Inside, companies are forecasting growth and sales, accounting departments are forecasting profits, and marketing departments are predicting all sorts of interesting things about customer behaviour and new products and markets. No crystal balls required. Good workforce planners are always informally wondering “what if?” Before you start formal scenario planning, you already have a picture of your workforce and the labour landscape in front of you. Start formally by getting the right people together to interact about the organization's strategic direction and desired future state. Everyone develops a deeper understanding of the issues important to the future of the business. You are exploring what might happen, what is likely to happen, and how that will impact on your workforce. For Talbot, this integration with business planning, budgets and with the business as a whole is critical.

“You have to engage people and demonstrate why workforce planning is important and how it can assist with aligning the business strategy and planning process.” Your workforce plan, like the business plan, is not a “do once and forget” activity or an exercise you start from scratch every year. It’s an ongoing process which you adjust as your situation changes. It’s OK for forecasts to be off the mark; it’s not OK to neglect checking and modifying them. You might review every six months or annually, but don’t start afresh each time. Just as the business planning process puts a stake in the ground about how the future of the business will be, so must the workforce planning process define how the future workforce will look—a targeted future state. How different is your ideal future workforce.

Very Interesting question for excellent thought. Many thanks Mr.Rami.

Here, the main concept before making any strategy are basically two points.

1-      Need to know what are your products or services.

2-      Need to get a market research report.

Whether market is on the verge of collapse or extreme growth, some products or services would not move well  while others would do better. For instance, if there is a financial crisis or not, FMCG items, private schools and hospitals would work very well or the crisis would not affect those industries soon because it is “need” for society, and see what is happening on construction industries, major expansion projects, iconic mixed land development projects would be stopped or closed until the crisis cycle would end completely.

Regardless the market position based on your feasibility study we can make market driven successful strategies.

i think best if u do mix to less risk

Generally, a growing market is more desirable. Not only is there great sales potential, but also it is usually easier to enter and build sales in a growing marketplace than it is to supplant competition in flattening or shrinking marketplaces

For very small firms, however, a large market can be a double-edged sword. On the positive side, of course, there is the potential for huge sales. Negatively, though, larger firms with established access to marketing channels and better financing may be tempted to enter such an attractive marketplace. Firms already involved in the particular industry may devote considerable resources to defending or increasing their current market share

supplant competition in flattening or shrinking marketplaces

Agree with Ms Ghada Eweda & Mr Mohammed Ashraf