Power up your workforce planning career with a strong professional network

For the busy workforce planning professional, building a professional network is often the last consideration on the list. In fact it often does not make the shortlist full-stop. Yet its potentially one of the most important parts of having a successful career as an analyst.

Having a strong professional network is a powerful concept, it has certainly aided me in career, not just to find my next employment opportunity but more often the source of valuable knowledge that has helped me solve an issue that would have otherwise set me back for days/weeks/months.

In fact “Best Practice Sharing” and what I learn from talking shop with other planning professional is the source of my motivation for writing blog articles, contributing to Linkedin groups and general willingness to help any workforce planning professional who reaches out with a problem shared.

Sharing best practices and learning from others throughout my professional network has helped me identify and fill my knowledge gaps, it has helped me generate creative and innovative ideas, has enabled better decision making, and has made me more productive through getting to the answer quicker.

An organisation that has been immensely valuable to me personally has been the Professional Planning Forum, through their conferences, workshop and networking events they are the true champions of best practice here in the UK. I certainly recognise them as the UK number 1 community for planning professionals and always find they are providing opportunity for stimulating collaboration, continual learning and best practice sharing.

LinkedIn has also been a great friend to me and I have been using it right from the start to help build my network across the world – providing me access to thousands of like-minded professionals, that would otherwise have been impossible to reach previously. LinkedIn has simplified building the professional network as most people who connect on LinkedIn, by default, have identified themselves as people who are looking to connect. The problem is that just expanding your network alone isn’t really going to help you, and I am seeing an increasing number of people using LinkedIn who seem just to be collecting the connect number, and don’t want to engage in conversation.

True networking is about discovery. It’s about looking for others that you have something in common with and building a relationship. People want to work with others that they know, like, and trust. As with any type of connect just meeting people and getting introductions is only part of the process. The most important part of building a professional network is making yourself valuable. I am big believer that the more you put yourself out there, the more you are willing to give up your valuable time & expertise the more you will get back.

Click Here to Join WFManagement Whatsapp group.

Another great tool I have found is whatsapp. A whatsapp group is something I have had with nearly every planning team I have managed or had the pleasure to be involved in. Even after leaving the organisation I often keep the whatsapp group open.

So with that in mind I would like to try an experiment, I have launched a whatsapps group for readers of this blog. As I am sure you know whatsapp groups only allow 256 participants at any one time, so I only want engaged parties that are willing to share knowledge and help other workforce planning professionals. This group is however completely free to join, with the only rules being… be polite and professional, and keep the topic to workforce planning. Let see how this experiment goes.

You can join the group via this HyperLink – https://mailchi.mp/e6efc58ccb47/wfmanagementwhatsapp

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