A New Dynamic Nursing Workforce Planning Considering Skills Required at the Different Organizational Hierarchy: An Optimal Control Method

As a vital practice in human resources management, workforce planning determines that the organization is needed how many workforces, when, and which position. Workforce planning is not formed in a vacuity, and job variables such as skill, ability, and knowledge affect the planning. This study examines workforce planning in the health sector concerning the workforce's flows such as recruitment, promotion, degradation, fired, retention, and termination of the contract according to the skill audit and the role of performance appraisal results in this program. For this purpose, a dynamic model has been applied that can provide optimal answers to the number of workforces required and the workforce's flows at any time during the planning periods. This model has been implemented in a hospital ward with two levels of hierarchy: nurses, supervisors, and nursing directors. The results show that the designed system can converge the existing values to the optimal values by noting delays by the optimal control model.