Workforce Planning Only Works If You Stop Lying to Yourself

Most organisations claim they’re doing workforce planning. What they’re really doing is guessing.

They take last year’s structure, add or subtract a few heads, run a spreadsheet, and call it a plan. HR is asked to build models based on hiring intentions that shift every quarter. Managers say they need more staff, then delay recruitment once budget is approved. And leadership is shocked when critical roles stay unfilled for months or the wrong people get promoted into roles they were never built for.

This isn’t strategy. It’s institutionalised short-termism.

The first problem? No one wants to be honest about what work is actually being done — and by whom. Job descriptions haven’t been updated in three years. Teams are still structured around functions that no longer exist. There are three people doing the same task under different job titles. And still, headcount requests keep coming.

In 2023, a logistics firm based outside Sheffield hit a wall when two major contracts fell through. The finance team flagged a cost problem. HR flagged a workload issue. Operations said they needed ten new hires. The truth? Four people were handling work that could’ve been automated. And another five were doing tasks nobody had re-evaluated since 2019. It wasn’t a headcount issue. It was an alignment issue. One that could have been solved six months earlier if someone had stopped and looked properly.

Workforce planning shouldn’t be owned by HR alone. If the commercial team isn’t involved, the plan will always lag behind business reality. But what usually happens is this: HR builds the framework, asks for input, and waits. Managers delay, throw in vague numbers, or don’t reply. The final product gets shared, nodded at, and buried in a folder.

Until something breaks.

Here’s the fix: force the conversation. Don’t ask “How many heads do you need?” Ask “What work won’t get done if you don’t have them?” That one question will tell you everything you need to know about priorities — and who’s asking for bodies out of habit.

Then there’s the talent hoarding problem. Managers hold on to people they don’t need because they’re afraid they won’t get the headcount back later. So succession planning gets stuck. Internal mobility slows down. High performers get restless and leave — not because they don’t like the company, but because they can’t see a way forward.

It’s not the people that are broken. It’s the system that tells managers to hoard, not build.

One fintech company in London ran a quarterly “talent release review” in 2024. Every leader had to put forward one person from their team they were willing to develop out — not fire, but move. The goal was to unstick progression. It worked. Promotions sped up. Internal hires increased. People stopped leaving for the wrong reasons.

Let’s talk about the numbers too. Everyone loves a dashboard. But most workforce plans rely on data that’s out of date by the time it’s presented. And even worse, no one is interrogating the logic behind it.

If you’re planning workforce needs based on forecasted revenue, fine. But if that forecast changes — and it will — what’s the trigger for adjusting the plan? Who owns that recalibration? And how do you make sure your capability gaps don’t widen while everyone’s looking the other way?

The organisations that get this right do one thing better than everyone else: they treat planning as active, not passive. It’s not a document. It’s a conversation — constant, difficult, and brutally honest.

They ask:
– What roles are critical?
– What capabilities are at risk?
– Where are we vulnerable?
– Who’s leaving, and why aren’t we ready?

The answers don’t always lead to pretty charts. But they tell you where to invest. And what to stop pretending is working.

If you’re not prepared to look under the hood — properly, relentlessly — don’t bother writing a plan. It’ll just gather dust while the real problems grow sharper.

Workforce planning isn’t about headcount. It’s about readiness. And you can’t fake readiness.