Adam Gibson

Realising the value of workforce planning is the first step to ensuring business success. The critical step is recognising workforce planning, not as an HR process or initiative, but recognising it as strand of strategic planning that delivers real RoI. This session will cover: • Reinventing and modernising your approach to workforce planning • Safeguarding your business in a VUCA world • Aligning your workforce to meet future business objectives • Effective forecasting to bridge the skills gap

In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, robust planning has become critically important to organisations who want to succeed. Longer-term trends around the skills-gap, an ageing workforce and the continuing rise of populism are coupled with more recent challenges like declining confidence in global economic growth, a slowdown in Chinese investment and, of course, Brexit. Employees typically comprise 60-80% of a company’s budget and up to 90% of its value, so workforce planning in a VUCA world has become a pressing concern for many organisations. Done effectively, workforce planning drives the execution of the business strategy, mitigates risks and creates operational efficiencies, a priority for 77% of CEOs in 2019¹. The challenge in recent years is that the traditional approach to Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) has struggled to adapt to the real world, and only 8% of senior HR leaders are getting suitable RoI from current SWP. Workforce Planning needs reinventing to be fit for purpose in the real world! During the masterclass Adam will introduce Agile Workforce Planning as the next evolution in thinking; a step change from a linear process that results in a plan, to a cyclical methodology that results in better business outcomes.