Articles 
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. What is Strategic Workforce Planning?
3. The Role of Talent Acquisition in Strategic Workforce Planning
a. Technology and the Future of Strategic Workforce Planning
4. How TA Can Build Agility for Rapidly Changing Organizations
5. Final Thoughts: A Call to Action for Talent Leaders
Introduction
Imagine your organization as a grandmaster in a high-stakes chess game. Each piece on the board represents a crucial element of your workforce—every employee, role and skill with unique value and strategic importance. The board symbolizes the business landscape with its intricate grid, full of opportunities and unforeseen challenges.
Success in this game isn’t about making isolated moves; it’s about seeing the entire board, anticipating future plays and aligning the pieces with a strategy that adapts to evolving conditions. This is the essence of strategic workforce planning (SWP)—a skillful orchestration where each decision contributes to immediate goals and the business’s long-term success.
Organizations often fail to manage their workforce as strategically as they should, treating it as a cost exercise or excluding critical stakeholders with valuable insights. In fact, a survey of over 130 HR executives found that only 32 percent are actively involved in workforce planning.
The study shows that even when involved, TA leaders don’t get a seat at the table two-thirds of the time. In an increasingly competitive market, this isn’t trivial. Talent is a finite resource, but plans are being made assuming that skilled candidates are always available and TA will fulfill business demand, which leads us to another stark paradox.
Even as CEOs express growing concern over skills shortages —26 percent of them identify talent shortages as the top threat to their business outlook― many organizations are cutting talent acquisition spending.
This complex scenario reinforces the need for TA to participate more actively in SWP. From partnering more closely with the business to leveraging data and technology, we’ll cover the steps TA can follow to get a seat at the workforce planning table and help create a future-ready workforce.
What is Strategic Workforce Planning?
Strategic workforce planning is the process of aligning an organization’s long-term business goals with its talent strategy by ensuring the right people with the right skills are in place to meet future demands. It involves analyzing current workforce capabilities, forecasting future skill requirements and proactively identifying gaps to address potential shortages.
SWP extends beyond immediate hiring demands. It incorporates strategies like succession planning, which ensures organizations are prepared for leadership transitions, and internal mobility, enabling employees to shift across roles while benefiting from targeted upskilling and reskilling initiatives to stay aligned with evolving business needs.
Additionally, SWP includes the strategic employment of contingent labor, such as freelancers and contractors, to adapt to changing business demands and ensure the workforce remains flexible and resilient in the face of market fluctuations.
The Role of Talent Acquisition in Strategic Workforce Planning
Korn Ferry’s latest survey reveals that talent is not just a concern but a top business priority for HR leaders. This highlights the need for TA to play a central role in strategic workforce planning.
However, historically, TA teams were seen as purely operational, tasked with filling requisitions as needs arose. Legacy technology reinforced this limited role, not providing TA with the data or insights necessary to become more strategic.
Without access to real-time, actionable data—often hindered by siloed approaches—TA is left without the visibility needed to influence strategic workforce decisions. In fact, according to Bersin’s research, 56 percent of HR leaders admit that their current technology solutions do not align with their business needs, particularly as they navigate digital transformation.
The remaining 44 percent have evolved, and this number will hopefully continue to rise. Supported by modern technology and access to real-time data, these TA teams are stepping into the role of strategic advisors and offering invaluable market knowledge and insight.
After all, even as AI and automation continue to transform TA, the function’s core remains deeply human—modern recruiting teams shape organizational culture and understand the unique dynamics of roles within the business. They know which skills are easy to source and which are scarce, can identify trends and could offer valuable recommendations that help ensure the business has the people it needs at the right time.
For example, based on their understanding of the availability of certain skills in the external market, they could recommend filling an open position with a freelancer to respond to an urgent business need. Similarly, they could suggest expanding searches to different locations in the face of high-cost or hard-to-find talent.
For TA to consolidate as an advisor in workforce planning conversations, their extensive market knowledge alone isn’t enough—they also need the right tools to support their input.
Technology and the Future of Strategic Workforce Planning
As we’ve seen, TA teams are evolving into strategic advisors at different paces. Those already at the table leverage powerful insights to guide decision-making.
For those who are not yet there, investing in best-in-class technology is essential to overcoming challenges and shifting from reactive to proactive strategies. These modern systems enable informed, strategic decisions by providing access to critical data and advanced reporting capabilities.
Leading organizations such as McCann Worldgroup are already benefiting from data-driven talent acquisition strategies supported by fit-for-purpose technology. For the organization, data is a unifying element that helps them build stronger connections and deliver valuable insights to stakeholders.
If you are going best in class as an approach, you’re able to connect the dots and leverage a consistency that you’re building into those tools so that you can get what you need, get the data and get the insights out of it.”
Lori Woodcock
SVP of Talent Technology, McCann Worldgroup
Technology is also a driver of transformation, as seen with the talent acquisition team at Fonterra, a New Zealand dairy cooperative owned by about 9,000 farmers. By bringing TA in-house and leveraging top-tier technology for better insights, Fonterra was able to shift from reactive hiring to a proactive, forward-thinking strategy. This approach has allowed them to better align recruitment with long-term business goals and enhance their approach to meeting future talent needs.
Just like Fonterra did, organizations that aren’t already doing so would be wise to rethink how they integrate TA into the process. A step beyond that, they should also assess whether their current technology systems can empower the TA team with the data needed to truly influence strategic workforce planning.
How TA Can Build Agility for Rapidly Changing Organizations
Having the right skills at the right time is critical for organizations to adapt agilely to market changes, technological advancements and shifting consumer demands. Yet, given the diminishing average lifespan of organizations—from 61 years in 1968 to less than 20 years today, based on the S&P 500—it becomes clear that many organizations are struggling to do so.
The rapid pace of skills disruption is compounding this challenge. According to a recent report from BCG, over one-third of the top 20 skills for US jobs have shifted since 2016, emphasizing the need for newer and more forward-thinking talent strategies.
Those businesses that pride themselves on their organizational agility have seen that bridging the gap between TA and TM, for example, can significantly impact their ability to access the skills they need to drive business growth.
Instead of hiring conversations focusing solely on external talent, this joined-up approach is helping teams better assess the availability of skills within their workforce. In line with this, investment in internal mobility and learning and development programs drives upskilling and reskilling, cultivating skills internally and reducing reliance on external hiring.
The flexibility to harness the potential of existing employees helps address immediate skills gaps more quickly and ensures the organization can pivot faster.
As James Elliot stated in The Talent Transformation Podcast, organizations that revisit learning to build a culture of continuous development and facilitate employees’ movement across functions and roles are better positioned to adapt to change.
We need to have a more fluid workforce. We have to have people who are more able to move around the organization, whether that’s their skills flowing to gigs or whether that’s just a more effective movement of people between jobs. We can play a significant role in moving that culture along and help the business prepare for this next evolution.”
James Elliott
Talent Thought Leader
If the needed skills are not found in-house, organizations can also rely on the contingent workforce—freelancers, contractors and gig workers—to remain agile. This is especially relevant for project-based work or during economic uncertainty, where full-time hires may not be the best solution. In these cases, contingent staffing offers flexibility by addressing short-term needs without a long-term commitment.
A caveat here is that TA is often left out of this space too, usually managed by procurement. If placed under talent acquisition leadership, contractors can be considered within the organization’s overall skills panorama together with full-time employees, allowing TA to form a clear picture of the areas that are covered and those that still need to be filled.
By working more closely with TM and gaining visibility over the contingent segment, TA teams can also supercharge their external market knowledge with insights from the internal talent pool. With this expanded vision, they can add even greater value to the workforce planning conversation and help design talent strategies that will allow the organization to remain adaptable amid change.
Final Thoughts: A Call to Action for Talent Leaders
From our experience working with innovative talent acquisition leaders who head up some of the world’s most successful organizations, we know that those with a tangible impact on business success go beyond just filling roles. In fact, they are getting deeply involved in workforce planning conversations with leadership, shaping better alignment between talent strategies and long-term business goals.
As strategic partners who understand the organization’s long-term vision, talent acquisition leaders can drive more dynamic strategies, including proactive sourcing, conducting internal talent searches and integrating contingent workers into their scope to anticipate and secure the necessary skills for future growth.
Undeniably, best-in-class technology plays a crucial part in enabling TA’s shift to a more strategic role. By equipping the function with comprehensive data, teams are better suited to partner with the business in the workforce planning exercise, working hand in hand to anticipate future skills needs and envision the best way forward for the organization to unlock agility and a sustainable competitive advantage.
