Workforce Planning Analyst / Workforce Planning Specialist / Workforce Planning Manager

Helps the organization plan the number of employees, skills, and roles needed to meet current and future business demands. Works with leaders, HR, finance, and operational teams to understand service plans, workload, growth priorities, budgets, and workforce constraints. Uses this information to identify gaps between expected demand and available people, capabilities, and capacity.

Analyzes workforce data such as headcount, vacancies, turnover, skills, productivity, workload, hiring activity, and labor costs. Develops forecasts and scenarios to estimate future staffing needs and assess how changes in demand, attrition, budgets, technology, or organizational design may affect workforce requirements. Prepares reports, dashboards, and recommendations to support hiring plans, redeployment, reskilling, succession, and other workforce decisions.

Works with managers and HR partners to translate workforce insights into practical plans. Tracks progress against staffing targets, hiring timelines, and labor budgets, and highlights risks such as critical skill shortages, hard-to-fill roles, or excess capacity. May support workforce modeling, organizational design, skills inventories, location planning, and the evaluation of automation or other changes that could affect roles and capacity.

A Workforce Planning Analyst typically focuses on data, forecasts, reporting, and scenario analysis. A Workforce Planning Specialist may lead planning activities for a business area and advise stakeholders on workforce requirements. A Workforce Planning Manager generally sets the planning approach, coordinates organization-wide or regional plans, manages a team or process, and presents recommendations to senior leaders.

• Bachelor's degree in human resources, business, finance, economics, statistics, data analytics, or a related field
• Experience in workforce planning, people analytics, HR, financial planning, business operations, or capacity planning
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, including the ability to interpret workforce and operational data
• Experience with headcount forecasting, staffing models, labor-cost analysis, or scenario planning
• Proficiency with spreadsheets and reporting tools; experience with HR information systems, business intelligence platforms, or workforce planning software is an asset
• Ability to combine data from different sources, check its accuracy, and explain assumptions and limitations
• Understanding of workforce measures such as headcount, attrition, vacancies, skills, productivity, and labor costs
• Strong communication and presentation skills for explaining findings to managers and senior stakeholders
• Ability to collaborate with HR, finance, talent acquisition, and business leaders
• Good organization and project-management skills for coordinating planning cycles and deadlines
• Discretion and sound judgment when working with confidential employee and organizational data
• Experience with skills planning, organizational design, or strategic workforce planning is beneficial
• Team leadership and experience setting planning methods may be expected for manager-level positions
• Relevant certifications or training in people analytics, workforce planning, finance, or data analysis are an asset