Workforce Planning Lead

What to Expect

The Workforce Planning Lead will build and run our workforce planning approach, helping the organisation understand the people, capabilities and cost required to deliver its business plans. Working closely with People Business Partners, Finance and business leaders, the role owns the workforce planning cycle and the method behind it, bringing together workforce data, business requirements and financial plans to give a clear view of current and future workforce needs.

It covers the total workforce, permanent and contingent, as a single picture. The role provides analysis, modelling and insight across headcount, workforce cost, capacity, skills and workforce risk, and acts as custodian of our organisation design principles so that structural change is tested before it is approved rather than after it is built. This is a hands‑on role suited to someone who enjoys combining data and analysis with stakeholder engagement and practical delivery, and who is comfortable holding a position when the evidence does not support what has been requested.

• Build and own the organisation's workforce planning approach, method and annual planning cycle.
• Define the workforce drivers for each business area — the volume, programme, product cycle and service factors that genuinely determine resource need — and test them against historic headcount before they are adopted.
• Translate business plans into clear workforce assumptions covering headcount, roles, skills, location and cost, working with People Business Partners, Finance and business leaders.
• Consolidate functional plans into an organisation-wide view of workforce demand, and run scenario models for the decisions the business is actually facing.
• Identify emerging workforce gaps and risks, track agreed plans through the year, and give visibility of progress and change.

• Own the establishment record: every approved and funded role, filled or vacant, with its position in the structure.
• Operate the control point for establishment change: check each request against the plan and the record, allow funded in‑plan requests to proceed, and route the rest to the agreed decision forum with the analysis attached. People Business Partners initiate requests and hold the business case.
• Monitor actual workforce movement against agreed plans and escalate material variances early.
• Work closely with Finance to keep workforce data reconciled with budgets and forecasts.
• Report the workforce position, movement and emerging risk to an agreed cadence: monthly position report, quarterly planning review, annual plan into the budget cycle.

• Act as custodian of McLaren's organisation design principles, ensuring proposed structures are tested against them before approval rather than after implementation.
• Report the structural measures the principles exist to protect — layers, spans of control, duplicated accountabilities and reporting lines that lengthen communication — and make drift visible over time.
• Provide the modelling and design analysis behind restructures, new functions and operating model changes, supporting the People Business Partners who lead them with the business.
• Build the structural reporting once and automate it, so this is a recurring output rather than a standing analysis task.

• Build and maintain a complete picture of the contractor and agency population: numbers, duration, cost, location, capability and the reason each engagement exists.
• Define the principles for when contingent resource is the right answer — genuine peak, specialist scarcity, time‑bound programme — and when it is substituting for a permanent role that should be established.
• Quantify the…