Director of Workforce Planning (23 Month FTC)

Director of Workforce Planning (23 Month FTC)

Advert Close date: 2nd March 2026

Purpose of Role: The Head of Workforce Planning will lead the design and execution of the organisation’s workforce planning strategy, ensuring that talent supply aligns with long-term business objectives. This role is pivotal in shaping organisational agility, embedding workforce planning into business decision-making, and enabling sustainable growth and cost reduction through data-driven insights, scenario modelling, and stakeholder alignment.

Main accountabilities:

• Strategic Leadership

  • Define and deliver the organisation’s workforce planning vision and roadmap

  • Embed workforce planning into corporate strategy, financial planning, and organisational design

  • Drive continuous improvement in the workforce planning operating capability incorporating new technologies, data sets and ways of working as the maturity of the function evolves

  • Lead scenario planning to anticipate future workforce needs in response to market, regulatory, and technological shifts

• Workforce Analytics & Insights

  • Lead and oversee demand and supply forecasting, skills gap analysis, and workforce risk assessments

  • Develop dashboards and reporting frameworks to provide actionable insights to stakeholders including the executive team, business unit leads and People and Change/HRBPs

  • Champion evidence-based decision-making across HR and business units

• Stakeholder Engagement

  • Partner with senior leaders from across the organisation to deliver robust and achievable workforce plans that enable strategic ambitions

  • Influence executive decision-making through clear, persuasive communication of workforce strategies

  • Build strong relationships across HR, Finance, Operations, and external partners

• Workforce Strategy & Change

  • Align workforce strategies with business priorities, ensuring agility and resilience

  • Support redeployment, reskilling, and internal mobility initiatives

  • Drive cultural alignment by embedding workforce planning into values and leadership behaviours

  • Promote and build the Crown Estate brand and culture both internally and externally, acting as an ambassador and role model to employees, suppliers, customers and other external stakeholders

• Governance & Risk Management

  • Ensure compliance with diversity commitments, and regulatory frameworks

  • Identify workforce risks (attrition, demographic shifts, skills shortages) and develop mitigation strategies

  • Establish governance processes for workforce planning across the organisation

Most important skills based requirements:

• Extensive experience in workforce planning, both in the delivery of workforce strategies but also in building a workforce planning operating capability

• Understanding of the drivers of demand and the impacts of workforce interventions on the ability to align supply to demand

• Strong analytical and data interpretation skills, with expertise in workforce planning platforms (e.g., Anaplan, OrgVue, Visier, SAP, Workday etc).

• Proven ability to lead complex, multi-party discussions and stakeholder alignment

• Exceptional communication skills, able to distil complex insights into clear, actionable strategies

• Problem solver identifying practical interventions to align workforces to deliver business objectives

• Senior stakeholder engagement and gravitas to influence executive level decision making aligning business, financial and HR wants and needs

• Operate as a sole contributor drawing on expertise from across the organisation as well as leading teams of resources to realise the workforce planning ambition

• Experience of the annual people/human capital cycle combined with an understanding of the people processes that underpin this – talent acquisition, performance reviews, learning, reward and employee engagement etc

• Experience in working for multiple organisations across different sectors (public and private) bringing knowledge and experience in workforce challenges and interventions covering the tactical to the strategic time horizons

• Well-connected and able to draw upon a network of broader industry expertise and knowledge to support the development of the workforce planning capability

Our Offering / benefits:

As well as a competitive salary, pension and performance related bonus offering, we have a wealth of benefits available ranging from flexible working; market leading family policies and shopping discounts in the West End, to private healthcare; life and critical illness cover and 28 days holiday with the option to buy more. We value work life balance and your wellbeing highly, enabling you to be your best self to work.

Disability Disclaimer:

We are a proud disability confident employer and operate the offer of interview scheme Disability Confident employer scheme - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

We are happy to offer alternative application methods or formats and can be flexible on our process to enable you to have the best opportunity.

If you have any questions about our recruitment process or would like to talk about adjustments, please contact us directly.