Running a growing business can be exciting but sometimes it often feels like a juggling act - balancing immediate business needs with long-term goals; keeping clients happy while managing overheads and trying to lead a team that’s stretched across competing demands.

When things are busy, it’s easy to default to hiring reactively: “We need someone now - just find me someone who can do the job.” But without a clear picture of your future workforce needs, you can end up overstaffed in one area, under-resourced in another, or carrying skill gaps that hold the business back.

That’s where workforce planning becomes a game changer.

At its core, workforce planning is about ensuring you have the right people, in the right roles, at the right time, with the right skills to deliver on your business goals. It helps you anticipate needs before they become urgent problems and enables you to make smarter, more sustainable people decisions.

Why workforce planning matters more than ever

You don’t need to be a large corporate business to benefit from workforce planning. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses often feel the impact of poor planning more acutely.

A few familiar scenarios:

• Your operations manager resigns, and you realise no one else knows how to do their job.
  
  
• A long-time employee retires and takes critical knowledge with them.
  
  
• You land a new contract (yay!) but don't have enough skilled team members to deliver.
  
  
• You keep hiring externally because there’s no clear path for internal progression and no training and development program in place to address the issue.

Each of these situations can create stress, delays, and costs that could have been reduced or avoided with a proactive workforce plan. And in today’s market where skill shortages, rising wage costs, and employee expectations are evolving fast, businesses that don’t plan ahead risk falling behind.

Getting started with workforce planning

So how do you get started and give your business the best chance of success in the long term?

1. Visualise the future

Begin by considering your business goals over the next couple of years. Are you planning to:

• Grow your customer base or branch out into new markets (e.g. go national or perhaps build your presence in current markets)?
  
  
• Introduce a new product or service?
  
  
• Shift toward digital tools, automation or upgrade current machinery with newer technology?
  
  
• Improve efficiency, profitability, or customer experience?

Every one of these goals has workforce implications. If you’re opening a new site, who will manage it? If you’re scaling up operations, do you have enough trained staff or will you need to develop or hire new ones? If you want more flexibility, can your current team structure support it?

Think of your business goals as the “what,” and your workforce plan as the “how.”

2. Know your people

Before you can plan for future roles, you need a solid understanding of your current workforce. This means more than just knowing how many employees you have - it’s about knowing what they can do, where they add value, and where they may be under-utilised, at risk of burning out or they may be looking to retire or be a potential flight risk (your opposition may have designs on your top people!).

Ask yourself:

• Who are our high performers and are we investing in keeping them?
  
  
• Where do we rely too heavily on one person?
  
  
• Are there team members ready to step up, if given support?
  
  
• What skills do we have in abundance, and which are in short supply?

This helps you build a realistic picture of what’s working, what’s on shaky ground, and what’s missing.

3. Spot the gaps

Once you’ve looked at where you’re going and who you’ve got, it’s time to identify the gaps:

• Are there roles that are business-critical, but have no one ready to fill them?
  
  
• Are you consistently hiring externally for roles that could be grown internally? If so, what planning needs to occur so you can start building an internal  development program?
  
  
• Are there parts of the business where turnover is high or morale is low?
  
  
• Do your team’s current skills match what your business will need next year? What do you need to do to start building and improving skillsets?

You may also spot opportunities—for example, junior team members who could grow into leadership roles, or admin tasks that could be streamlined with better systems.

This part of the process helps you shift from reactive decision-making to informed planning.

4. Invest in your team

In a tight talent market, buying skills (through recruitment) can be more expensive, time-consuming, and uncertain than building them internally. If you have the right talent already in your business, you may be able to implement training, mentoring, shadowing, or on-the-job development to help you get the most from your current team while preparing them for future roles.

For example:

• If you know your senior engineer will retire in two years, start mentoring a junior now.
  
  
• If your business plan is to expand into new areas of service delivery, begin upskilling key employees that you have earmarked for development rather than hiring an external specialist at the last minute.
  
  
• If you have a strong admin assistant showing leadership potential, consider project work to test and grow those skills. You may have an incredible office manager or someone that could become a senior operations leader already sitting in your office!

Not every gap requires a new person to enter your business as you may have hidden gems in your business if you just take the time to have a proper look at your people and what they may be able to bring to the table.

5. Recruit well

Recruitment is still an important piece of the puzzle.  You won’t always have the necessary skills or ability in your current employees and if you are growing, you will need to look at increased headcount to manage the increased workload. 

Recruitment requires some planning though and some considerations you should include:

• Where are the gaps in your current team that will need to be filled?
  
  
• What are the timeframes that you will need to allow for the recruitment process? Then look at the onboarding and how long you anticipate new team members require to really get momentum in a role.
  
  
• How will you manage the recruitment process? Do you have the capacity to run this inhouse or will you look for external support?
  
  

6. It’s all in the planning

You don’t need to overdo it. It’s the old KISS principle – Keep It Simple Silly (I’m choosing to go with the polite version 😉). A concise and simple plan can be incredibly powerful if it includes:

• A clear list of critical roles or future needs
  
  
• Development plans for internal talent
  
  
• Recruitment priorities and timelines
  
  
• Known risks (e.g. planned departures, growth targets)
  
  
• Opportunities that are known if the conditions and talent are right
  
  
• Actions and owners

Keep it live. Revisit it quarterly and update it as business conditions change. Workforce planning isn’t a “set and forget” task, it’s a habit of good leadership to continually review and evolve.

Future proofing your business

At its heart, workforce planning is about being ready. Not just for future opportunities, but for future challenges too.

It helps you stop relying on guesswork. It protects your business from disruption. And it gives your people a sense of direction, development, and purpose, something that’s increasingly vital in attracting and keeping great talent.

Whether you’re growing fast, trying to stabilise, or simply want to run a stronger, more resilient business, workforce planning will help you lead with confidence and clarity.

Need help getting started?
We support business leaders to map out practical workforce plans, so call the HR Staff n’ Stuff team to chat about where you want to take you business and we can help you work out a plan to get there!