Ljupcho Velkovski

Strategic Workforce Planning

Know how many people and which skills you need in five years to deliver your strategy.

Strategic Workforce Planning for CHROs, executive boards and CFOs

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velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim

Added value.

Strategic Workforce Planning helps you master four challenges

Business environment and market

Challenge

  • Geopolitics brings uncertainty and volatility
  • Candidate-driven market: the war for talent
  • GenAI and digitalisation are changing the world of work

Contribution of SWP

  • Market knowledge and trends
  • Targeted, forward-looking recruiting

Workforce supply and demand

Challenge

  • Retirement, fixed-term contracts and attrition shrink the workforce
  • Drivers of additional and reduced demand are unclear

Contribution of SWP

  • No one-to-one replacement of positions
  • Transparency on demand in capacity, costs and skills

Skill management and talent development

Challenge

  • The qualitative perspective is gaining importance
  • Skills become a success factor

Contribution of SWP

  • Development before recruiting
  • Targeted upskilling and reskilling

Integration into corporate planning

Challenge

  • Targets from strategy and budget
  • Type, scope and cost of HR measures are open

Contribution of SWP

  • Risk management for over- and understaffing
  • SWP as a building block of corporate planning
velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 01

Services.

From the introduction to the annual planning cycle: eight services

An introduction including a pilot typically takes 4–11 months, depending on scope.

Design and introduction of SWP

Concept, pilot, rollout and enabling of the organisation

Job family architecture

Future-proof structure as the basis for planning and skills

Workforce demand and skills for 5–10 years

Workshop-based, KPI-based, with regression analyses

Supply projection and risks

Retirement, attrition, bottleneck functions

AI and automation effects

Substitutability at role and job family level, in FTE

Measures and simulation

Derive 7B measures and calculate them in scenarios

SWP Studio

My own solution for demand assessment, planning and reporting, to buy or with support

www.swp-studio.de → (opens in a new tab)

SWP as a service

Support for the annual planning cycle

velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 02

SWP Studio.

My own solution for your Strategic Workforce Planning: from workshop to reporting

SWP Studio brings together method and tools from project practice, so that your team can run Strategic Workforce Planning on its own.

  • Guided demand assessment in a workshop, in five steps
  • Clear handling: fixed colour system and step-by-step guidance
  • Reporting templates for management and business units
Explore SWP Studio (opens in a new tab) Request a demo
Demand assessment in five steps
  1. Setup
  2. Drivers
  3. Target picture 2030
  4. Distribution 2027–30
  5. Skills

Result: demand per business unit and job family up to 2030, including skills

velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 03

SWP Cycle.

Strategic Workforce Planning is an ongoing process that supports HR decisions

Design

Set the frame

  1. Segmentation

    Clusters by business unit, function, qualification and cost hierarchy

  2. Planning design

    Link drivers: strategies, markets, costs, productivity, labour markets

  3. Scenario design

    Target, risk and trend scenario; supply with attrition and retirement

Plan

Calculate demand

  1. Workforce demand

    Simulate demand, gross, net and net-net, evaluate scenarios

  2. Gap analysis and closing

    Fields of action and measures: make, buy or mix

Act

Implement

  1. Impact simulation

    Headcount, personnel and transformation costs as a basis for decisions

  2. Commitment

    Consensus with HR business partners, unit heads and the CEO

  3. Process integration

    Anchor measures: recruiting, development, HR controlling

velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 04

Quick Check.

How mature is your workforce planning? Ten success factors for a self-assessment

Your answers stay in your browser; nothing is stored or sent.

1. Top management support: Our top management supports SWP and makes time for the key meetings.
2. Alignment with strategy: SWP results match the target picture and the business plan derived from it.
3. Commitment: The identified additional and reduced demands are binding for business units and HR.
4. Process integration: SWP is linked to strategic, business and financial planning as well as to recruiting and development.
5. Self-reliant execution: After a first cycle, HR can repeat the SWP process on its own.
6. Planning horizon: Business units state additional and reduced demands for five years.
7. Courage in planning: Business units quantify productivity, digitalisation and automation as reduced demand.
8. Job families and skills: Planning is done at job family level and covers FTE, personnel costs and skills.
9. Data quality: Our HR data is central, available at any time and of good quality.
10. Tool and scenarios: An SWP tool supports the process; scenarios with FTE and personnel costs can be simulated.

10 of 10 factors still open. The result appears once all are answered.

velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 05

Projects.

Workforce planning projects: from the introduction to the target picture 2030

Selection, clients anonymised

  1. 2025

    Operating model and target picture 2030 for sales

    Automotive supplier · People Planning Expert

  2. 2024

    SWP update, support of the planning cycle, human capital value

    Project Lead

  3. 2023–24

    Design and introduction of SWP with pilot and enabling

    Energy group · People Planning Expert

  4. 2023

    SWP pilot, Excel tool and tool champion training

    Insurance · People Planning Expert

  5. 2023

    HR topics after an acquisition

    Mid-sized software company · Project Lead

  6. 2022

    Design and introduction of SWP with pilot and enabling

    Technology company · People Planning Expert

  7. 2019–20

    Strategic Workforce Planning for three business units

    Medical technology · People Planning Expert

  8. 2019

    Five-year personnel cost forecast and HR KPI dashboard

    Medical · Interim HR Controller

velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 06

Mindset.

Workforce planning with numbers, but for people

“Behind every chart and every statistic are people who can shape change.”

WirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting 2012

1st place Human Resources Management, as part of the award-winning project team

Tools

  • SWP Studio, my own solution
  • Market overview, software selection and implementation
  • Workday Adaptive Planning
  • SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP SuccessFactors
velkovski.de · Pricing | HR | Interim 07

Contact.

Let's talk for 30 minutes

Ljupcho Velkovski

Düsseldorf

Drop me a short note on what it is about. I will gladly look into it and get back to you with first ideas for a solution.

Let's talk
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