Workforce Planning Lead

Role Overview

Wood PLC is seeking a Workforce Planning Lead to join its team in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This is a full-time, office-based position.

Role Purpose

The role leads operational workforce planning activities across assigned business units, regions, or portfolios. The Workforce Planning Lead partners with business leaders to align workforce capacity with current and future demand through accurate forecasting, utilisation management, workforce insights, and proactive resource planning. The role provides trusted workforce intelligence to enable informed staffing decisions, improve utilisation, identify workforce risks, and support profitable project delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Workforce Planning

• Lead workforce planning activities across assigned portfolios, disciplines, or regions.
• Develop short, medium, and long-term workforce forecasts aligned to business demand.
• Maintain rolling capacity plans highlighting resource gaps, surpluses, and deployment opportunities.
• Identify workforce risks early and provide mitigation recommendations.

Capacity & Demand Management

• Partner with Delivery Managers and Business Leaders to understand future workload.
• Translate sales pipeline, secured work, and project demand into workforce requirements.
• Monitor workforce capacity and recommend hiring, redeployment, contractor engagement, or workshare opportunities.
• Support mobilisation planning for major projects.

Utilisation Management

• Monitor weekly utilisation performance across assigned portfolios.
• Analyse utilisation trends and recommend actions to improve billability and productivity.
• Support leaders to optimise workforce deployment while balancing employee development and project delivery.
• Provide commentary explaining utilisation movements and future outlook.

Workforce Analytics & Reporting

• Produce weekly and monthly workforce planning reports from enterprise dashboards.
• Present workforce insights to senior stakeholders using clear recommendations.
• Monitor key workforce planning KPIs: utilisation, forecast accuracy, resource demand, capacity risk, hiring requirements, and skills shortages.
• Ensure reporting accuracy and consistency across all business units.

Stakeholder Partnership

• Build trusted relationships with Operations Managers, Delivery Leaders, Project Managers, and Talent Acquisition.
• Act as the primary workforce planning advisor for allocated business areas.
• Facilitate regular workforce planning meetings and planning reviews.
• Influence workforce decisions through data-driven recommendations.

Data Governance & Continuous Improvement

• Ensure workforce planning data remains accurate, complete, and current.
• Drive adoption of enterprise workforce planning processes and tools.
• Identify opportunities to improve reporting, automation, and planning processes.
• Support implementation of new workforce planning initiatives.

Change & Adoption

• Champion workforce planning best practice across the business.
• Coach leaders on workforce planning methodology and utilisation principles.
• Support change initiatives relating to workforce systems, reporting, and planning standards.
• Promote a culture of proactive workforce planning rather than reactive staffing.

Qualifications & Experience

• Degree or equivalent experience in operations, business, engineering, data/analytics, or related discipline.
• Experience in workforce planning, resource management, or operational planning within a complex organisation.
• Experience in change management and continuous improvement programmes.
• Experience interpreting utilisation and operational performance metrics.
• Experience working with enterprise workforce planning or ERP systems.
• Training or certification in resource planning, workforce analytics, or change management (desirable).

Skills & Competencies

• High-quality decision-making, planning, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong analytical capability with advanced Excel and Power BI experience.
• Ability to simplify complex workforce data into practical business recommendations.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of project-based delivery environments.
• Experience facilitating planning forums with senior stakeholders.
• Proactive and open approach to learning and change, with ability to identify opportunities that bring value to the organisation.
• Strategic thinker with excellent operational execution.
• Proactive problem solver who identifies risks before they occur.
• Strong communicator who can influence at all organisational levels.
• Collaborative leader who builds trusted relationships.
• Continuous improvement mindset with a passion for using data to drive decisions.
• High attention to detail and commitment to data quality.
• Comfortable working in fast-paced, changing environments.

Additional Information

• Full-time, office-based position.
• Owns workforce forecasts for allocated portfolios.
• Recommends hiring, contractor engagement, and redeployment activities.
• Escalates workforce risks impacting delivery.
• Approves workforce planning assumptions within agreed governance.
• Recommends resource optimisation strategies to improve utilisation.
• Works with internal stakeholders including Delivery Leaders, Global Competence Manager, Workshare Utilisation & Best Practice, Wood Technical Academy, IT/Systems & Data, and Talent Acquisition.
• Expected to be a role model for Wood values and behaviours.