Case Study No. 1
UK Armed Service
The service faced a considerable challenge to match demand with supply and manage costs of a £5Bn workforce. Over four years and led by Giles, a fundamental redesign of workforce planning capability was carried out encompassing academic research, feasibility studies, business process and organisational redesign, simulation-based workforce forecasting tools, information systems, data management, data quality improvements and governance changes. A feature of the new arrangements was the integration of workforce and financial staff under a single responsible owner; in 2009, the first decision made under these arrangements saved £40m in one year. Financial and recruitment oscillation was all but eliminated.
The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review led to major re-organisation and a 20% reduction in workforce numbers and budgets. Underpinned by the quality of workforce and cost information now available and with an effective governance mechanism to make and implement decisions in place, for which Giles was responsible, transformation was delivered two years ahead of schedule, saving a further £1.4Bn, whilst maintaining recruitment at levels needed for a sustainable future.
Case Study No. 2
Health & Social Care
In 2013, a new UK government agency (5,500 FTEs) was created by bringing together a large number of much smaller entities. The agency made a commitment to develop and implement an integrated workforce plan to ensure that it had the right workforce with the right skills in the right place and time to meet the demands of the current and evolving health agenda, to ensure that the workforce budget was affordable, and to establish the workforce baseline for a forthcoming strategy review and its subsequent implementation. At the time, the organisations planning horizon was one year, and it faced potential budget cuts of up to 20%. Developed by Giles, the plan completed in September 2014 combined projections of the workforce establishment, staffing levels, budgets and costs for three years, as a whole and its subordinate directorates and regions. Analysis of workforce turnover, vacancy rates and causes, combined with above inflation salary cost growth, revealed that in the short term, the agency would have a significant budget surplus, but that this would be eroded away over three years, triggering action to rebalance investment in the short term and mitigate risk in the longer term, leaving it better placed to manage its resources over the next few years.
Case Study No. 3
Local Government
A county council’s strategy was to transition from directly delivered to commissioned services. An outcome based business plan and budget were put in place, but the implications for workforce capability and capacity had not hitherto been considered, putting the achievement of planned outcomes at risk. Guided by Workforce Planning Solutions, the project to develop a workforce plan revealed significant variations in the execution of the commissioning operating model and confused governance arrangements which impact on overall effectiveness of the council, not just workforce planning. The outcome was an immediate risk based assessment of the workforces’ ability to deliver commissioning projects, sustainable methodologies for integrating workforce factors into annual and strategic plans, a framework for a new talent management strategy to develop and maintain staff capability to conduct commissioning, and recommendations targeted at improving the council’s operating models and governance arrangements.
Case Study No. 4
3rd Sector
Following a change of funding arrangements from central government grants to competed contracts from local commissioners, a £40m charity’s strategy was to move from a regionally based pure service delivery model to a client facing lines of service model that was sufficiently flexible and robust to manage contract wins and losses. Realisation that major transformation was required came very late. In 9 months the charity, guided by Workforce Planning Solutions, developed a change strategy, designed and implemented new operating models and standardised and catalogued its range of products and services, whilst reducing its corporate overheads by 25%.