Workforce planning commission

Who it is for

People directors, HR business partners and finance leads in UK employers with several hundred staff or more — typically a trust, a multi-site retailer, a council, a care group or a manufacturer with more than one plant. You already produce a turnover percentage. You need figures that survive a challenge about which posts, which sites and which months.

The result you keep

A bound briefing pack (and a matching PDF) covering:

• funded establishment versus occupied posts, with acting-up and secondments called out
• voluntary and involuntary leavers by tenure band, site and grade
• replacement cost using your recruitment fees, agency fill and induction time, not a borrowed benchmark
• two or three headcount scenarios for the next planning year, each with a written assumption list
• a one-page cover note for the board that does not hide the disputed lines

Scope

In scope: the legal entities and sites you name at the scoping call; the grades and contract types in the extract; the last 24 months of leavers if the file supports it. Out of scope unless separately commissioned: job evaluation, pay benchmarking, union negotiation, software selection, and rewriting your HR policies.

What is included and excluded

Included: one scoping call; a data checklist; two working sessions (remote or in Watlington); the draft pack; one round of factual correction; a briefing day of up to six hours at your offices or ours; a one-week window for a revised page after the day.

Excluded: building or hosting a live charting product; ongoing access to any shared workspace after the pack is delivered; chasing missing files from third-party payroll bureaux (we will tell you what to request).

Who does the work

Helen Marsh leads the commission. She is joined by a second practitioner for the briefing day when the board pack covers more than three sites. You will have one named contact throughout.

Process

1. Scoping call: we confirm the question the board actually asked, not the question on the purchase order.
2. File review: we say within five working days whether the extract will bear a leaver map.
3. Working session one: tenure bands, site list, and which leavers count as voluntary.
4. Draft pack issued.
5. Working session two: finance questions, scenario assumptions.
6. Briefing day.
7. Revised pages, if marked on the day.

Duration and timing

Eight to twelve weeks from a usable extract. December and March board cycles book early; we will not compress a study into three weeks because a paper deadline moved.

Where the work happens

File work is done in Watlington. Working sessions can be remote. The briefing day is on your premises in the United Kingdom, or at 44 Simone Weil Avenue if that is easier for a small group.

Preparation

You nominate a single file owner in HR or workforce information. We need a payroll or establishment extract with person-level rows (anonymised is fine), start date, leave date, leave reason, grade, site, hours, and contract type. A dictionary of leave-reason codes saves a week.

Constraints

We will not sign a pack that prints a company-wide turnover rate as the lead figure. If a sponsor insists on that layout, we will decline the commission rather than print a number we cannot defend in the room.

Price basis

Quoted against our day-rate schedule. A typical eight-week commission for one legal entity and up to five sites falls in a range we will put in writing after the file review — not before, because a dirty extract changes the days. See Rates. A deposit of one-third is payable on instruction. Informational only; there is no online checkout.

Next step

Request a scoping call and attach, if you can, a sample of column headings (no personal data). We reply within two working days.