Future Workforce planning has risen to the top of the list of priorities of current HR leaders.
The business models of organizations are changing rapidly; technology is changing the way people work, and we can no longer rely on outdated forms and/or stale definitions of a role.
We need to think about the workforce of the future, recognizing it is flexible, skills-based, and intrinsically connected to artificial intelligence.
The workplace of 2025 looks very different from the one many organizations were built.
Skills have a shorter shelf life; employees expect some flexibility and mobility, and AI tools are now included as part of everyday decisions. In addition, all of these changes represent some level of difficulty but also provide opportunities. Leaders with the ability to align their workforce planning to increasingly comprise skills-first programs and utilize a level of AI-fuelled decisions as part of their people practices will set themselves apart from the pack.
And it isn't just about talent management; workforce planning is about enabling organizations to be resilient and sustainable.
An Agile Workforce, and intelligent HR technology to assist in that effort, will allow organizations to pivot no matter what the market brings.
In terms of HR plans, it is about being able to use the trifecta - plan to be sure, act in an agile way, and grow a workforce ready for the future.
The workforce is changing faster than many organizations can respond. The traditional nine-to-five in-person experience has evolved to a flexible hybrid model of remote and in-office work. Skills are changing at such a rapid rate that what was a relevant skill three years ago is now outdated.
The new reality requires HR leaders to think differently about role design, team composition, and employee support.
Key elements of the new workforce reality include:
Most organizations follow a hybrid work mode now. It is a combination of remote and in-person, and employees expect flexibility, with some autonomy and control over how and where they work. This model requires organizations to manage productivity, collaboration, and culture.
The half-life of skills keeps on shrinking. Technical skill sets that were sought after yesterday could lose their value tomorrow. HR will need to continuously assess skills gaps and create routes for ongoing upskilling.
Employees want career growth, defined learning opportunities, and customized experiences. If these needs are not satisfied, employees are now willing to change jobs as demands are ever-increasing. Retention models have shifted to focus more on development and engagement than previously.
Organizations are moving beyond the local market and tapping into global talent. This broadens the opportunities, but also increases the competition. The new approaches to engaging, managing, and interacting with diverse, distributed teams are different in terms of processes or methods of communication and inclusion.
Collaboration tools, HR technology, and AI solutions are now at the forefront of workforce management. They are a part of the decision-making process, they are a part of the automation of administrative tasks, and they provide leaders with a more productive way to plan by providing greater data and insights.
For HR leaders, this is both a challenge and an opening.
It is a challenge to move beyond standardized processes and find a new way to build strategies to respond to a world of continuous business change.
The successful organizations will be those who treat workforce planning as a continuous, skill-based activity and use the technology to assist them.
Classic work force planning is focused on job titles, job duties, and specific roles. Human resources teams employ people to fill positions, then assess labor needs based on static, organizational structures and defined roles, which works well when business service volumes and demands are predictable and roles change slowly.
In businesses today, the velocity and uncertainty of the modern workforce force the anachronistic type of workforce planning to focus on job titles and certain positions is no longer sustainable.
Businesses need agile workforce models, can evolve quickly with new skill consumption trends, can connect given talents to collaborative and strategic workforce goals, not just filling roles.
This push to agility in workforce planning has led to a thrust of moving to skills-first workforce planning, which focuses on skills and not titles, as the central aspect of how organizations source, develop, and deploy their talent.
Some of the key aspects of a skills-based approach are:
HR personnel are hiring around sets of skills that meet the shifting demands that project-based employment asks for, thus allowing them to shift people across teams and tasks in a more agile workforce.
More often than not, skill profiles are replacing fixed job descriptions. Employees can see instantaneously where their respective skill sets unlock opportunities. This is a significant retention and engagement strategy since it provides growth pathways out of organizational silos.
Organizations will invest in tools to monitor skills across the workforce. These tools display gaps and predict future needs, and help plan, not just when hiring.
Once skill gaps are defined, organizations have the ability to more clearly identify training. That means there are focused, individualized development pathways based on the actual business needs.
Skills data becomes a valuable asset. Leaders are making decisions based on what the organization can do, rather than simply who is in a position. This helps employees recognize that organizational capacity may not align with business plan objectives.
To shift to a skills-first mindset means to invest in not only a framework and skill tools, but to get skills taxonomies, internal marketplaces, and learning platforms to work together, and the need for some level of cultural change.
Both managers and employees must view skills as fluid (assets) and not labels (static).
Salesforce was and continues to be a leader in these AI-enabled, skills-oriented HR approaches.
In May 2025, they launched their AI-enabled internal talent marketplace, Career Connect.
It helps employees to discover skill gaps, receive personalized recommendations to learn new skills, and find new roles that match their skills, all through the 'Career Agent' that is embedded directly in Slack.
The Career Connect solution enables organizations to plan an agile workforce while giving employees the ability to drive their own career development.
The platform enables skill gap identification, and employees can identify and then close the gaps.
Users provided with personalized learning recommendations can create relevant and targeted upskilling pathways.
It identifies and surfaces aligned role and project opportunities, driving internal mobility and proactive career development.
The platform integrates with day-to-day workflows and enables real-time career guidance through Slack, which makes career development more on-demand and relevant to the context.
The role of artificial intelligence in workforce planning has become a prominent strategic element.
AI even exceeds automation itself; it enables leaders to predict future needs, first aligning workforce skills and capabilities and then giving the organization the ability to alter, transform, and create workforce plans for future needs and timing.
AI provides unique value through predictive abilities, personalization, and tailoring, as well as automation. AI can make sense of massive amounts of data to visualize and present outlier programs and buried trends. Predictive capabilities foster foresight, allowing organizations to merge workforce capabilities along with their business agenda.
Some of the key applications for AI in workforce planning include the following:
AI tools have the foresight, based on business trends and expected project pipelines, to forecast hiring needs. AI will allow HR leaders to have foresight options when getting future talent contingents in place.
By looking at existing employees' performance reviews and skills, AI finds the gap in current employee talent against the future skill set needs. AI allows for intentional reskilling and reduces the need for future labor rehiring.
AI provides training recommendations specific to employees' current roles, career aspirations, and referenced performance data. Learning becomes relevant and timely.
AI will rate engagement patterns amongst employees as well as workload or career path movement to highlight any employees who may be distressed around engagement, workload, or lack of movement, allowing HR to intervene in anticipation of an employee leaving the organization.
AI tools can help simulate changes to a business situation, either from external market shifts or organizational growth. Business leaders can see what effect these changes may have on talent strategy. This helps leaders stress test people, strategy, and plan accordingly.
AI can help HR teams automate routine administration activities, such as screening resumes or scheduling interviews, allowing your HR teams to think strategically about talent development and employee experience rather than lower-level administration activities.
The greatest advantage to a business is not just applying AI to an activity for efficiency, but gives that organization the flexibility and adaptability to shift. In a world where business is continuously changing and turbulent, a fixed workforce plan will not work. AI gives organizations the capability to move and redeploy resources, resolve skills gap quickly within teams, or build agile workforce flexibility.
HR leaders will also need to be mindful ethics of deployment, including transparency, eliminating bias, and governance.
When responsibly implemented, AI will enhance workforce planning and shift the focus away from static workforce strategies to a forward-looking people and skills strategy that allows organizations to navigate uncertainty.
In a bold organizational move, Moderna combined its HR and IT functions in 2025, under the position of Chief People and Digital Technology Officer, held by its former HR chief, Tracey Franklin.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has integrated over 3,000 customized GPT agents into a range of workflows, including HR and legal support, scientific research, and clinical operations.
It is creating a completely new way to think about work in terms of human-AI collaboration.
Key Takeaways:
The integrated function will now have technology and human strategy led by the same executive. The merger illustrates that technology and people are inseparable in today's organization.
The company now has over 3,000 GPT agents built into key business processes, redefining how work is allocated across the organization.
Roles and workflows are being reconceptualized through an AI-enabled lens. Tasks are assigned based on who or what is better at performing them.
The integration represents a movement from traditional workforce planning through fixed job design to "work planning" based on capabilities that are flexible.
Workforce planning isn't a static HR function anymore. Companies that plan around fixed job titles are either laggards or are going to quickly find themselves in the laggard category.
As HR technologies continue to evolve, one principle stands out: being nimble is key. Skills are the future of work. AI and technology expand the conversation by making workforce strategies more nimble and precise.
HR leaders who leverage technology responsibly will increase efficiencies and ultimately create workplaces in which employees can thrive, grow, and have a legitimate vision for their futures.
As Josh Bersin, a leading HR industry analyst, has stated:
“AI will not replace HR, but HR leaders who use AI will replace those who do not. The future belongs to those who build human-AI collaboration into workforce planning.”
This reflective stance encapsulates the reality most organizations face as they look to their workforce of the future.
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