Workforce and skills planning: anticipating future jobs and safeguarding career paths

Workforce and skills planning is a forward-looking approach that maps changes in an organisation against its jobs, occupations and skills.

It answers very practical questions:

• Which jobs are going to change?
• Which skills will become critical?
• Where are the gaps?
• What career pathways can be created between roles?
• Which training or mobility programmes need to be put in place?

The aim is to move from reactive workforce management to a more forward-looking approach to skills and career development.

A workforce and skills planning approach helps organisations anticipate change rather than simply manage its consequences. It becomes both a tool for steering transformation and a lever for employee development.

In particular, it helps organisations to:

• identify emerging, changing or declining jobs;
• anticipate the skills that will be needed in the future;
• identify gaps between available skills and future needs;
• create pathways between jobs and facilitate internal mobility;
• build appropriate upskilling and reskilling programmes;
• support employability and secure career paths;
• provide HR teams and managers with practical tools to support change.

Our approach covers the entire process, from anticipating change through to rolling out career pathways.

Future-of-work studies and industry job observatories

We analyse the economic, technological, environmental and organisational developments likely to transform jobs.

The aim is to identify key trends, the roles affected and the skills that need to be anticipated, to inform HR decision-making.

Job mapping and skills frameworks

Job mapping provides a structured overview of an organisation’s roles and the skills associated with them.

Skills frameworks then provide a shared foundation for managing mobility, training, recruitment and, more broadly, HR processes.

HR strategy and workforce and skills planning agreements

Alixio Group helps you define the ambition behind your workforce and skills planning approach, its governance and how it will be implemented.

Our support can also include preparing and drafting a workforce and skills planning agreement, as well as the tools and processes needed to implement it.

Career pathways and internal mobility

We analyse similarities between jobs to identify possible career moves and the skills employees need to make them.

These pathways turn a static job map into real mobility opportunities for employees.

Skills passports

At individual level, skills passports highlight each employee’s existing skills and experience, identify the roles they could move into and show any gaps to be closed.

They give employees clear, practical guidance for planning their career.

Tailored assessments and skills evaluation

Alixio Group designs assessments tailored to specific roles and employee groups, to evaluate skills and measure gaps.

The results can then be used to build targeted upskilling, reskilling or internal mobility programmes.

Training and skills development

We can design programmes based on the gaps identified: upskilling, retraining for new roles, certified programmes, face-to-face training, digital learning or other suitable formats.

The aim is to link forward-looking workforce analysis directly to skills development initiatives.

An employee often has transferable skills that can apply to several jobs, including roles that may seem very different from their current position.

A skills-based approach makes it possible to look beyond job titles alone. Organisations can then spot similarities between roles more easily, open up new career pathways and pinpoint the skills still to be developed.

This approach can also pave the way for a Skills-Based Organisation (SBO), in which skills become a core reference point for mobility, training and resource allocation.

Workforce and skills planning turns changes in jobs into practical decisions about skills, mobility and training. At Alixio Group, our approach starts on the ground, to understand how jobs are actually done, identify transferable skills and build the right career pathways.

For example, in a food manufacturing group, we observed production operators on the factory floor, analysed their activities and identified possible pathways into more digital roles. This work made it possible to pinpoint skills gaps and define the training programmes needed.

Where an organisation needs a more objective and detailed view of its employees’ skills, this approach can be complemented by tailored assessments to evaluate gaps and guide development or mobility pathways.