Workforce Planning Examples: How These 3 Companies Are Preparing For The Skill-Ready Future
Workforce planning is no longer a back-office spreadsheet exercise. For HR teams facing skills shortages, shifting market demands, and retention challenges, it’s become a board-level priority. A recent SHRM report noted that 83% of HR leaders believe their organization’s success increasingly hinges on workforce planning, yet fewer than half feel confident in their ability to do it well.
As more organizations attempt to align their business goals with the actual capabilities of their workforce, this gap gets more visible. While traditional workforce planning focuses only on roles, requisition, or headcount forecasts, strategic workforce planning gives emphasis to skills, not just seat count. And it enables HR teams to map, mobilize, and grow talent in step with the business.
If you’re looking to future-proof your workforce in a practical, measurable way, these strategic workforce planning examples offer a clear starting point.
In This Article:
What sets strategic workforce planning apart?
Strategic workforce planning addresses a common misconception: workforce planning is just limited to headcount forecasting and has zero alignment with the business goals. It actually prioritizes skills over titles, agility over static headcount, and long-term alignment over short-term fixes. It is a continuous, collaborative process — not an annual HR ritual.
There are three core capabilities that set modern workforce planning apart:
Skills visibility and mapping: Strategic planning starts with identifying the skills people already have, where gaps exist, opening up internal mobility pathways, and making it easier to match talent to evolving needs
Scenario planning: Modern workforce planning accounts for market shifts, new technologies, regulatory changes by building multiple “what if” models around talent demand, cost, and supply
AI-powered mobility tools: Intelligent talent experience platforms now help surface candidates for open roles, recommend learning paths based on adjacent skills, and provide managers with real-time views of team capabilities
In short, strategic and effective workforce planning is not a fixed plan — It’s a living system that adapts to business change while keeping people development at its core.
Related: Mastering Strategic Workforce Planning: A Comprehensive Guide
3 Examples of Workforce Planning
From healthcare to technology, these examples of workforce planning strategies show what it looks like when HR moves from reactive to proactive planning.
1. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
Operating in over 60 countries across 64,000+ employees, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany faced a growing need to evolve its workforce planning from a simple headcount exercise into a strategic, skills‑driven capability. Recognizing that relying on static forecasts wouldn't match fast‑changing talent needs, the company introduced a centralized skills taxonomy to create a common language across regions and departments.
This laid the groundwork for AI-enabled scenario planning, allowing HR and business teams to assess future demand against variables like retirement rates, salary inflation, labor availability, and expansion plans.
Rather than reacting, Merck KGaA could proactively determine where critical skills would be needed, when they would be lacking, and what the financial implications might be. “When you’re able to have strategic yet concrete discussions focused on business ROI and workforce opportunities, suddenly people are listening,” said Alexis Saussinan, Global Head of People Insights & Effectiveness at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. That clarity helped reshape conversations around talent investment.
To scale this capability, Merck KGaA integrated their skills and scenario data into SAP SuccessFactors, bringing real-time workforce insights directly into systems used by HR, finance, and business leaders. The result? Workforce decisions became faster, more precise, and tightly aligned with both strategic goals and cost efficiency.
The impact:
More agile, data-informed talent decisions
Improved planning precision across global regions
Strategic alignment between people, cost, and capability needs
Read the full story:Mastering Workforce Dynamics: Merck KGaA Germany’s Cutting-Edge Approach
2. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield
Following a 37% workforce expansion over two years, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) needed to rethink how employees explored internal opportunities. Many team members weren’t aware of open roles, and internal mobility often required fully offboarding and rehiring individuals — a time-consuming and inconsistent process.
The result? Career visibility was low, internal transfers were rare, and high-potential employees were starting to look elsewhere.
“We were experiencing what I would consider fairly significant growth... but we didn’t have a consistent way to track or understand skills across the organization,” explained Tim Lippincott, Vice President of People Strategy at Excellus BCBS.
To build a more consistent, employee-centered experience, the Excellus team conducted a nine-month listening survey initiative involving over 2,500 employees. This survey revealed: what people needed: clearer development paths, mentorship, and visibility into roles beyond their immediate teams.
That insight shaped their new approach — a skills-first strategy powered by Phenom Talent Marketplace. Employees could build skill profiles, receive personalized role recommendations, and identify development paths based on real data. The experience also included peer mentoring, internal gig work, and shared accountability between employees and leaders.
“When we went through and started to ask our employees what mattered the most to them... the word empowerment kept coming up again and again and again,” Lippincott noted. This approach helped them avoid change fatigue, build organic momentum, and demonstrate tangible ROI at every stage.
For HR and change management professionals, the lesson is clear: don’t push forward on arbitrary timelines. Advance only when there’s evidence of engagement and value.
The impact:
75% visibility into internal talent for managers and recruiters
27% faster internal hiring
30% reduction in turnover in key job families
Read the full story:How Excellus BlueCross BlueShield Solved Career Visibility with a Skills-First Approach
3. EPAM Systems
EPAM Systems, a global software engineering and professional services company with over 50,000 employees, has been executing a skills-based workforce strategy since its founding in 1993. What began as manually tracking skills in spreadsheets evolved into a deeply integrated, company-wide framework powering staffing, learning, and performance.
“It all started because as a professional services company, our whole business is matching people to work,” explained Sandra Loughlin, Chief Learning Scientist at EPAM. “We have to figure out what projects clients need, what kinds of skills they need from us. And then we have to go and find the people that have those skills.”
Unlike many companies where skills initiatives are HR-led, EPAM takes a business-first approach. Skills data is treated as a business capability — critical for agility, service quality, and operational efficiency. Their infrastructure is supported by a unified skills framework, governed data mesh architecture, and a performance model where career progression depends on validated skills, not self-reported ones.
This foundation enables EPAM to offer tailored learning paths, mentorship, and internal opportunity matching — all connected by skills data. Employees can explore any role in the company and receive a curated development journey, including communities of practice and high-quality courses.
The results speak for themselves:
Double the retention rates compared to industry peers
Higher quality of work, as reported directly by EPAM clients
Stronger alignment between talent, business needs, and market shifts
Read the full story:EPAM’s 30-Year Skills Journey: Achieving Business Agility & High Retention
Strategy is no longer optional
Workforce planning still feels out of reach for many HR teams, especially when the pressure to get it right has never been higher. The solution lies in strategic planning. Planning that focuses on roles instead of skills, or short-term hiring over long-term capability, can’t keep pace with today’s rate of change. The best way to get started is actually getting started without waiting for the perfect conditions.
Each of these examples of workforce planning have one thing in common: started with what they had, including fragmented data, emerging business demands, and a mandate to do things differently. What unified them was a shift in mindset, seeing workforce planning as a living, skills-first strategy, not just a forecasting tool.
If you’re part of an HR team asking how to prepare your workforce for what’s next, the path forward doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start with skills. Start with visibility. Start where the impact is real, and build from there.
Ready to explore what that could look like for your organization? See how Phenom supports skills-based workforce planning — no matter where you are in the journey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Strategic workforce planning is a continuous, collaborative process that prioritizes skills over titles, agility over static headcount, and long-term alignment over short-term fixes. Unlike traditional workforce planning that focuses only on roles, requisitions, or headcount forecasts, strategic workforce planning maps existing skills, identifies gaps, and mobilizes talent in step with business needs. It is a living system that adapts to business change while keeping people development at its core.
Modern workforce planning is set apart by three core capabilities. First, skills visibility and mapping identifies the skills people already have, where gaps exist, and opens internal mobility pathways. Second, scenario planning builds multiple 'what if' models around talent demand, cost, and supply to account for market shifts, new technologies, and regulatory changes. Third, AI-powered mobility tools surface candidates for open roles, recommend learning paths based on adjacent skills, and provide managers with real-time views of team capabilities.
After a 37% workforce expansion over two years, Excellus BCBS conducted a nine-month listening survey involving over 2,500 employees to understand what they needed. The team launched a skills-first strategy powered by Phenom Talent Marketplace, where employees built skill profiles, received personalized role recommendations, and accessed peer mentoring and internal gig work. The results: 75% visibility into internal talent for managers and recruiters, 27% faster internal hiring, and a 30% reduction in turnover in key job families.
According to a recent SHRM report cited in the article, 83% of HR leaders believe their organization's success increasingly hinges on workforce planning, yet fewer than half feel confident in their ability to do it well. This confidence gap grows more visible as organizations attempt to align business goals with the actual capabilities of their workforce, highlighting the urgent need for skills-based, strategic approaches over traditional headcount forecasting.
EPAM Systems, a global software engineering company with over 50,000 employees, has executed a skills-based strategy since 1993. What started as manual spreadsheet tracking evolved into a unified skills framework, governed data mesh architecture, and a performance model where career progression depends on validated, not self-reported, skills. EPAM takes a business-first approach, treating skills data as a business capability. The results include double the retention rates compared to industry peers and a higher client-reported quality of work.
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, operating in over 60 countries with 64,000+ employees, introduced a centralized skills taxonomy to create a common language across regions. This enabled AI-enabled scenario planning to assess future demand against retirement rates, salary inflation, labor availability, and expansion plans. By integrating skills and scenario data into SAP SuccessFactors, workforce decisions became faster, more precise, and tightly aligned with strategic goals and cost efficiency, enabling proactive rather than reactive talent planning.
Apurba is a writer who specializes in creating engaging content, backed by storytelling, data, SEO and a cup of coffee. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, cooking fusion food, or curiously traveling like a local.
Get the latest talent experience insights delivered to your inbox.
Sign up to the Phenom email list for weekly updates!
