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Workforce Planning: How to Build the Team Your Growth Plan Actually Needs
The Human Balance Sheet
Workforce planning is about much more than deciding how many people to hire next year.
In this episode of **The Human Balance Sheet**, Jay Volak and Tom Applegarth of Preferred CFO discuss how CEOs and leadership teams can build a workforce plan around the company’s actual business strategy, growth goals, financial capacity, and future talent needs.
They explore why headcount should be an outcome of the planning process rather than the starting point, how leaders can evaluate the business case for new positions, and why productivity needs to be part of every hiring conversation. The discussion also looks at how AI, automation, outsourcing, and fractional expertise are changing traditional workforce models.
Jay and Tom also cover the importance of connecting HR and Finance when planning for growth, identifying the skills a company will need in the years ahead, and building succession plans for critical roles.
Topics include:
- Workforce planning vs. traditional hiring plans
- Connecting headcount to revenue and growth goals
- Building the business case for new positions
- Productivity and revenue per employee
- AI, automation, outsourcing, and fractional talent
- HR and Finance collaboration
- Future skills and organizational capabilities
- Succession planning and key-person risk
For growing companies, the goal is not simply to add more people. It is to build the right organization, with the right capabilities and cost structure, to support where the business is going next.
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