Senior Workforce Planning Manager

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

Role description:

The Senior Workforce Planning Manager GEC will drive workforce agility across GEC, establishing proactive 12-week forecasts, maximizing productivity, and ensuring demand needs are managed, early warnings and proactive insights are provided to GEC Service leaders. This role will also manage a team of Resource Planners.

Role accountabilities:

• Own the 12-week forecast, highlighting supply and demand variance.
• Establish data driven resource forecasts to enable proactive decision making.
• Provide recruitment recommendations to Service Directors and inform TA partner(s).
• Maximize the agility of talent across accounts and Sectors, ensuring optimal use of named resource requests.
• Monitor and report on weekly billable and productive time vs planned and drive improvements in performance and data quality.
• Escalate key risks and issues to leadership and Industry WFP Directors as relevant.
• Prepare and provide contingency staffing plans to support potential risks or outcomes.
• Maintain an accurate view of workforce planning data, including WFP Tags, people mapping and capacity reporting to ensure the integrity of planning and deployment decisions.
• Maximize deployment opportunities to the Global Excellence Centre.
• Optimize resource mix (GEC, Local, Global, Contingent) across the business to achieve optimal financial and client outcomes.
• Support workforce integration and transformation projects within the GEC.
• Ensure talent agility is maintained through optimizing use of name-based demand requests.
• Identify and communicate operational risk areas related to talent availability or deployment.
• Understand and support Sector / Market needs and support talent requirements.
• Feedback to key stakeholders on compliance to processes that drives data quality.
• Oversee and lead direct reports and provide leadership and capability building to the wider Resource Planning community.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the regional Service Director.
• Influence PM behaviour and approach to pursuits and project setup that provides sufficient resource level detail.
• Feedback insight to service leaders on talent availability, workforce capability, deployment trends, and future capacity considerations.
• Serve as a key point of contact for workforce supply and deployment requirements for Tier 1 and Tier 2 clients across the GEC.
• Provide design requirements on technology and process from a GEC context.
• Drive adoption of workforce planning processes to ensure the accuracy and completeness of data.
• Support and/or lead change management initiatives, helping embed new workforce planning processes and ways of working.
• Implement and oversee work-sharing and project resourcing policies.
• Ensure the supply and demand matching process is optimized and working effectively.
• Own and coordinate workforce planning training requirements for team managers, ensuring consistent understanding and adoption of workforce planning tools, systems, and processes.
• Ensure SLAs relating to demand requests within the Demand Marketplace are consistently achieved and maintained.
• Establish approaches and processes to maximize any non-billable time toward productive work supporting clients or pursuits.
• Drive productivity from non-billable time through proactive workforce management, deployment strategies, and operational planning initiatives.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Experience in workforce planning, resourcing, forecasting or related analytical roles within the AEC or related professional Services Industry in the GEC.
• Strategic thinking and business acumen, with the ability to translate regional Service forecasts, utilization trends and project demand into actionable workforce planning insight.
• Deep understanding of workforce analytics and forecasting, including forecast versus actual billable hours, productivity metrics and demand variance analysis.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills, with proven ability to work effectively with Regional Service Directors, Service Area Leaders, Major Project Directors and Talent Acquisition partners.
• Knowledge of regional talent trends, labor markets and basic employment law relevant to workforce planning and mobility decisions.
• Analytical and data-driven, with strong capability in interpreting workforce data, identifying risks and driving proactive interventions.
• Detailed knowledge of processes and systems that drive workforce planning data, demand matching and deployment decisions, or the ability to quickly build that knowledge in a comparable environment.
• Client oriented mindset, with understanding of Service offerings and differentiators from a client perspective and how these influence workforce needs.
• Experience leading or managing resource planners or similar workforce planning teams, including setting priorities, building capability and improving forecast accuracy and productivity.
• Demonstrated ability to identify and escalate workforce risks, support contingent staffing decisions and maintain accurate workforce tags and planning data.
• Strong communication skills, able to provide clear recommendations and insight to Service leaders and project stakeholders on talent availability and capability.
• Ability to make and guide workforce planning decisions, balancing competing priorities across projects, sectors, and workforce constraints.
• Strong understanding of commercial drivers such as utilization, billability, cost management, and their impact on workforce planning decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to lead the end-to-end workforce planning lifecycle, including demand forecasting, capacity planning, deployment, recruitment planning, and performance tracking.
• Leadership style that empowers Arcadians, promotes accountability and continuous improvement, and supports a healthy, inclusive and high engagement culture aligned to the Arcadis Leadership profile of being curious, driving success and igniting passion.
• Degree level education in a relevant technical or commercial discipline such as business, operations, human resources, analytics, engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Advanced degree preferred such as MBA or a relevant Master’s in business, human resources, analytics, operations or a related field, or equivalent senior level experience in complex regional organizations.

Why Arcadis?

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone's contribution matters. It’s why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together.

You’ll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you’ll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you.

Together, we can create a lasting legacy.

Join Arcadis. Create a Legacy.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day, which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people. At Arcadis, you will have the opportunity to build the career that is right for you. Because each Arcadian has their own motivations, their own career goals. And, as a ‘people first’ business, it is why we will take the time to listen, to understand what you want from your time here, and provide the support you need to achieve your ambitions.

#LI-SP2