Workforce Management – Where to Start
Where do you start when building the business case for Workforce Management? Often, the first challenge is simply understanding the workforce you already have. A practical place to start is…
In their 2025 Future of Jobs Report, they forecast:
(Sources: WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 — Digest & Press Release)
There’s a whole science behind prediction and future modelling, and I respect the work the World Economic Forum does. I’m not going to pretend I could replicate it, but I can share what we’re actually seeing inside organisations today.
The idea of 170 million new jobs sounds optimistic.
Through my work supporting global enterprises across HR, Procurement and Workforce Transformation, one pattern is clear:
Roles are changing, but teams are shrinking, not growing.
Capability is moving outside payroll.
And the external workforce is becoming the engine of modern work.
The WEF lists several “fast-growing roles” including:
These roles are indeed rising.
But here’s the part most future-of-work narratives ignore:
They require small teams with deep capability, supported heavily by AI.*
Across the companies I work with, there seems to be a quiet compression, where components of teams are disappearing and not being replaced:
The work hasn’t disappeared.
But the structure of the workforce has changed.
AI is absorbing the repeatable work, and humans are doing the high-value work.
That means fewer people, deeper skill sets, more specialised capability.
This alone forces a complete rethink of workforce strategy.
The WEF’s list of declining roles confirms what many leaders already feel:
(Source: WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 — Declining Roles)
These roles are shrinking due to automation, AI, self-service, digitalisation and structural organisational change.
This isn’t temporary.
This is the new operating model.
Here is the critical insight few organisations have connected:
They will be delivered through external specialists, fractional experts, project teams and services providers.**
Companies do not want fixed cost.
They want capability on demand.
Right now, the external workforce delivers:
Yet many leaders still treat the external workforce as:
a cost line. A PO. A category. A transaction.
This is the blind spot.
Organisations talk about “building capability”,
but in reality, capability is increasingly borrowed, not built.
With nearly 40% of skills becoming obsolete in the next five years, organisations cannot depend solely on traditional hiring.
To stay competitive, leaders must redesign their workforce strategy around:
(leadership, critical domain expertise, continuity roles)
(the capability engine)
(work that can scale without adding headcount)
(so the organisation actually knows who delivers what)
In the next decade, winning organisations will not be the ones with the biggest internal teams.
They will be the ones with:
The organisations that ignore this will shrink quietly — without understanding why.
This isn’t just about jobs.
It’s about capability.
And capability is becoming more external, more flexible, and more AI-enabled than ever.
The question you need to ask yourself, are you ready and already focused on the future of work changes?
