L&D Skills Planning Manager

Job Purpose:

To lead on ensuring workforce planning is aligned with L&D requirements to meet the strategic needs of the organisation, bridging the current gap between workforce planning and L&D, ensuring that the organisation has a cohesive approach to managing staff skills, competencies, and the external training budget.

Main Responsibilities:

To collaborate with the HR Workforce Planner to integrate workforce projections and turnover rates into L&D planning, ensuring L&D plans are aligned with the organisation's 3-year strategic workforce plan, addressing current gaps in annual external training spend management.

Conduct L&D scenario planning to explore various training delivery methods (internal or external), using data on: workforce needs, turnover, and skills retention and provide insights into how workforce changes affect training delivery, especially for essential roles, such as Firearms Officers, Negotiators and Detectives.

Develop a strategic L&D plan that addresses the organisation's skills, knowledge, and competency requirements for new recruits and existing officers and staff, ensuring they are effectively integrated into workforce planning. Manage the L&D Support Services Assistants.

Support the retention and development of essential roles in the organisation by ensuring L&D plans are comprehensive and strategically aligned and provide senior leadership with data-driven insights and solutions for improving training efficiency and effectiveness.

Liaise with key stakeholders, including chief officers, to communicate the importance of aligning workforce and L&D planning and present compelling cases for investment in L&D to ensure organisational preparedness for workforce shifts and training demands.

To monitor, collate and share organisational learning, including any national best practice.

To undertake other duties commensurate with the nature, level of responsibility and grading of this post, as required.

Special Conditions:

Some travel across the Warwickshire area in support of local meetings for L&D / HR. There maybe very occasional weekends and lone working from home.

Person Specification:

Knowledge:

Educated to degree level or has equivalent experience
Knowledge of L&D best practices, including training design, delivery methods (internal and external), and scenario planning.
In-depth knowledge of training program design, scheduling, and the processes for booking and updating training records.
Understanding of budgeting processes for training programmes, especially managing external training budgets.
Familiarity with HR systems for workforce data and tools for tracking and updating training records.
Knowledge of workforce analytics and metrics to inform L&D decisions.
Knowledge of regulatory and compliance requirements related to mandatory training in certain roles (e.g., APP and licence to practice)

Experience:

Proven experience in developing and executing L&D training plans that align with workforce needs and organizational goals.
Experience conducting scenario planning to anticipate future training needs based on workforce projections and turnover.
Experience of managing training logistics, including planning, booking, and coordinating internal and external training programmes.
Experience overseeing the maintenance of accurate training records, ensuring data is kept up to date.
Demonstrated experience working closely with HR, senior leaders, and other departments to align training initiatives with workforce planning.
Experience in communicating with senior stakeholders, presenting data-driven insights, and influencing strategic decisions.
Experience managing training budgets, especially external spend, and ensuring cost-effective delivery of training programs.
Experience managing a team and leading cross-functional initiatives related to workforce and training alignment.

Key Skills:

Ability to think strategically about workforce and training needs, identifying gaps and proposing solutions to align L&D with organisational goals.
Excellent communication skills to clearly convey training plans, budget impacts, and strategic recommendations to senior leaders and key stakeholders.
Ability to influence decision-makers to secure support for training investments and strategic L&D initiatives.
Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple training programmes, timelines, and stakeholders simultaneously.
Ability to effectively manage and optimise the training budget, ensuring external and internal training resources are used efficiently.
Ability to lead and inspire a team, ensuring effective execution of training programmes and workforce planning strategies.