Priority 1 - Workforce Planning
Our vision
Coventry City Council will take a proactive, data-driven approach to workforce planning to ensure we have “the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time” to deliver excellent services to Coventry’s residents. This means anticipating future needs – such as demographic shifts, evolving service demands, and identifying skills gaps and developing talent pipelines both internally and externally to meet those needs.
Our objectives
- establish and embed an effective workforce planning approach across all services, enabling leaders to forecast demand, identify skills gaps and implement solutions that build long term workforce resilience
- expand internal progression routes by implementing clear career pathways, standardised job descriptions and use of job families to support organisational consistency and agility
- embed talent and succession planning through regular use of the 9-box grid and targeted development opportunities for critical roles
- redesign recruitment and onboarding to be simpler, faster and relevant, including automating steps where this improves quality and reduces administrative effort
- refresh the employee benefits offer to support attraction, retention and wellbeing
What does success look like?
- effective recruitment processes, reflected in reduced time to hire and improved candidate experience
- managers using workforce data and insights to understand future demand, identify skills gaps and plan effective solutions
- job families consistently applied, providing clarity on role expectations, skills and responsibilities
- employees can clearly see how to progress through ‘grow our own’ routes, transparent career pathways and regular development conversations
- our organisation is better equipped to plan, with the right people, skills, and capacity in place to meet the needs of Coventry’s residents and communities
- we are recognised as an employer of choice, attracting and retaining talent through a strong employee experience
- recruitment processes that are faster, clearer, fair and free from unnecessary barriers
- candidate assessment methods that test the skills required for the role and support fair, evidence-based decisions
- a seamless onboarding experience from offer to day one, enabling colleagues to contribute sooner