Workforce Planning Lead

About the role

Wood is seeking a Workforce Planning Lead for its Abu Dhabi office. This full‑time, onsite position will lead operational workforce planning across assigned business units, regions or portfolios. The role partners with business leaders to align capacity with current and future demand through accurate forecasting, utilisation management and proactive resource planning.

Key responsibilities

• Lead workforce planning activities and develop short, medium and long‑term forecasts aligned to business demand.
• Maintain rolling capacity plans, highlight resource gaps, surpluses and deployment opportunities.
• Identify workforce risks early and provide mitigation recommendations.
• Partner with Delivery Managers and Business Leaders to translate sales pipeline and project demand into workforce requirements.
• Monitor weekly utilisation performance, analyse trends and recommend actions to improve billability and productivity.
• Produce weekly and monthly workforce planning reports, present insights to senior stakeholders and track KPIs such as utilisation, forecast accuracy and hiring needs.
• Build trusted relationships with Operations, Delivery, Project and Talent Acquisition teams, driving adoption of planning tools and best practices.

Required profile

• Degree or equivalent experience in operations, business, engineering, data/analytics or a related discipline.
• Proven experience in workforce planning, resource management or operational planning within a complex organisation.
• Experience in change management, continuous‑improvement programmes and driving data‑governance.
• Strong analytical capability with a commercial mindset and understanding of project‑based delivery environments.
• Strategic thinker with excellent operational execution and the ability to simplify complex data into actionable recommendations.
• Effective communicator and collaborative leader able to influence at all organisational levels.

Required skills

• Advanced Excel
• Power BI
• Enterprise workforce planning or ERP systems