Warwickshire Police: Building workforce planning for the longer term

With the launch of its new vision and values in 2025, Warwickshire Police recognised the need to strengthen its approach to workforce planning by taking a longer-term view of future workforce requirements.

Existing planning was predominantly focused on the short term, typically looking six to 12 months ahead. While this supported immediate requirements, the force wanted to develop a more strategic approach that could anticipate workforce needs further into the future and align more closely with strategic horizon-scanning, risk management and innovation ambition, as well as the medium-term financial plan.

The aim was to reduce the need to respond to workforce challenges at short notice by identifying potential pressures earlier, planning further ahead and enabling positive change. While reactive workforce decisions will always be part of policing, Warwickshire wanted to create a stronger foundation for anticipating and responding to future workforce requirements.

Through the NPCC Strategic Workforce Planning Pilot, Skills for Justice worked with Warwickshire Police to develop a more structured approach to longer-term workforce planning.

As one of four trailblazer forces, Warwickshire received expert support to develop its strategic workforce planning approach, with access to a programme of specialist workshops, practical tools and resources, analytical expertise and opportunities to share learning with the other participating forces.

A key element of the programme was the Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning, which provided a structured framework for the workforce planning process. The workshops were delivered in modules aligned to the different stages, enabling Warwickshire to work through the process sequentially and build its understanding over time rather than trying to tackle strategic workforce planning as one large exercise.

An accompanying workbook provided further structure and discipline, prompting the force to consider its current position, what it was trying to achieve and the steps needed to get there. Warwickshire adapted the tools to its own circumstances and priorities rather than treating them as a prescribed end product. For example, having recently completed a restructure, the force used the service-change mapping element to focus on the aims and objectives it wanted its future workforce approach to achieve.

Data and analysis were also an important part of the process. Analytical support helped Warwickshire make sense of its workforce data and consider how it could be presented and used more effectively. The work also reinforced the importance of balancing consistent workforce information with an approach that reflected the force’s ambition, objectives, priorities and the data available to it.

Warwickshire ultimately brought together its workforce analysis, organisational context and the outputs developed through the Six Steps Methodology and workbook to shape its own workforce strategy. This gave the force a structured process for developing the plan while retaining the flexibility to create a strategy relevant to its own starting point and longer-term ambitions.

The pilot has helped Warwickshire put in place stronger foundations for longer-term strategic workforce planning. This now more directly supports the force vision and values, and its ambition for the future. While it is too early to measure longer-term workforce outcomes, the work has already resulted in tangible developments in the force’s strategy, planning approach and supporting capability.

Key areas of impact include:

• An Executive Board-approved workforce strategy. Warwickshire has developed a workforce strategy that brings together workforce data, organisational insight and identified challenges within a single strategic framework. Approved by the Executive Board, it provides an agreed starting point for longer-term workforce planning and is intended to evolve as a living document as the force’s needs and evidence develop.
• A more structured and repeatable approach to workforce planning. The Six Steps Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning has provided a sequential process that Warwickshire can apply to workforce planning at different levels. The force is also developing the more detailed, shorter-term workforce planning that will sit beneath the strategy, creating a clearer link between its longer-term direction and tactical workforce planning.
• Stronger workforce planning capability and infrastructure. Alongside the pilot, Warwickshire has invested in its workforce planning capability, including a workforce analyst and a chief inspector overseeing the function, with duties and learning support being brought closer together. The workforce planning work also helped the force articulate the benefits of greater systems capability as part of the business case for a new workforce system, supporting the case for greater investment.
• Greater organisational focus on workforce planning. The work has helped influence how workforce planning is viewed at senior level and coincides with changes in how workforce resources are being managed. Protective services and investigative resources have been brought within the duties team’s approach, applying greater rigour and discipline to the management of these areas.

“Using the Six Steps to Integrated Workforce Planning gave us a practical way to break strategic workforce planning down into manageable stages and work through it in a structured and disciplined way.

“We now have a more structured and strategic approach that enables us to take a longer-term view of our workforce needs to support delivery of the force vision and values, and to support our ambition to deliver excellence as standard. We can continue to build on this as our workforce planning capability develops, which is a significant enabler and step forward.”

– Alison Hall, Head of Human Resources, Warwickshire Police

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