Functional Service Provider (FSP) partnerships give sponsors access to specialist expertise, flexibility, and global delivery capability. But as these partnerships mature, there is an increasingly important question to consider: are we simply filling today’s resource requirements, or are we building a workforce that can continue to deliver tomorrow and well into the future?

Workforce planning is often approached through the immediate requirements of a role: the skills needed, years of experience, location, and availability. These are all important considerations. But viewed individually, they can overlook something more fundamental — how the overall team should be designed around the work that actually needs to be delivered.

Does more experience always mean less risk?

When delivery timelines are demanding and quality is paramount, asking for highly experienced resources is understandable. The expectation being that experience brings technical expertise, judgement, and reassurance.

But does every activity require the same level of experience?

If highly experienced people routinely perform work that could appropriately be delivered by colleagues at an earlier stage of their careers, there can be wider consequences. Senior expertise may be under-utilized, delivery costs can increase, and, importantly, opportunities for others to gain the experience needed to progress can become limited.  There is also the retention element in that if a team member feels that their skills are being under-utilized and they are not being challenged and/or finding the work interesting, then they might look elsewhere.

The challenge is therefore not simply to find experienced people. It is to design teams with the right balance of experience and capability for the work being delivered, supported by appropriate oversight and development.

Experienced talent has to come from somewhere

This leads to another important consideration.

Every senior programmer, statistician, or technical leader was once at an earlier stage of their career.

If organizations continually seek experienced talent but don’t create meaningful opportunities for developing professionals to learn, take on greater responsibility, and progress, where does the next generation of experienced talent come from?

Training is part of the answer, but development goes considerably further. It requires mentoring, exposure to different challenges, opportunities to apply new skills, appropriate support, and a visible career path.

Done well, this creates a virtuous cycle: people develop their capabilities, take on increasingly valuable work, progress in their careers, and, importantly, have reasons to stay.

Development and retention are workforce planning issues

Retention is sometimes considered separately from workforce planning. But the two are closely connected.

When experienced people leave, organizations don’t simply lose headcount. They can lose technical knowledge, client understanding, established relationships, and the experience accumulated over years of delivery. Replacing that capability requires recruitment, onboarding, and time before new colleagues develop the same depth of organizational and client knowledge.

Conversely, when people can see opportunities to learn and progress, organizations have the opportunity to retain the capability they have invested in creating.

(In our upcoming webinar, we’ll share a real example of someone whose career journey demonstrates this in practice — progressing through continued training, support, and career opportunities and building significant experience over a number of years.)

Looking beyond today’s resource request

Strategic workforce planning therefore needs to look beyond individual vacancies and immediate delivery requirements.

It should ask broader questions:

• What work needs to be delivered, and what level of capability does it genuinely require?
• Are we using experienced talent where that experience adds the greatest value?
• Are we creating opportunities for developing talent to become tomorrow’s experts?
• And are we building an environment in which those people want to stay?

Cost-effectiveness remains an important consideration, particularly as sponsors face continued pressure on budgets. But sustainable workforce planning is about more than reducing costs. It is about creating the right balance of capability, experience, development, and continuity to support high-quality delivery over the long term.

Interested in learning more?

In our upcoming webinar on “Building Smarter FSP Partnerships Through Strategic Workforce Planning,” we’ll explore these questions in more detail, looking at practical approaches to team design, capability development and retention, and how they ultimately translate into stronger and more sustainable FSP delivery.

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