Start With the Business Plan, Not the HR Calendar

Ask a leadership team how they plan for people and the answer usually arrives as a calendar. Performance reviews in March. An engagement survey in May. Training budget in July. A succession conversation in the second half, if there's time.

A calendar like that fills the year, and it's easy to run. What it can't tell you is whether the people side of the business is set up to deliver the commercial plan.

A better starting point is the plan itself. Take the two or three commercial priorities for 2027. A new channel, a range extension, a move into another region, a cost target. Then work back from each one with three questions:

→  What will the business need to be able to do in 18 months that it can't do today?

→  Which roles matter most to getting there?

→  Are the right people in those roles, and what happens if one of them leaves?

Those answers produce a different kind of people plan. It might point to a hire in the first quarter. It might show that a strong manager is carrying two jobs. It might show that three of the five roles the plan depends on sit with people who've been in the same seat for six years and haven't had a development conversation in two.

There's extra pressure on this going into 2027. Rates rose again in November, budgets are being trimmed, and unemployment has moved even higher. When money gets tight, the HR calendar is often the first thing to be cut and the last thing anyone questions. The roles that carry the plan get left as they are. That's the wrong way round. A tighter budget is a reason to be more specific about where the people money goes, not less.

A one-hour exercise gets most of the way there. Put the 2027 priorities on a single page. Under each one, list the roles it depends on. Beside each role, write the name of the person in it and one word for how ready they are for what 2027 will ask of them: ready, stretched or uncertain.

The roles marked stretched or uncertain are your people plan. Everything on the HR calendar can then be tested against them. A survey that tells you about the five roles you're worried about earns its place. A training program that doesn't touch any of them can wait.

Plans built this way are shorter, and they're easier to defend when budgets get questioned, because every line connects to something the business is trying to do.

Which role does your 2027 plan depend on most, and how would you know if the person in it was ready for what's coming?