Head of Workforce Planning and Analytics (Band 8a)

Are you passionate about workforce planning and the power of data to drive meaningful change?
North Bristol NHS Trust is offering an opportunity to join our well-established team as Head of Workforce Planning and Analytics-a new role designed to enhance the way we plan and deliver our workforce needs.
As a vital part of the Workforce Planning, People Systems, and Data team, you'll support the Assistant Director in leading the team and shaping its strategic vision. You will play a key role in aligning data insights with workforce strategies at local, regional, and national levels, helping us identify opportunities for improvement-whether through automation or innovative processes.
This role offers the flexibility of hybrid working, with a minimum of 60% on-site at our People Hub in Southmead Hospital. We are open to discussing individual circumstances that may require more tailored working arrangements.
If you're ready to drive workforce planning to the next level and thrive in a collaborative, forward-thinking environment, we want to hear from you.

Main duties of the job
You will lead and deliver complex technical work across workforce planning, business information (BI), and analytics, managing the relationship between these areas while driving workforce data literacy across the Trust and broader system.
By staying closely connected with a wide range of stakeholders and subject matter experts, you will ensure the team's outputs meet evolving needs, offering stability and expert guidance. You will also have ownership of designing and implementing workforce planning and information policies, tools, and guidance, incorporating external best practices where relevant, and leading all related training and implementation efforts.
Additionally, you will oversee workforce planning and design modelling, from establishment reviews and annual operational planning to long-term strategic workforce planning. Collaborating with a wide range of clinical, operational, and corporate stakeholders across the Trust, system, and nationally, you will ensure these plans are comprehensive, aligned with best practices, and meet national requirements., 1. Leading the workforce planning and information team with responsibility for all
aspects of the team's output and for team and individual performance and
development
2. Responsible for pay and non-pay budgets associated with the workforce planning
and information team
3. Represent workforce planning and information on behalf of the Trust at system and
NHS England networks and formal governance groups
Policy
4. Operational owner of the Trust workforce planning policy (planning approach),
ensuring it is widely understood and embedded in the organisation and that the
document is adapted and refreshed as organisational need or national
requirements change
5. Ensuring best practice is reflecting in the Trust workforce planning approach, using
published literature, network participation and working collaboratively with system
partners to do so
6. Support the Assistant Director of Workforce Planning, People Systems and Data
with subject matter expert for workforce planning modelling, forecasts and analysis
and workforce planning approach, including responding to changing situations and
requirements, designing modelling approaches from scratch or responding to
partial guidance or information
Strategic Workforce Planning
7. Engaging stakeholders to ensure the value of strategic workforce planning is
understood in the organisation and that this is translated into engagement and
action in the Trust
8. Ownership of both the workforce demand and workforce supply side of planning,
working with stakeholders from operational, clinical, and financial teams to ensure
alignment on the development and use of long-term assumptions for planning
9. Leading the use of the Trust Long-Term (Strategic) Workforce Planning tools,
ensuring they are widely understood and embedded in divisional and professional
planning activity
10. Ensuring the Trust's tools can incorporate data from multiple systems and
stakeholder feedback to produce outputs that allow different scenarios to be
presented, recognising that often uncertainty will be a large part of the planning
process and that robust tools can support stakeholders making decisions
11. Translating modelling outputs and stakeholder analysis and feedback into cohesive
narrative to be used internally up to Trust Board level and externally with system
and NHS England stakeholders
12. Working with system partners to ensure alignment of planning tools, approach, and
assumptions, often having to negotiate and influence others to ensure the best
possible outcome for the Trust and other stakeholders
Operational Workforce Planning
13. Support the Assistant Director of Workforce Planning, People Systems and Data in
leading the operational workforce planning process in the Trust, ensuring that
operational plans produced are aligned with activity and finance and also with
resourcing, learning and development and profession level assumptions
14. Receive and translate NHS England and system planning guidance into
operational plans, taking overall responsibility for disseminating information to all
stakeholders involved in the workforce element of operational planning
15. Design, build and develop the operational planning model for workforce building in
all required assumptions, aligning with long-term planning assumptions where
required and covering all areas of workforce (substantive, bank and agency)
16. Provide a single point of contact for divisions to deliver their operational plans,
including forecasts models, analysis, and modelling to inform target setting and
decision making and
Workforce Information
17. Lead the Trust workforce information team ensuring all statutory and mandatory
workforce reporting is delivered including monthly and ad-hoc returns to NHS
England
18. Lead the workforce information team to ensure that the needs of the Trust are met
across all regular workforce performance reports to ad-hoc reporting and analysis.
Designing and adapting BI tools and analysis to meet a range of needs, e.g. where
specific technical requirements of stakeholders are known, where stakeholders
have simply posed a question or described a complex problem to where you as an
individual identify the need to carry out the work
19. Lead the data element of regular safer staffing reviews and ensure models remain
fit for purpose
20. Lead the production and use of workforce benchmarking information, using a range
of nationally available platforms and data sets or from networks and targeted
contact with other NHS organisations to enhance understanding, compliment
internally produced information and facilitate decision making and target setting.

Working for our organisation
North Bristol NHS Trust employs over 12,000 staff providing healthcare to the residents of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset from our award-winning hospital building at Southmead. We are the regional Major Trauma Centre, and an internationally recognised centre of excellence in a range of services and major specialities. Our vision is that by enabling our teams to be the best that they can be, we will provide exceptional healthcare, personally delivered.
We commit to treating each patient as an individual with respect and dignity, aiming to deliver excellent clinical outcomes and a first-class experience for everyone who uses our services. North Bristol NHS Trust values all people as individuals. We aim to be an anti-discriminatory organisation and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We welcome applicants from all underrepresented groups., If you apply for this vacancy and have not received a communication from North Bristol NHS Trust within three weeks of the closing date, please assume that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful.
Please note that North Bristol NHS Trust does not reimburse travel expenses relating to interview attendance.
If you feel you meet the requirements of the Disability Act / Two Ticks scheme and require further support/advice, please contact us on tel .
North Bristol NHS Trust are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
The successful applicant(s) will normally commence at the minimum of the scale unless they have previous NHS service at the same band. Progression through the scale is by annual increments.
At North Bristol Trust (NBT), we know diverse and inclusive environments lead to happier and healthier teams and improved patient care and outcomes. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are currently underrepresented in NBT's workforce at Band 8a and above. These include people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled people and LGBTQIA+ people.
Please note that stringent pre-employment checks are undertaken on all successful applicants prior to commencement in post.