Organisations need to improve their workforce planning if they are to have the people with key skills they need.

Speaking at the release of a survey in London yesterday, Simon Bradberry, corporate sales director at Hays, told an audience of HR practitioners that workforce planning was key. The survey found that 30% of businesses believed it would be difficult to get people with the skills needed over the next 12 months.

Bradberry said that four out of  10 of the Hays’ clients surveyed believed they didn’t have the skills they needed for the next year, or that it was too early to say.

He said that those skills most needed over the next 12 month were management and leadership skills, communication skills, and business development skills.

Business development had been one of those skills lost during the recession, added Bradberry.

Later Andrew Mayo, president of the HR Society, cited the National Grid as a good example of an organisation that has successfully implemented workforce planning.

He said that by looking ahead as far as 2020, and by providing training and college programmes, the firm had managed to head off the disparity between the lack of engineers and increasing demand.