October might feel early to be talking about 2027, but for many financial services firms, planning for next year is already underway. Budgets are being discussed, priorities are taking shape and leadership teams are considering where investment will be needed. Workforce planning should be part of those conversations now, rather than something that begins when a vacancy is eventually approved.
One thing I’ve noticed through conversations with clients this year is just how considered hiring has become. Firms aren’t simply adding headcount because a team is busy. There is much greater scrutiny around where additional capability is genuinely needed, which roles are business-critical and whether an existing team could be structured differently before another permanent hire is approved.
Against that backdrop, planning for 2027 shouldn’t simply start with “Who do we need to hire?” It is more useful to look at what the business needs to deliver next year, the people and skills already in place to do it, and where the genuine gaps lie.
Look at capability, not simply headcount
It is easy for workforce planning to become a numbers exercise. A team has ten people today, expects to grow next year and therefore budgets for another two. In practice, the more useful conversation is about capability and whether the existing team is equipped for what comes next.
That means looking at where teams are already stretched, where too much knowledge or responsibility sits with one individual and whether the business has become more complex without the team evolving alongside it. There may also be people within the organisation who are ready to step up, but that needs some thought too. Promoting somebody internally can solve one problem while creating a new gap elsewhere.
Across financial services, technical expertise will always matter, but the conversations we have with employers increasingly go beyond qualifications alone. Businesses want people who can communicate well across different functions, adapt as priorities change, make sensible use of technology and understand the commercial context of their role.
This is particularly relevant as firms work through the practical implications of AI and automation. It is still too early to know exactly how these technologies will reshape every function, but it would be difficult to plan a workforce for the next few years without considering how roles may change and where human judgement, technical knowledge and commercial understanding will remain particularly important.
Give difficult hires enough time
One of the recurring issues we see is businesses recognising that they will need a particular skillset but waiting until the requirement becomes urgent before going to market.
For senior and specialist appointments in particular, the right person may be performing well in another organisation and have no immediate intention of moving. Finding them, engaging them and ultimately persuading them to consider a new opportunity can take time.
If you know now that a particular area of the business is likely to grow next year, or that you will need expertise you don’t currently have, there is value in understanding that market before the vacancy becomes critical. What does the talent pool actually look like? What are those people earning? What would make them move? Are there enough of them in Ireland, or is the search likely to need a broader reach?
These are useful questions to answer while budgets and plans can still be adjusted, rather than after a role has been signed off with a salary, job description and start date that prove difficult to deliver.
Think beyond permanent headcount
The other part of this conversation is whether every gap necessarily requires another permanent employee.
There will always be roles where permanent headcount is clearly the right answer, particularly when the requirement is central to the long-term direction of the business. But there are also situations where a firm needs additional experience for a defined period: a transformation programme, regulatory project, maternity leave, systems implementation or simply a period when the existing team is under unusual pressure.
Interim hiring can be useful in those circumstances, and I think there is scope for more businesses to consider it as part of their workforce planning rather than only turning to the interim market when they have an immediate problem to solve.
The point isn’t that one model is better than another. It is about understanding the requirement first and then deciding what type of resource makes sense commercially and operationally.
Recruitment and retention belong in the same conversation
It is difficult to plan next year’s workforce properly without also considering the people already in the business.
Which individuals hold knowledge or relationships that would be particularly difficult to replace? Where is there a succession issue? Who is ready for more responsibility, and what needs to happen to retain the people the business wants to build around?
This is also where external market knowledge becomes useful. Salary is obviously part of the picture, but it isn’t the only reason people move. Role scope, progression, flexibility, leadership, benefits and the longer-term opportunity all come into the conversations we have with candidates.
Understanding what comparable professionals are being offered elsewhere can help businesses make better decisions about both recruitment and retention. It can also prevent a fairly common problem: approving a role based on historic salary assumptions and discovering once the search starts that the budget no longer reflects the market.
Start with what the business is trying to achieve
None of this requires a business to predict exactly what its organisation chart will look like at the end of 2027. Things change, particularly in financial services, and a good workforce plan needs enough flexibility to change with them.
But there is a real advantage in having the conversation early.
If the business knows what it wants to achieve next year, it can begin to look at whether the skills and experience required to deliver those plans already exist internally. Where they don’t, leadership teams have time to decide whether the answer is development, promotion, restructuring, permanent recruitment or bringing in specialist expertise for a period of time.
Working in recruitment gives us an interesting view of this because we often become involved at the point when a business plan turns into a hiring requirement. By then, some organisations have already done a lot of the thinking. They understand why they need the person, what they need them to deliver and what the market is likely to look like. Others are trying to answer those questions while simultaneously running a recruitment process.
As conversations around 2027 budgets and business plans get underway, it is worth bringing the people question into the room early. A little more thought now can give businesses far more options when they come to hire next year.
- By Mark Fallon, Managing Director at Coopman Search & Selection.
