Driven by AI, automation and seismic social changes, workplaces are evolving at rapid speed. KPMG is responding by evolving its strategic workforce planning approach. 

Traditional workforce planning has relied on stable business strategies and predictable workforce dynamics – an approach that has served well in times of relative certainty.

Today, however, the landscape has changed. We face an environment defined by rapid, multidimensional transformation: the rise of artificial intelligence, geopolitical volatility, climate pressures, demographic shifts, sweeping regulatory change and complex ethical considerations. To thrive amid this disruption, workforce planning must evolve – becoming more agile, adaptive and forward-looking than ever before.

Despite these challenges, 34 per cent of employers don’t have a strategic workforce plan in place, according to AHRI’s September Quarterly Work Outlook report. These employers are taking a significant risk. As Benjamin Franklin once said, those who fail to plan, plan to fail. 

Workforce planning must adopt a faster, integrated, whole-of-system approach that aligns closely with organisational goals, governance and business plans, while keeping ahead of macro market shifts and the competitive landscape. Building business resilience as a core capability requires courage to confront change head-on, while putting the forward horizon at the heart of company strategy. 

At KPMG, we’re in the throes of reinventing our approach to strategic workforce planning, bringing skills, data-driven insights and the disruptive force of AI to the forefront. Below, I’ve shared a topline view of how these initiatives have helped to reposition our firm’s approach to future planning. 

Alignment with executive leadership

From the outset, we recognised that we needed to face-in as a leadership team and to pivot from workforce planning as a standalone operational exercise to a coordinated strategic discipline. To position this strategic shift, we held an offsite with our executive team. This was an opportunity to step back from daily pressures, discuss and debate, and reach alignment on how we’d lead workforce transformation across the firm. 

Dorothy Hisgrove GAICD, National Managing Partner, People & Inclusion at KPMG.

We recognised the importance of looking both outward and inward. To truly understand the pace and scale of disruption reshaping work, we sought insights from our clients and global networks, listening to their experiences, learning from their responses and testing our own assumptions about what the future demands.

We ran demonstrations of new software, such as Workforce.ai, our proprietary tool that goes beyond traditional headcount analytics to map the skills, tasks and roles that will shape our firm’s future. 

Our executive team could see first-hand how AI will drive value by identifying where automation will create opportunities and drive innovation and efficiency, as well as how human capabilities must evolve.    

We also delivered sessions on AI-related challenges, such as ethical dilemmas facing the business, regulatory changes and ensuring inclusivity. These complex topics were led by external experts such as Edward Santow, Director of Policy and Governance at the UTS Human Technology Institute, and Siobhan Savage, founder and CEO at Reejig.

After two days, we achieved exactly what we had hoped for: alignment, ownership and a sense of urgency. We committed to embed skills-enabled workforce planning as a core organisational process, linking strategy, technology and talent. 

We created important momentum at the executive level and moved from conceptual discussion to connected execution, with clear accountabilities, data-led insights and a defined roadmap.

Workforce planning blueprint 

Our approach is skills-first, data-driven and iterative. Four critical principles underpin our strategy, combining to create a model that’s dynamic, transparent and capable of real-time adjustment.  

First up, we are bringing people and AI together. We see AI not as a disruptor, but as an enabler that can help us make better decisions, faster. 

To bring our people on that journey, we launched the market-leading Eclipse AI Learning Academy, which upskills our people in the latest AI tools, including KymChat (our version of ChatGPT) and CoPilot, supported by access to on-demand industry-leading courses, enabling our people to build cutting-edge digital, AI and data skills.

“We’re also evolving how we assess potential – testing for adversity quotient (AQ) is becoming as critical as IQ and EQ.” – Dorothy Hisgrove, National Managing Partner, People & Inclusion, KPMG

Seventy-three per cent of employees have completed at least one AI learning experience, and 9600 AI digital badges have been awarded. At the same time, we’ve accelerated our partners’ capabilities by delivering a program on leading and mastering AI, in collaboration with the UTS Human Technology Institute. 

We’re also evolving how we assess potential – testing for adversity quotient (AQ) is becoming as critical as IQ and EQ. In a world of constant disruption, resilience, adaptability, and problem-solving under pressure are fast emerging as the differentiators of future-ready talent.

AI’s potential is extraordinary, but without ethics guiding its use, that potential can be harmful. We’ve invested in building a values-led culture, where ethical decision-making is at the forefront of how we lead and work, from the ground up. 

Our graduates are introduced to the RIGHT ethical decision-making framework as part of their onboarding. This framework ensures that when making decisions we: recognise the ethical dilemma;identify various viewpoints; gather help and resources; have a plan; and take action, based on ethical standards. 

In March 2025, we held our Ethical Leadership Summit, bringing together 300 emerging leaders to explore real-world ethical problems, including the application of AI. And, throughout the firm, we have an Ethics Champions Network, which runs ethical decision-making workshops, encourages dialogue and role-models ethical leadership in action.

Secondly, we link people, business and technology through a single lens: skills. We don’t think about headcount or roles anymore. Instead, we focus on the skills we need today, tomorrow and into the future. 

We’re building predictive tools to identify emerging skills, map skill adjacencies, identify where automation will release capacity and determine how to move talent into growth areas. For example, our audit and tax divisions have restructured roles in line with AI automation, ensuring we redeploy talent, rather than displace it.

Thirdly, workforce planning occurs as an iterative, ongoing process, rather than an annual exercise. Each division now conducts regular planning sessions, surfacing trends and analytics to forecast the capacity and skills we’ll need, aligned to strategic priorities. Our Mid-Market and Private business reviewed trends in the market and, from this, interpreted the shift in skills required for the future – those in demand, and in decline. 

“Workforce planning must adopt a faster, integrated, whole-of-system approach that aligns closely with organisational goals, governance and business plans.” – Dorothy Hisgrove GAICD, National Managing Partner, People & Inclusion, KPMG

Fourth, we take a scenario-based approach by stress-testing our plans against a variety of factors, from AI adoption curves and regulatory shifts to market dynamics. 

For example, we have introduced a multi-dimensional Trusted AI governance framework, focused on striking the right balance of ethical decision-making and adherence to compliance – all while seizing the AI opportunity for our clients and business. We’ve also drawn on economic and labour market intelligence to anticipate skills shortages, which has made us aware of the capabilities that will be in high demand over the next few years.      

We are currently working on embedding our new approach into the firm’s rhythm. Key to this has been transforming the HR function, moving from a transaction-based model to strategic advisory. Our HR leaders act as talent partners to the business, guiding leaders to scenario plan, interpret data, translate insights into action and drive integrated people and AI outcomes.

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Challenging old mindsets  

Our greatest challenge has been shifting mindsets. We’ve needed to help our people unlearn traditional approaches and start asking new questions that push us to think differently, such as:

• How can AI be embedded into the flow of work?
•  How do we move from cyclical planning to a dynamic, continuous approach? 
• What work truly needs to be done – and which skills are essential to deliver it? 
• How do we shift from reactive hiring to proactive capability-building? 
• What ethical considerations must guide us as we interpret insights and decisions shaped by AI?
  

We’ve reframed strategic workforce planning from a traditional HR function to a core element of integrated enterprise risk management – fundamental to business continuity, client delivery and reputation management. It is now fully embedded within our risk register, governance frameworks and board reporting.

Results are in

After just 12 months, we’re already seeing tangible outcomes. We’re now able to respond to disruption more quickly and effectively.   

We’re building resilient talent pipelines, driven by predictive analytics that identify skills redundancy and the critical skills we’ll need in 6-12 months. Our people, rather than resisting change, are embracing it and becoming more confident, as reflected in strong improvements in our engagement scores. 

In our recent 2025 Global Pulse Survey of our workforce, 83 per cent agreed that AI will bring positive change to our work. Overall, our workforce is more agile, capable and self-assured.

Organisations that hold on to traditional approaches risk falling behind, missing opportunities to innovate, losing top talent to more progressive competitors, and facing the financial and reputational costs of inefficiency. 

The path forward calls for a new mindset: to view change fuelled by AI, automation, technology and macro forces not as disruption, but as a catalyst for sustainable growth.

Dorothy Hisgrove GAICD is the National Managing Partner, People & Inclusion at KPMG. This article first appeared in the Dec/Jan 2026 edition of HRM Magazine. 

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