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A vacancy is only part of the problem.
A contractor can have enough people on its payroll and still miss a handover because nobody can approve the final inspection. A bank can recruit analysts while experienced managers remain the bottleneck for every exception. These are illustrative situations, but they expose the same planning error: counting positions before understanding the work.
Start with an operational commitment, such as opening a branch, completing a project or reducing a maintenance backlog. List the tasks needed to deliver it, the decisions that could delay it and the evidence required before work can proceed. This makes a staffing discussion specific enough to test.
Use labour-market evidence at the right level.
South Africa's 2024 National List of Occupations in High Demand was designed to inform education and training planning, and also invites employers to use it. It is a useful signal of wider demand. It cannot establish whether a particular applicant can do a particular job. [1]
Compare that external signal with your own evidence. Review time to fill vacancies, rejected offers, overtime, rework and dependence on contractors. Ask supervisors where a qualified new recruit would still need coaching. For operations in South Africa and the DRC, maintain separate assumptions about local availability, language, professional recognition and site access. Do not turn one country's shortage list into a regional hiring forecast.
Make the choice between hiring and development explicit.
For each important task, record the capability needed, who can currently demonstrate it and how long a replacement would take to become effective. Separate a missing skill from missing authority. Training an employee will not remove a delay caused by an approval that only one director can give.
Recruitment makes sense when the work is durable and the capability cannot be developed in time. A temporary specialist may fit a short commissioning period. Internal development needs protected practice time and a competent supervisor. Compare the full cost of each option, including supervision and disruption, rather than comparing salary with a course fee.
Design practice that proves competence.
The ILO's 2023 Quality Apprenticeships Recommendation sets out structured learning, written agreements and protections for apprentices. Its approach provides a reference when designing a formal apprenticeship; local requirements still need to be checked. [2]
For ordinary staff development, use a real but controlled task. A junior planner could prepare a schedule that an experienced planner reviews before release. Record the errors corrected and the next task they can attempt with less supervision. A completed course shows attendance or assessment within that course. Evidence from the work shows whether the employee can perform the role safely and reliably.
Review the plan when the work changes.
Keep the first plan short enough for an operations meeting. Give each capability gap an owner, a delivery date and an observable result. Review whether overtime, repeat errors or approval delays actually fall. If the result does not improve, revisit the diagnosis before buying more training.
A useful workforce plan also exposes succession risk. Identify work that only one person can complete, agree a deputy and test the handover during planned leave. This gives management a practical measure of resilience before an unexpected departure forces the issue.
A question for your team
Which task would stop if our most experienced person were unavailable for a month?
Sources & notes
Sources checked on 29 October 2026. This article presents our analysis of the cited research and its implications for businesses. Numbered references link to the original sources.
