Looking Ahead to 2027: Why Are So Few Employers Planning Beyond Two Years?
CIPD’s 2026 Resourcing and Talent Planning report found that only 16% of organisations in the UK planned their workforce more than two years ahead and 46% still approached recruitment on an ad hoc basis. This is even when 52% of organisations reported increased competition for qualified talent.
This also seems to be a common factor within the space sector. A new contract is signed. Investment lands. A manufacturing facility gets the green light. Then comes the question: “How quickly can we hire?”
After 27 years in recruitment, including around 20 in space and satellite communications, I believe that question needs to come much earlier.
As businesses prepare for 2027, their ability to deliver will depend partly on how well they connect commercial commitments with the people and skills required to fulfil them.
Recruitment can move quickly. Building capability takes time.
For employers planning their 2027 workforce, the challenge goes beyond deciding how many people to hire. It means understanding which skills will be hardest to secure and what delays in those hires could mean for delivery.
Even if overall recruitment slows, an experienced thermal engineer, an AIT leader or a commercial director with the right customer relationships may still be difficult to find.
These plans also need to account for geopolitical uncertainty, conflict and the growing focus on defence readiness. Changes in government priorities, funding, supply chains and access to international talent could quickly alter both the capabilities a business needs and its ability to recruit them.
My expectation for 2027 is that workforce planning will need to bring hiring priorities and business risks much closer together. Which capabilities are critical to delivery? Where are we dependent on a small number of people? What happens if a programme accelerates, funding shifts or an overseas talent pool becomes harder to access?
A useful workforce plan should help leaders prepare for those possibilities, with enough flexibility to respond as circumstances change.
Start with the business milestone
During my time leading talent acquisition and workforce planning at Serco, translating European space programme requirements into hiring priorities was a central part of my role.
Supporting programmes across organisations such as ESA, EUMETSAT and EUSPA meant understanding different technical requirements, delivery commitments and national talent markets. Different programmes needed different skills, often within overlapping timeframes, drawing on some of the same specialist talent pools.
The challenge was to understand which capabilities were most critical, where shortages could affect delivery and how to allocate recruitment capacity across those competing requirements.
That required conversations with programme and country business leaders about upcoming demand, existing workforce capability and the consequences of leaving particular roles unfilled. A vacancy needed to be understood in the context of the programme it supported.
For me, this is where talent acquisition contributes most effectively to workforce planning.
We bring external market intelligence into business decisions: whether the skills are available, where they are concentrated, what candidates expect and how realistic the proposed hiring timetable is.
That intelligence becomes particularly valuable when a business is building a new operation at pace. Recently I was supporting recruitment for EnduroSat’s planned 100,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Los Angeles which provides a practical example: developing the facility and growing its LA workforce from one employee to around 180 within just 18 months is an ambitious undertaking, requiring close coordination between recruitment and operational planning.
Construction, operational leadership, engineering, manufacturing and commercial hiring each have different lead times, yet their progress is closely connected. Leaders need to be in place to shape their teams, while specialist engineers and manufacturing staff need to join at the right stage to support equipment installation, commissioning and production readiness.
The workforce plan must also reflect the conditions surrounding that growth. Potential supply chain delays can shift the timetable, while competition for experienced space talent in Los Angeles can affect both recruitment lead times and salary expectations.
Understanding these pressures early helps leaders build realistic budgets, agree hiring priorities and prepare alternatives before a dependency becomes a delay.
This is where workforce planning adds practical value: connecting the people plan to the delivery schedule, with enough flexibility to adapt as the project develops.
Construction and facility management influence when the site can become operational.
Engineering and AIT leadership help establish the processes, equipment requirements and standards that production teams will work to. Commercial commitments then need to reflect the capacity the business can realistically deliver.
Hiring each role in isolation can overlook those connections.
For example, bringing manufacturing employees into a facility before equipment, processes and supervision are ready can create avoidable cost and frustration. Leaving a critical leadership appointment too late can delay decisions affecting several subsequent hires.
The workforce plan therefore needs to work backwards from business milestones, identifying both the people required and the order in which their capability becomes necessary.
Location must be part of that assessment from the beginning. A business can choose where to establish a facility, but that decision does not guarantee access to every skill it needs.
If the local talent pool is limited, leaders may need to consider relocation, broader sourcing, different experience requirements or investment in training. Each option changes the cost, timing and delivery assumptions behind the plan.
Salary expectations need the same early scrutiny. A budget can be internally approved while still being insufficient to attract the required experience in a particular market. Discovering that after weeks of unsuccessful recruitment means losing time that the programme may not have.
Before turning a growth plan into a vacancy list, I would want talent acquisition, HR, finance and operational leaders to agree the assumptions behind it. Working closely with the CFO helps us understand what the business can fund, where external pressures could affect costs or timing, and how much flexibility we have if circumstances change.
Together, we should answer:
What must the business deliver, and by when?
Which capabilities are essential to achieving each milestone?
What skills and capacity do we already have?
Which appointments must happen first because other work depends on them?
Are the people we need available in our chosen location?
How long will sourcing, assessment, notice periods and onboarding realistically take?
What salary and overall package will attract the required capability?
How could competition for talent, salary inflation, supply chain disruption or geopolitical developments affect our assumptions?
What would those changes mean for the hiring budget, cash flow and delivery timetable?
When will each person become productive, rather than simply start?
What is our alternative if a critical appointment takes longer than expected?
What level of employee turnover should we plan for, which departures would put delivery most at risk, and how can we reduce avoidable losses?
The answers may change the recruitment approach. They may also change the location strategy, budget, delivery timetable or balance between permanent hiring, interim support and internal development.
That is precisely why these conversations need to happen early.
A useful workforce plan gives leaders a credible route from today’s capability to tomorrow’s commitments. Recruitment then has a clear purpose, a realistic timetable and priorities grounded in what the business needs to achieve.
Headcount is only part of the picture
A plan to hire 250 people tells me the intended scale of recruitment. It does not yet tell me whether the organisation will have the capability it needs, when it needs it.
Those 250 appointments could span engineering, manufacturing, programme delivery, commercial and support functions. Each will have different recruitment lead times, levels of availability and dependencies. Treating them as one annual hiring target can hide the decisions that will determine whether the business delivers.
I would want to understand how that number was reached. Which business milestones does it support? What skills and capacity already exist internally? Where could someone develop into a role, and where will we need to recruit externally? Are we adding people to an established operation or building teams and capabilities from the ground up?
We also need to distinguish between growth and replacement hiring. If the ambition is to increase headcount by 250, the recruitment requirement could be considerably higher once expected departures are included.
For illustration, a business with an average workforce of 500 employees could model annual turnover scenarios of 10%, 20% and 30%. That would mean 50, 100 or 150 departures over the year. If every departure required a replacement, delivering net growth of 250 would therefore require between 300 and 400 hires. The assumptions should reflect the organisation’s own turnover history, workforce profile and market conditions.
Retention therefore belongs within the workforce plan from the outset. Where are we most exposed to losing critical skills? What are employees telling us about management, workload, pay and career opportunities? Which issues could we address before they become reasons to leave?
The impact also depends on who leaves. Losing an experienced technical leader or someone holding essential programme knowledge can create a gap that takes months to recover, even after a replacement starts. Planning needs to account for that loss of capability, alongside the recruitment cost and time required to rebuild it.
The sequence matters too. Some leaders need to join early enough to define their teams, establish standards and make technical decisions. Other appointments depend on facilities, equipment or contracts being ready. Hiring too late can delay delivery; hiring too early can add cost before people have the conditions they need to contribute.
There is also a significant difference between recruiting 250 people and successfully integrating them. Do managers have the capacity to interview, onboard and develop that many new colleagues? Are the systems, training and facilities in place? How long will it take before those appointments translate into productive capacity?
This is where strategic workforce planning becomes useful. It connects future demand with the people and skills already available, then identifies how to close the gaps through recruitment, development, internal movement or external support.
In practice, that means bringing business leaders, finance, HR, talent acquisition and operational teams into the same conversation early enough to influence decisions.
Together, they can test whether the proposed growth is affordable, achievable and aligned with delivery, and agree what needs to change if the assumptions behind it shift.
Recruitment is one of several options
When a skills gap appears, opening a vacancy may be the right response. It should also prompt consideration of the alternatives.
Could we develop an existing employee? Redeploy someone from another programme? Use an interim specialist while building permanent capability? Improve retention in a team where losing one experienced person would create a serious delivery risk?
Technology belongs in that discussion too. However, assumptions about AI-driven productivity need testing against the work people actually perform.
CIPD’s 2026 research points to AI changing tasks within roles and highlights the need to align skills development and job redesign with how organisations adopt it. That makes reviewing role requirements an important part of planning for 2027.
Plan for the date someone becomes productive
A recruitment timeline often ends when an offer is accepted or a new employee starts.
A delivery plan needs to go further.
Notice periods, onboarding, training and access to facilities or systems can all affect when someone becomes productive. For some roles, security or other eligibility requirements may add further dependencies.
Working backwards from that productive date gives leaders a more realistic view of when recruitment must begin.
It also makes the consequences of delay clearer. A critical vacancy can affect several colleagues, a customer commitment or an entire programme.
Five questions to ask before approving the next vacancy
For leaders building their 2027 plans, I would start here:
Which business outcome depends on this capability?
When must it be available and productive?
What capability do we already have internally?
What is the best way to close the gap?
What will we do if our first plan takes longer than expected?
These questions do not require a complicated planning system. They require an honest discussion about demand, capacity, timing and risk.
My view is that talent acquisition leaders should be part of that discussion while growth plans are being shaped. Our knowledge of talent markets can help leaders assess what is achievable, where flexibility is needed and which decisions cannot wait.
By the time a vacancy opens, several of the most important hiring decisions have already been made.
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I’m Ian Stammers, founder of Ian Stammers Talent Advisory. I bring 27 years of recruitment experience, including around 20 years in space and satellite communications.
Previously Head of Talent Acquisition for European Space at Serco, I have supported organisations from early-stage space businesses to established operators and institutional programmes, combining hands-on recruitment with talent strategy and workforce planning.
CIPD Affiliate Member | CIPD Strategic Workforce Planning
If you are shaping your 2027 workforce plan, expanding a facility or preparing for a major programme, I’d welcome a conversation about the people, skills and hiring priorities needed to deliver it.
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