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One of the topics I wrote about in my book chapter on strategic workforce planning is the challenge of “trapped workforce capacity,” or the talent, skills, and resources that exist within an organization but aren’t fully utilized or reflected in workforce plans. When this capacity is overlooked, it can lead to over-hiring, misaligned resourcing, and missed opportunities to use existing talent more effectively. I’ve also shared several of my one-page cheat sheets, including this one, illustrating how improved ways of working can unlock capacity within the workforce. A new Deloitte article reinforces this point by highlighting how much capacity and capability sit “below the surface” of traditional workforce planning. It outlines several strategies to uncover it, including activating talent marketplaces, leveraging adjacent skills to redeploy workers into in-demand roles, and factoring in digital capacity from AI agents and automation. The article also goes deeper into these tactics with company examples showing how organizations are already putting them into practice. My suggestion for getting started is this: brainstorm where trapped workforce capacity might exist in your organization, narrow the list to the areas with the greatest impact, refine it to what is easiest to tackle, and pick one to address in the next 60 days (ensuring you gain stakeholder alignment and support). Feel free to use my cheat sheet to help identify opportunities.
