Introduction

In March 2024, the UK Government announced a ‘national endeavour’ to strengthen the UK’s nuclear deterrent. The accompanying command paper[1] sets out crucial steps to achieving this, including substantial investment in the development of nuclear skills. This investment will help fill the additional 40,000 jobs needed by the industry by 2030.

In its report “The future of NHS human resources and organisational development”[2] NHS England notes that there is increasing demand for health services as the population ages, with more people living with long-term multiple conditions. In the context of increasing demands on the NHS, workforce supply challenges are expected to continue.

But what strategies should the Government and organisations be considering to ensure the successful supply of skills into the nuclear enterprise and the NHS?

In this article, we share insight into DAS’s workforce supply modelling capabilities, and how such models have informed strategic analysis of workforce supply into the nuclear and health and social care sectors, and beyond. We also discuss the value of workforce planning models, both now and in the future, to achieve enduring organisation capability.

The Role of Workforce Planning Models

Many factors challenge the supply of skills in the nuclear industry, including an aging workforce, high attrition levels, and the need for more skilled people to service an increasing infrastructure renewal and new build demand. The UK Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG) and Cogent Skills commissioned[3] DAS to develop a workforce planning model that could assess the future supply of skills in the nuclear industry. Using System Dynamics[4], DAS created a simulation model able to generate projections of workforce supply over the next twenty years. The model enabled different approaches to increasing the nuclear workforce to be explored, such as changing intakes to university, upskilling the workforce, and improving retention rates. Significantly, the model took less than five seconds to run, leading to rapid strategic insight. It also incorporated the workforce skill requirements from previously completed demand modelling. This enabled a comparison between supply and demand requirements. The model was used by Cogent Skills and the NSSG to develop a proposed skills strategy to ensure the nuclear industry had the skills needed to deliver critical programmes of work. Importantly, the model is dynamic, meaning its supply and demand requirements can be revised to reflect new scenarios.

Registered nurses are the largest single group of NHS staff, comprising half of all clinical roles. Historically, however, nursing vacancies have made up to forty-five percent of the total number of open positions across the organisation. This shortfall represented a major, long-term, and growing problem for the NHS. The UK Health Foundation commissioned[5] DAS to develop a workforce supply model that could assess the nursing industry’s future workforce supply over five to twenty years. A ‘whole system’ approach was taken that considered evidence-based factors found to influence nurses' career choices, as well as stakeholder feedback. The simulation model developed provided the Health Foundation with detailed workforce supply projections using different methods of attraction, retention, and development, over up to twenty years. The model provided a tool to evaluate different long-term workforce supply strategies and could be used to enhance decision-making capabilities extensively.

DAS has used a similar approach to support other organisations with critical workforce planning projects.

The Lasting Value of Workforce Planning Models

Workforce planning models, such as those described in this article, are dynamic, strategic tools that support organisations to understand the complex impact of different behavioural and economic factors on skills supply. They are created using innovative simulation methods, data analysis, and visualisation techniques. This includes quantifying future workforces and identifying skills gaps over extensive periods, alongside detailed analysis of the behavioural and investment factors influencing supply and retention.

Workforce planning models provide a ‘whole system’ view of workforce supply and demand and enable detailed workforce planning strategies to be tested. For instance, they can highlight where investment would increase workforce supply and when such investment should happen, such as highlighting the potential impact of investing in additional apprenticeship programmes and the ideal timing for this. They can outline the behavioural and economic factors that influence supply and the effect of varying them. They can also identify unintended consequences of certain actions.

Workforce planning models provide insight on critical topics through rapid options exploration, enabling informed decisions on resource strategy to be made over different time horizons. Most importantly, the models can be used time and time again to aid in decision-making and guide ongoing strategy development, ensuring they help organisations achieve an enduring capability.

At such a crucial time for the nuclear industry and NHS, it is imperative that a whole system approach is taken to assessing workforce supply, and that it can be adapted to explore alternative scenarios to support evidence-based decision making for enduring organisation resource capability.

References

Defence Nuclear Enterprise Command Paper: Delivering the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent as a National Endeavour Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-4782-3, March 2024.
The future of NHS human resources and organisational development report. https://www.england.nhs.uk/future-of-human-resources-and-organisational-development/the-future-of-nhs-human-resources-and-organisational-development-report/evolving-to-meet-a-changing-world.
35th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, July 2017: Assessing the future workforce supply for the UK Nuclear sector, Cave S, Bennett SL, Pleasant RS and Woodham E. https://proceedings.systemdynamics.org/2017/proceed/papers/P1160.pdf
System Dynamics: an approach that enables complex systems to be better understood, and their behaviour over time to be projected using computer simulation.
Projecting the future nursing workforce supply in England. https://www.health.org.uk/what-we-do/real-centre/nurse-supply-model.