The Association of Health and Care Workforce Planning | Skill Building, Networking, Tools and Resources

Workforce Planning Improves Health & Care

The difficulty in matching enough of the right staff to the growing health and care needs of communities is an existential threat for many services across the globe.

Your people are the single most important part of delivering excellent health & care and we need to find more staff, keep and develop the ones that we've got, and transform the way we deliver care. All of this is workforce planning.

If you lead or support a team, then a big part of your job is workforce planning. The AHCWP exists to help you understand it, develop your skills in it and significantly improve it for the benefit of your people and service users.

Building a Supportive Network

We are a global community dedicated to improving workforce planning across health and care, helping ensure the right people are in the right place to meet population needs.

AHCWP members can access training, assess development needs, use guides, share good practice, connect with peers and ask questions. Our membership includes people from the UK, North America, the Middle East and beyond.

AHCWP welcomes anyone involved in workforce planning across public, private, paid, unpaid, health or care settings, whether or not “workforce planning” appears in their job title.

We are just beginning this journey. Join us and shape what comes next.

Join Us >

Podcast

The Health and Care Workforce Planning Podcast, from the AHCWP

Practitioners and experts talk through the workforce challenges they’ve actually faced - with the tools, models and decisions that got them through, episode by episode.

Latest episode

Volunteer Workforce, with Maeve Hully and Julia Clarke

Published 13 May 2026

Maeve Hully, Director of Volunteering at Helpforce, joins Julia Clarke, Director of Public Participation at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, to talk about the volunteer workforce and how it complements paid staff. They cover Helpforce’s “Volunteer to Career” programme, which helps volunteers move into paid health and care roles, and what workforce planners should consider when building volunteering into their staffing plans - fresh off Helpforce being named Staffing Solution of the Year 2026 by HSJ Partners.

Timeline

New Release

We have added detailed “How to guides” for typical workforce planning tasks, and a searchable set of resources to aid your workforce planning - including training, case studies, good practice and examples.

Also on Apple Podcasts · All episodes >

Events

Latest events >

We hold regular sessions for members and specialist groups. For example, we currently hold modelling support sessions for those working in the New Hospitals Programme to help them navigate the requirements of their Outline Business Case. We also run sessions for regional workforce planners. If you would like to join our groups or ask us to host a new one, please contact support@ahcwp.com.

From the blog

Why the Frontline Manager Has the Most Important Job in Workforce Planning

You won’t set national training numbers or build system-wide models - but you’re the one making sure the right people are in the right place, day in and day out. Here’s what that job really takes.

Read the full post >

Read our guides

Leading a team Workforce redesign Leading an organisation Developing a workforce plan Designing a new hospital Annual plan submission Building a workforce collaborative / hub