Engineering talent plan canvas

The 12 to 24 month talent plan canvas is a strategic planning page for your engineering and technical workforce. It is designed for a 60-minute session with your engineering or technical leadership team and HR. Work through the six sections in order to build your plan on a page.

Free download: Engineering talent plan canvas (PowerPoint).

1. Business context (5 minutes)

  • Key business goals: your top three strategic priorities for the next 12 to 24 months.
  • Major projects or changes: significant projects, expansions or changes that are planned.
  • Key constraints: budget limits, location restrictions and technology shifts.

2. Engineering and technical team today (10 minutes)

  • Break down current headcount by function: design, projects, technical, maintenance, field and other.
  • Identify strengths, bottlenecks, dependencies and capability gaps.

3. 12 to 24 month demand forecast (15 minutes)

  • Forecast new roles needed in each quarter.
  • Plan for backfills, including retirements and risk of leavers, and for skills shifts from new technology.

4. Strategic priorities (10 minutes)

  • Agree your top three talent priorities, for example building a controls pipeline or reducing time to hire.
  • For each priority, define measurable success criteria and a timeframe.

5. Make, buy or build (10 minutes)

  • Internal develop: who and which roles you can grow from within.
  • External hire: the roles that need recruitment focus.
  • Automate or outsource: where roles may shrink or change.

6. Support needed from your recruitment partner (10 minutes)

  • Tick what you need: retainers or talent pipelines, salary and market insight, campaigns or branded projects, and early-career programmes.
  • Discuss these with your recruitment partner and agree next steps.

Keeping the plan current

Record the completion date and a review date on your plan, and review it when the business plan changes. The Critical Role and Succession Heatmap is a useful input to section 2, and the engineering recruitment health check shows where your current approach needs work first.

Talk it through

Book a free 30-minute discovery call if you would like help running the session. You can also email info@yprecruit.co.uk or call 0113 418 0806.