IT M&A People Integration and Workforce Planning Specialist

Job description

This OpportunityWSP is a leading professional services firm that grows through acquisition as well as organically. Within Global IT, the Office of IT M&A holds financial governance and decision support for the IT integration portfolio — from deal close through integration completion. The Specialist, IT M&A People Integration and Workforce Planning owns the people dimension of IT integration across the active deal portfolio. You will build and maintain the workforce picture for each acquired entity, plan the IT capacity required to deliver the integration, plan how that capacity transitions into WSP’s IT function organizations, and quantify and track the people-related synergies that result. The role sits at the intersection of workforce planning, M&A integration, and cost governance. You will work closely with HR Business Partners, IT Function Leads, the Senior Program Manager for IT M&A Integrations, and IT leadership at acquired companies. You will coordinate and quantify; HR and Function Leads own employment decisions. Reporting is to the Program Controls Manager, IT M&A, with the VP, IT M&A & Technology Rationalization as the sponsor for people matters. This is a role for someone who is comfortable holding confidential workforce and compensation data, building order out of incomplete acquired-entity information, and influencing across functions without line authority. Your ImpactWorkforce baseline and segmentation Build and maintain, for each deal, the controlled IT workforce dataset — population, profiles, roles, locations, and labour cost — with documented sources and a defined refresh cadence.Segment the workforce by organizational placement and activity, map it to the WSP IT function taxonomy, and validate the mapping with IT Function Leads.Reconcile the baseline to HR records on a defined cadence and explain all movements (joiners, leavers, transfers).Maintain the baseline as the single source feeding people-cost handover, budget inputs, capacity planning, and synergy quantification. Workforce capacity planning — integration and transition Translate the workforce baseline, functional mapping, and integration schedule into a capacity view for each active deal.Own and operate the intake protocol for acquired-entity capacity requests — who may raise a request, in what form, who validates it, and which budget line it feeds.Model which roles, teams, and capabilities transition into WSP function organizations and when, feeding function budget handover and the people-synergy baseline.Apply cost-type attribution to every capacity line — integration-funded versus transitioning to function budgets — so no untagged item enters budget or synergy reporting.Identify capacity constraints, single points of failure, transition support needs, backfill requirements, and integration-critical talent dependencies.Align people availability with integration waves, cutover windows, knowledge transfer, and stabilization periods in partnership with the Senior Program Manager and Function Leads. People synergy management Maintain the people-synergy tracker: initiative-level breakdown by deal and function, with accountable owner, approach, schedule, and defined measurement method.Validate due-diligence people-synergy assumptions with HR and Function Leads as data access opens post-close, and document any recalibration.Tie synergy phasing to actual workforce events through a headcount and last-day-worked tracker.Track costs-to-achieve — retention, severance, backfill, transition support — so both gross and net positions can be reported.Guard against double-counting and cost-shifting between functions when headcount moves rather than exits. Talent evaluation and transition coordination Coordinate assessment and mapping interviews between acquired-entity IT staff, Function Leads, and HR — scheduling, materials, and capture of outputs.Support a uniform, consistently applied talent-evaluation process with criteria agreed before assessment, with HR leading and Function Leads accountable for decisions.Translate evaluation outputs into retention priorities, knowledge-transfer plans, transition support, backfill needs, and separation sequencing.Track assessment, retention, and transition milestones against integration timelines and escalate slippage as program risk.Maintain retention-risk visibility for integration-critical IT talent in partnership with HR. Budget, forecast, and reporting inputs Produce people-related labour cost inputs for budget and forecast cycles: acquired-entity labour baselines, handover-year treatment, and synergy-adjusted outlooks.Route all people figures entering budget cycles through the Office’s controlled channel, with documented gross/net and raw/burdened basis.Maintain clear separation between one-time integration cost and pre-existing standalone run cost in every people deliverable. Communication and governance Prepare townhall content for IT leadership at acquired companies — agenda, materials, FAQ, and follow-up actions — and support delivery.Prepare IT leadership team reporting to an exception-based, fact-driven standard.Propose and maintain the Function Lead engagement protocol and the capacity intake protocol, validated by the Function Leads.Operate within the confidentiality perimeter for people data, maintaining restricted-access working files and a complete audit trail.Raise boundary issues and controls gaps as structural program risks through governance channels. Who You AreRequired Qualifications Bachelor's degree or equivalent.5–8 years of experience in workforce planning, HR business partnering, organizational change, or M&A integration with substantial people-workstream exposure.Demonstrated discretion handling confidential headcount and compensation data, with defensible access controls.Experience quantifying and tracking workforce cost — headcount modelling, labour cost baselining, or benefit/synergy tracking.Workforce or delivery capacity planning experience: demand mo