Strategic workforce plan

The strategic workforce plan worksheet works the year's hiring from the numbers a plan actually turns on: today's headcount, the target, your own attrition, your own time to hire and your own ramp. It returns net growth, expected leavers, the hires the plan really needs, starts a month, the latest week a requisition can be approved and still start in year, the productive weeks lost to hiring and ramp, and the annual cost of the planned team. Enter your own figures and it computes on the page, with no account.

Growth is not hiring

The plan says a hundred and twenty becomes a hundred and fifty and everyone writes down thirty. The requisition count is thirty plus everyone who leaves, and at any realistic attrition that is the difference between a plan that lands and one that is short all year. This is the first output for that reason.

Attrition is your number, not an industry one

Take leavers over the last twelve months against average headcount and enter it. A borrowed figure is worse than a rough one, because a rough one is at least about your team, and every downstream number here moves with it.

Time to hire sets a date, not a rate

If it takes ten weeks from approval to a start date, a requisition approved in week forty-three cannot produce a start inside the year. The worksheet returns that week from your own figure, and it is usually a more useful thing to put in a plan than the headcount itself.

Ramp is capacity you have paid for and not received

Multiplying the hires by time to hire plus ramp gives the productive weeks the plan loses to its own mechanics. It is the number that explains why a fully hired team still misses its output, and it argues for starting earlier rather than hiring more.

What the worksheet refuses to decide

What the target should be, whether the attrition you are seeing is acceptable, and what people should cost are your organisation's decisions. The worksheet prices the plan you describe and publishes no benchmark for any input.