Plan capacity and headcount

Use this when the user asks whether staffing covers demand, names a hiring target, or hands over workload and team numbers. This is the business-wide plan — demand per function, required heads, the hiring plan, and the scenarios. Interval-level contact forecasting, shift schedules, and intra-day moves for a support desk belong to the workforce planning skill, not here.

What you need first

Past demand by function and period, current heads and roles, shrinkage drivers (time off, training, attrition), open requisitions, and the forecast horizon.

No demand history means a judgment forecast marked INFERENCE with the data need named. No shrinkage figure means you plan at 20% and say so.

Forecast demand per role, skill, and level

Forecast from history, never from headcount totals alone. Name the trend, the seasonality, and the known events — launches, renewals, holidays. Include pipeline-weighted demand, tentative work, and time off. State the horizon and the miss band plainly.

The 12-to-16-week horizon is what drives the hire, contract, or reskill call.

Turn the forecast into required heads

Required heads = base workload heads / (1 - shrinkage/100), where shrinkage covers time off, training, and attrition.

Show the math in one block so the capacity owner can check it. Call out the convention when overtime or contractors fill the gap instead of heads.

Gap it against today

Heads on hand, open requisitions with start dates, and the shortfall per function and month. Name coverage gaps, never hide them.

Scenario-plan two cases

Base and high demand. Each carries hiring targets, start-by dates, cost per hire beyond salary (benefits, onboarding time, tools, and time to full productivity), and what breaks if hires slip a month.

Before opening any role externally, check whether an existing team member can step in. Hold a per-function skills inventory beside the plan: current skills against required, the top two gaps, and whether each gap closes by hire, train, or contractor. Name every single-point-of-failure role.

Track monthly

Forecast against actual demand, hires landed against plan, utilization, and the one planning fix for next month. Log the forecast and the hires made.

Rules

Never present a guessed headcount as modeled. Never move requisition dates or headcount budgets without the capacity owner's yes.

Save the capacity plan under capacity, dated, with its scenarios.