Workforce Planning: Terminology

Effectively utilizing the Workforce Planning module relies on an understanding of specific terminology and concepts employed by the tool. This article serves as a resource and quick reference guide for those concepts.

Glossary

Term	Explanation
Workforce Plan	Who you need in which roles, and when, to achieve your business goals for next year. The aspect of a business plan that includes the number of employees required in each role over the course of the next 1 - 2 fiscal years.
Headcount	The total number of people employed at your organization.
FTE or FTEE	Full time employee or full-time employee equivalent. FTEE is used as a proxy for production capacity or output. A measure of the productive capacity available to the organization at a specific point in time. This number takes into account the average hours worked per active employee and reduced productivity while an employee is ramping. The number can be used as an input in other plans, such as to model the number of sales made or orders shipping in a given month.
Total Base Pay or Total Base Compensation	The total base salary or wage to be paid in a given period of time. Variable pay such as MBOs, bonuses, or commissions are not included as they are often dependent on other outcomes of other forecasts such as an annual sales plan. When forecasting, we base it on the expected number of hours to be worked multiplied by the expected pay rate.
New Hires External	Hires made from outside of the organization.
Internal Hires	Transfer of an employee into this role from another role.
Internal Turnover	Transfer of an employee out of their role into another role.
External Turnover	An employee leaves the company permanently for any reason.
Unpaid Leave	An employee is not actively working and is not receiving pay. (Furlough)
Adjust Hours	Increase or decrease in average hours worked per employee
Adjust Pay Rate	Increase or decrease in the average pay rate.
Statutory Employee	An employee on payroll. A Statutory Employee is a person actively employed in a given period of time, regardless of the number of hours worked. A count of all current active employees in a role in the System of Record (SoR) will return this number.
Furloughed Employee	An employee terminated without cause who may be recalled at a later point. They have been effectively terminated and will not show in FTEE or pay. They may turn into permanent terminations if they find a new job or choose not to return if/when they are called back.
Furlough	The potential to recall the employee at a later time. (re-hiring a furlough employee will impact ramp time and time to productivity if/when these employees rejoin the organization’s workforce).
Average Hours Worked	The average number of hours in a period (e.g. one week) that a typical employee in a role works This allows us to accurately model a role that includes part-time employees.  It is assumed that this number reflects broad trends that do not change much throughout the year. Typically, HR would provide this data by looking at the total hours worked by a certain set of employees over an extended period of time and finding the average.
Adjusted Hours Worked	The percentage of hours in a period (e.g. one week) per employee While permanent layoffs and furloughs are one way of reducing expenses during a downturn, in some circumstances companies can reduce expenses by reducing the number of hours employees work.
Idle Capacity	The amount of productive capacity the company has which is “sitting on the sidelines” and can be brought back relatively quickly This is the amount of productive capacity (FTEEs) the company technically has but isn't using. Think: furloughs and hour reductions.
Churn	Employee turnover in a role.