You already work with more than enough spreadsheets in your day-to-day activities. When it comes time to allocate budgets and plan out your workforce, why not make it easier on yourself (and maybe even a bit more exciting) by using some visual tools in the process?

Organisational charts have been utilised by businesses of all sizes for a very long time for showing basic hierarchies, so it’s understandably easy to forget that modern org charts can be a useful tool for more than just showing your company structure.

HR, Talent Management, Line Management and Finance all need to collaborate to deliver meaningful outcomes when it comes to headcount and budget management. What is needed is:

• A single source of truth for headcount plans with associated budget information usually from integrating multiple data sources in a master source
• Accurate comparisons of budgets against expenditure including historical costs
• Overlay of future positions and recruiting targets
• Understanding of staffing to deliver on business outcomes
• Visibility at team and person level
• Ability to see budget impact of decisions and scenarios
• Ability to securely collaborate, share and review proposed changes across finance, HR, Talent and line management.

If you’re using org charting software like orginio or Planning@Work, your org charts can visualise data from your HRIS.

Budget planning and headcount management

The planning process is critical to get right. What is needed is both a top-down view of headcount, costs and budgets as well as a bottom-up plan that needs to address the business priorities. Plans can take time to develop and may go through many iterations. Many of the targets may be ‘moving targets’ until the right mix of factors is landed upon. This can be a significant administrative headache if handled through ad hoc channels such as email, spreadsheets and the like. 

Examining headcount and budgets from top down and bottom up with org.manager

Evaluating impacts of decisions

There is a great deal of work involved typically in reconciling the impact of different decisions across the business. Typically this can involve Finance tracking spreadsheets, HR tracking recruitment plans and headcounts. Having all data sources mastered into one with the ability to then overlay the impact of scenarios and costs both visually and by use of metrics and benchmarks takes the management of headcount and budget planning to a whole new level. The key is to have the information you need no more than a click away in the form of intelligent visuals with associated metrics (best for bottom up assessments) and dashboards (ideal for top down assessments).

Examining the impact of scenarios on costs and budgets (bottom up)

Examining costs and budgets (top down) level by level across the business

Enabling decisions and changes in your HRIS

Once scenarios and changes are agreed the next challenge is how to update your core HRIS with the relevant details. What is needed is an extract of the changes that can be uploaded back into your HRIS to sync up all the relevant information. No two headcount/budget planning projects are alike hence it is important to ensure the master data can be extracted in the format and with the relevant information that you need. Navigo’s org.manager implementation include hands on support to develop the right extracts for your HRIS.

If you’d like a more detailed look at how to create these views using org.manager, you can book a free online demo.