How to structure workforce planning in Pigment

Workforce planning goes wrong when HR counts people and finance counts cost, and the two never meet. In Pigment you can plan both from one structure. This is the shape I recommend for most organisations.

Positions are the backbone

Budgets are approved for roles, not for named people. Make positions the core dimension, each with a department, site, grade and effective dates. A position can be filled, vacant or proposed. Employees load from the HR system and link to positions, so a vacancy is simply a position with nobody in it.

A monthly roll-forward that ties

Every month: opening headcount, plus hires, minus leavers, plus or minus transfers, equals closing headcount. Build it as metrics by department and month, and add a control check that compares closing headcount with the HR load. That check should read zero. When it does not, you know exactly where to look.

Plan hires and attrition explicitly

• Hiring plan: managers request positions with a start month. Approved requests flow straight into cost.
• Attrition: rates by department and grade produce expected leavers, so the forecast does not assume everyone stays.
• Transfers: moves between departments keep history, so a cost centre's headcount is right for every past month.

Fully loaded cost, with timing

Calculate cost per position per month: base pay, merit, bonus, employer taxes and benefits. Merit and bonus need effective months, not annual averages, or the monthly phasing will be wrong. Feed the result into the P&L by function so finance never re-plans people cost in a separate opex model.

Versions and access

Run workforce on the same Version dimension as the rest of the plan, with Budget locked once approved. Give managers access to their own departments only, while finance sees everything. Snapshot the approved budget so variance is always measured against the plan that was signed.

Keep it fast

Workforce models get large quickly. Keep employee-level detail only where it is needed, aggregate early, and avoid putting every dimension on every metric. A position-by-month cost metric does not need a scenario dimension unless scenarios genuinely change it.

The workforce blueprint includes an interactive roll-forward you can try, using a fictional hospital group.