Brannock Health: a headcount number everyone trusts
Brannock Health is a fictional hospital group with about 1,240 employees across 14 sites. Finance and HR kept separate headcount files that never matched. This blueprint puts positions, people and cost in one Pigment model.
Blueprint: this model is fully designed and documented, and the live demo is being built next. The company and figures are fictional.
The problem
What wasn't working
HR counted people and finance counted cost, and the two never matched. Open roles lived in email. Every budget cycle started with a week of reconciling who actually worked where.
The design
How the model is built
- Positions are the backbone. Each position has a department, site, grade and start date, filled or open.
- Employees load from the HR system and link to positions, so vacancies show up as positions with nobody in them.
- A monthly roll-forward: opening + hires − leavers ± transfers = closing, by department and site.
- Fully loaded cost per position: base pay, merit, bonus, employer taxes and benefits, with merit timed by effective month.
Inside the model
What planners work with
Hiring plan
Managers request new positions with a start month. Approved requests flow into cost straight away.
Attrition
Attrition rates by department and grade generate expected leavers, so the forecast doesn't assume everyone stays.
Merit cycle
Merit pools by grade with guardrails. Managers allocate within the pool and see the cost impact live.
Transfers
Moves between departments keep history, so a cost centre's headcount is right for every past month.
Decisions that matter
Why it holds up
Positions, not people, drive cost
Budgets are approved for positions. People come and go, but the position and its cost stay stable.
One roll-forward, checked monthly
Closing headcount always equals the HR load, with a control metric that should read zero.
Access by department
Managers see and edit only their own departments. Finance sees everything.
What the client gets
A single headcount and cost number for HR and finance, a hiring plan managers can use themselves, and a merit cycle run inside the model instead of a spreadsheet.
More work
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