Modelling your headcount and workforce costs, planning for new hires, and tracking your spend by department... Understanding how changes in workforce size, spend, and hiring timing can affect your costs and business growth is vital for organisations small or large.

In many businesses, the largest cost to the organisation is the cost of the workforce - that is how much it costs to employ all of the individuals who work for the company. Workforce planning allows business leaders to model their overall workforce to understand and manage the total cost this brings. With effective workforce planning, we can align our company goals with the future hiring plans to ensure we have full visibility of the cost impact of our decisions.

That is why one of the first pre-built models we have added to our free-to-use library, is Workforce planning.

Common questions you might have when it comes to workforce planning:

• How much does my workforce actually cost my business?
• Can I afford to add some additional new hires to my business?
• How does the cost of the workforce compare across the different departments in my business?
• What would happen if I adjusted the amount we contribute to employee’s pension funds?

Workforce planning is definitely not a ‘one-off’ process. Businesses are constantly changing, and as a result it should be something that is maintained and re-visited on an ongoing basis.

Having said that, there are some stages of the business which updating and producing an up to date workforce model can be more important. For example if you are:

• Looking to scale and expand your team
• Running you budgeting processes
• Looking to cut costs in your business

The Blox Workforce Planning model allows you - within minutes - to view your workforce spend plan through an interactive dashboard and adjust your drivers to see different scenarios so you can make the best decisions. Plan outputs include Headcount, FTE, Salary, Employers Tax, and Total costs. Once built, adjust as needed, and share with other members of your organisation at the click of a button.

Having a solid understanding of the total cost of the workforce, and how it can change over time will have significant benefits for the business, allowing you to grow with confidence, manage cashflow, and avoid nasty surprises!

Learn more on our Workforce Planning model page, or click here to try it yourself for free, no credit card required!