Workforce Planning
One headcount number, agreed by finance, HR, and the business.
Plan positions, cost, and capacity in one model, so the hiring plan doesn't need reconciling every time someone asks how many people we actually have.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Designed for leaders responsible for operational and financial performance.
CFO / Finance Director
Know what the hiring plan costs before it's approved, and what happens to the P&L when it slips.
HR / People Leader
One version of headcount that finance recognises, so workforce conversations start from agreement rather than reconciliation.
Business Unit Leaders
See whether you have the people to deliver what you've committed to, early enough to do something about it.
THE CURRENT CHALLENGE
Three systems, three answers
Ask how many people work here, and you might get three different answers: one from HR, one from recruitment, and one from finance. Each team may be right based on its own data, but different definitions and reporting dates make it difficult to agree on a single number. That’s often where the workforce planning challenge begins.
HOW WE DO IT
Positions and cost, planned as one thing.
THE WORKFORCE PLAN
Every position, with its assumptions attached.
Plan open roles, new hires, backfills, and attrition at the position level, including start dates, ramp-up time, and the cost of unfilled roles. This creates a workforce plan that reflects how hiring actually happens, rather than spreading a headcount number evenly across the year.
THE FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCE
Approved plans that already tie to the budget.
Salary, on-costs, and loading flow into the financial plan as the workforce plan changes. When a start date slips or a role is cut, the P&L moves with it, and nobody rebuilds a spreadsheet to find out by how much.
PROVEN RESULTS
What HR and finance get back
SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking, 2026.
FAQ'S
Everything you need to know before getting started
Can't find what you're looking for? Talk to us.
Your HRIS tells you what your workforce looks like today. Planning helps you understand what it could look like next. It lets you test scenarios, understand cost implications, and compare different versions of the plan. The two work together: your HRIS remains the system of record, while your workforce plan uses that data to plan what comes next.
It's the place they meet, which is the point. HR plans positions, finance plans cost, and the business plans work. Putting all three in one model is what stops the reconciliation happening by hand every quarter.
We usually plan at the position level because that’s where details like start dates, backfills, ramp-up time, and the cost of open roles matter. For larger workforces, where that level of detail isn’t practical, we can plan by role and location instead. The right level of detail depends on how your workforce operates.
Yes, and it's usually the difference between a plan that's maintained and one that's rebuilt each cycle. Managers work within their part of the model, inside the constraints finance has set, and central teams get consolidated numbers as a result rather than by chasing submissions.
Directly. Salary, on-costs, and loading flow into the P&L as the workforce plan changes, so a slipped start date or a cut role moves the numbers without anyone rebuilding a spreadsheet. If FP&A is already in Anaplan, workforce planning should feed it rather than sit alongside it.
Often a natural second phase. Merit, bonus, and promotion cycles model well on the same structures, and doing them after the core workforce plan is live tends to work better than scoping everything at once.
Most of the data you need is probably already there: employee and position data from your HRIS, open roles, salary and employment costs, organisational structure, and attrition history. The harder part is often agreeing on the basics, such as what counts as headcount and which date everyone is working from.
Salary data needs proper controls, and access is configured accordingly: managers see their own teams, HR and finance see what their roles require, and the model is structured so aggregate planning doesn't expose individual detail unnecessarily. Worth designing early rather than retrofitting.
Most run 8–14 weeks from kickoff to first live cycle, depending on population size, how many source systems hold employee data, and whether compensation planning is in scope.
You’ll work directly with our team. Every consultant is an EliteEPM employee, and the partner who scopes the project stays involved through go-live. This keeps the right people close to the work from start to finish.
WHY ELITE EPM
We don’t do bait-and-switch consulting
Continuity is the difference between a model that survives its first planning cycle and one that doesn't. We stay focused on Anaplan, build our own specialist team, and keep senior people close to the model from the first workshop through hypercare.
All in on one platform
Anaplan is our entire business, so the platform's roadmap is our roadmap. Our team is fully certified and building on Polaris today - and they understand how businesses plan, not just how to build in the tool
Seniority where it counts
Our partners stay hands-on after the contract is signed. They shape the design, challenge decisions that won't hold up, work the difficult problems, and carry accountability through go-live.
Built for direct collaboration
You get the experience needed for complex, multi-entity work without layers of account management or subcontracted delivery teams.
Let's start the conversation
Whether you're building workforce planning in Anaplan for the first time or looking to improve your existing environment, EliteEPM is ready to help you connect workforce decisions to the broader business plan.
