How is required FTE calculated?

Required hours divided by the productive hours one full-time person delivers. In a 21-day month at 8 paid hours a day, with 11% absence and an 85% productive share, one FTE delivers 21 x 8 x 0.89 x 0.85 = 127.1 standard hours. Assembly needs 2,350 units x 2.4 h = 5,640 h, so it needs 5,640 / 127.1 = 44.4 FTE.

What is the productive share and why is it not 100%?

It is the standard hours earned per hour a person is at work: breaks, meetings, waiting for material and working below standard take the rest. The example uses 85%, an example value; use your own measured efficiency or utilisation. Absence is separate: the absence rate removes the paid days people are not at work, such as holidays not already taken out of the calendar, sickness and training.

How does the workbook handle attrition?

You type expected leavers per department and month, and the hires that replace them. Planned heads are heads at the start plus hires to date minus leavers to date. In the example, leavers are backfilled one month later, so every leaver costs a month of gap that has to be covered by overtime; moving the backfill into the same month removes it.

How is overtime calculated and when does the status turn red?

Overtime hours are the shortfall in standard hours divided by the productive share, because overtime is attended time too. The overtime share is overtime hours divided by the attended hours of the planned heads. With a 10% cap, a department that needs 400 h of overtime on 3,900 attended hours (10.3%) is Below target, while 300 h (7.7%) is Near target: short, but covered within the cap.

How is labour cost worked out?

Planned heads x paid hours per FTE, plus overtime hours x the overtime pay factor, all at the department's loaded rate. For 40 people, 168 paid hours each, 300 overtime hours at 1.5x and a loaded rate of 31 per hour: (40 x 168 + 300 x 1.5) x 31 = 222,270. That is the Direct Labor Cost calculator with 6,720 paid hours at 31 and the overtime premium hours as its separate amount.

Does it plan by skill or by shift?

No. It plans heads by department and month. A surplus in one department only covers a gap in another if people are trained for both, which the Skills and Training Matrix template tracks, and a monthly total can hide a short week, which a weekly capacity plan or the 4-Crew Shift Rotation Schedule will show.

Safety and People

Production Headcount Plan Excel Template

Turn each month's demand and your labour standards into the people each department needs, plan hires against expected leavers, and see where the plan is short, how much overtime covers it and what the year's labour will cost.

Overview

This headcount plan is a working Excel workbook for plant managers, HR business partners, planners and plant controllers who have to answer three questions for the year: how many direct people do we need, when do we hire, and what will it cost? It ships with a 12-month example plan for a fictional pump plant with four departments, so the dashboard, matrices and charts are populated the moment you open it; replace the example rows with your own and everything recalculates.

The plan starts from work content. Each department's demand in units times its standard hours per unit gives the hours of work in the month. One full-time person delivers the month's working days times paid hours per day, less the absence rate, at the productive share of attended time; required FTE is hours of work divided by that. Planned heads are the heads you start with plus the hires and minus the leavers you enter, month by month, so a backfill that starts a month late shows up as a gap.

Where planned heads fall short of required FTE, the workbook converts the shortfall into overtime hours and compares them with your overtime cap as a share of attended hours: green when no overtime is needed, amber when overtime within the cap covers it and red when it does not. Labour cost is paid straight-time hours plus overtime hours at your overtime factor, at each department's loaded rate, the same formula as the Direct Labor Cost calculator on this site.

What this template includes

Setup for paid hours per day, absence rate, productive share of attended time, overtime cap and overtime pay factor, a working-day calendar for 12 months, and departments with standard hours per unit, heads at the start and a loaded rate
Headcount Plan table with one row per department per month: demand, hires and leavers typed; required hours, paid and productive hours per FTE and required FTE calculated
Planned heads from heads at the start plus hires to date minus leavers to date, and the gap to required FTE
Overtime needed to cover a shortfall, its share of attended hours against your cap, a status word, and the labour cost at straight time plus overtime
Check column that flags departments or months not on Setup, duplicate department-months and more leavers than heads
Dashboard with four KPI tiles, required FTE vs planned heads by month, overtime by department, a monthly plant summary, and department-by-month matrices of the gap and the overtime share
Method sheet with every formula, and a Verify sheet that re-checks the formulas against an independent reference, including the Direct Labor Cost calculator (Self-check: PASS)

Suggested use case

Use it to build the direct-labour part of the annual budget, to decide when to start hiring ahead of a seasonal peak or a product launch, to show what a slow backfill of leavers costs in overtime, and to test what a lower absence rate or a better productive share would save.

How to use it

On Setup, enter paid hours per person per working day, your absence rate, the productive share of attended time, the overtime cap and the overtime pay factor.
Type the working days of each month on the calendar, then list your departments with standard hours per unit, heads at the start of the plan and the loaded rate per hour.
On Headcount Plan, keep one row per department per month and type the demand in units, the hires you plan and the leavers you expect.
Read the Status column: On target is fully staffed, Near target is short but covered by overtime within the cap, Below target is short beyond the cap.
Open the Dashboard and move hires earlier in the months that show red until the plan works, then read the labour cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is required FTE calculated?: Required hours divided by the productive hours one full-time person delivers. In a 21-day month at 8 paid hours a day, with 11% absence and an 85% productive share, one FTE delivers 21 x 8 x 0.89 x 0.85 = 127.1 standard hours. Assembly needs 2,350 units x 2.4 h = 5,640 h, so it needs 5,640 / 127.1 = 44.4 FTE.
What is the productive share and why is it not 100%?: It is the standard hours earned per hour a person is at work: breaks, meetings, waiting for material and working below standard take the rest. The example uses 85%, an example value; use your own measured efficiency or utilisation. Absence is separate: the absence rate removes the paid days people are not at work, such as holidays not already taken out of the calendar, sickness and training.
How does the workbook handle attrition?: You type expected leavers per department and month, and the hires that replace them. Planned heads are heads at the start plus hires to date minus leavers to date. In the example, leavers are backfilled one month later, so every leaver costs a month of gap that has to be covered by overtime; moving the backfill into the same month removes it.
How is overtime calculated and when does the status turn red?: Overtime hours are the shortfall in standard hours divided by the productive share, because overtime is attended time too. The overtime share is overtime hours divided by the attended hours of the planned heads. With a 10% cap, a department that needs 400 h of overtime on 3,900 attended hours (10.3%) is Below target, while 300 h (7.7%) is Near target: short, but covered within the cap.
How is labour cost worked out?: Planned heads x paid hours per FTE, plus overtime hours x the overtime pay factor, all at the department's loaded rate. For 40 people, 168 paid hours each, 300 overtime hours at 1.5x and a loaded rate of 31 per hour: (40 x 168 + 300 x 1.5) x 31 = 222,270. That is the Direct Labor Cost calculator with 6,720 paid hours at 31 and the overtime premium hours as its separate amount.
Does it plan by skill or by shift?: No. It plans heads by department and month. A surplus in one department only covers a gap in another if people are trained for both, which the Skills and Training Matrix template tracks, and a monthly total can hide a short week, which a weekly capacity plan or the 4-Crew Shift Rotation Schedule will show.