Are we hiring to plan?

The quarter planned 20 starts and got 16. The four-head gap is not evenly spread: Technology Delivery is two behind with the slowest fills and the oldest requisitions. Against a versioned plan, behind is a fact with a name, not a feeling.

RuleReport starts against the plan they were hired under: plan, actual, gap, by department. A gap with a name gets a decision; a vague shortfall gets a narrative.

Neverlet the plan move to meet the actuals. A revised-down plan hitting 100 percent is the least useful number in workforce reporting.

◆ The quarter against planplan, actual, gap, attainment.

Department	Planned starts	Actual starts	Gap	Attainment %
Sales	8	7	1	87.5
Technology Delivery	7	5	2	71.4
Support	5	4	1	80.0
March to May 2026	20	16	4	80.0

The 16 actual starts are the funnel’s bottom and the headcount page’s hires; the plan of 20 is the quarter’s approved workforce plan. Technology Delivery’s two-head gap is the one that compounds: its fills run longest and its open requisitions age deepest. Sample values are illustrative, never client data.

◆ The gap, covered or notwhat the open pipeline says about catching up.

The aging report shows 30 open requisitions at month end, four of them past ninety days. Whether the four-head gap closes next quarter is not a mystery: it is those 30 requisitions’ stage positions, read against the stage velocities. A plan report without the pipeline behind it is a scoreboard; with it, it is a forecast.

◆ The owned answerplan as a table, starts as events, gap by join.

The workforce plan is a small reference table with a version date. Starts come from the recruiting fact. The report is a join, and revised plans keep their history, so attainment is always quoted against the plan that was actually promised.

-- attainment against the original plan version
SELECT p.dept, p.planned_starts,
  COUNT(h.worker_id) AS actual_starts,
  p.planned_starts - COUNT(h.worker_id) AS gap
FROM ref_hiring_plan p
LEFT JOIN fct_hire h
  ON h.dept = p.dept
 AND h.start_date BETWEEN p.period_start AND p.period_end
WHERE p.plan_version = '2026-Q2-original'
GROUP BY 1, 2

Use case

Problem

Hiring progress is narrated, not measured: the plan lives in a deck, revisions overwrite it, and nobody can say which department is actually behind.

What we build

The workforce plan as a versioned reference table joined to start events: plan, actual, gap, and attainment by department, always against the promised version.

What you get

A hiring scoreboard that forecasts: named gaps by department, attainment against the original plan, and the open pipeline read against real stage velocities.

Which department is actually behind plan?

We build the versioned plan-to-starts join that keeps attainment honest.

Talk to us

Terms on this page

workforce plan: The approved starts per department per period.
attainment: Actual starts over planned, against the promised plan version.
gap: Planned minus actual; a number that demands a decision.
plan version: The dated snapshot of a plan; revisions append, never overwrite.
pipeline coverage: Open requisitions and their stages, read as the gap’s forecast.