Free HR calculator
FTE & Headcount Planning Calculator
Turn the work you have to get done into the people you need to do it. This converts your annual workload into full-time equivalents, net of holidays, PTO, and the share of time spent on the work. It then shows your staffing gap and the hires you need once attrition is counted in.
Before you start
What you will need. Annual work volume, Current team (FTE on staff)
Your workload and your people
Working-time assumptions (per FTE)
Full-time equivalents you need
How the number is built
The method
How FTE and headcount planning works
A full-time equivalent, or FTE, is one full-time slot of work. In the US that is almost always 40 hours a week, or about 2,080 hours a year before any time off. The trouble with planning against 2,080 is that nobody works it. First take out holidays, vacation, and sick time. Then take out the part of the day that goes to meetings, training, and admin rather than the core work. The hours one person can really put against your workload are lower, usually between 1,500 and 1,900 a year.
How this is calculated
Demand divided by productive hours
The method here is the standard capacity approach. First it works out your annual demand, the volume of work times the average hours each piece takes. Then it works out productive hours per FTE: gross hours, minus paid time off, times your on-task utilization. Dividing demand by productive hours gives the full-time equivalents the work requires. If your demand is 18,000 hours and one FTE delivers about 1,627 productive hours, you need roughly 11 FTE.
The gap is not the whole hiring number
Comparing the FTE you need to the FTE you have gives your staffing gap. But the gap alone understates hiring, because you also lose people every year. The total hires figure adds expected attrition replacement on top of the gap. A team that is short and also turning over needs more hires than the shortfall suggests. The recommended headcount rounds the requirement up to whole people.
Set the assumptions from your own data
The defaults lean realistic but every workplace is different. If your team rarely uses its full PTO, productive hours rise and you need fewer people. If a large share of the day is meetings, lower the utilization and the requirement climbs. The number is only as good as the volume, the hours per unit, and the time assumptions you feed it.
Carry this into the decision
Plan every team and role in one workbook
The in-depth Excel version plans FTE across multiple teams at once, models demand growth, separates the staffing gap from attrition replacement, and gives you a board-ready summary.
$29. 30 days. Reply to your receipt or email support@truestephr.com for a full refund. No form or explanation is required, and you keep the files.
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This tool estimates from the figures you enter. It is general information rather than legal, tax, or accounting advice, so check the result against your own records before you rely on it.