# Approve Workforce Need and Headcount

Status: draft · v0.1.0 · Hiring System
draft reference — not a fitted standard

Turn a business capacity or capability need into an explicit workforce decision before a role or requisition is opened.

## Purpose
Choose and authorize the most suitable response to the work—redesign, automation, development, redeployment, external capacity, or employee hiring—using common evidence and clear decision rights.

## Steps
1. Frame the business need — Define the work and required outcome before proposing a person.
2. Assess capacity and capability — Establish the size, duration, timing, and nature of the gap.
3. Generate response options — Prevent hiring from becoming the automatic answer to every work problem.
4. Evaluate economics, timing, and risk — Compare options on the same decision frame rather than preference or urgency alone.
5. Select the workforce response — Choose how the need will be met and make tradeoffs explicit.
6. Authorize and record the decision — Convert the recommendation into controlled authority to act.
7. Route, measure, and review — Start the correct downstream process and test whether the decision solved the need.

## Connections
- upstream: Manage Team Capacity and Priorities (/processes/manage-team-capacity-and-priorities) — trigger: Evidence indicates a durable gap requiring a workforce response decision.
- downstream: Define Role and Success Profile (/processes/define-role-success-profile) — trigger: Response type is Employee role or a combination containing Employee role.
- downstream: Redesign Work and Workflow (/processes/redesign-work-and-workflow) — trigger: Response includes stopping, redesigning, reallocating, or automating work.
- downstream: Build and Operate a Development Plan (/processes/build-and-operate-development-plan) — trigger: Development is selected as a workforce response.
- upstream (planned, not accepted): Translate Business Plans into Workforce Demand — trigger: An approved business plan or material scenario changes required work or workforce capacity.
- downstream (planned, not accepted): Allocate Work Across Employee, Contractor, Partner, and Automation Capacity — trigger: The selected response uses redeployment, contingent capacity, a partner or supplier, or automation and requires a governed allocation decision.

## Measures
- Decision cycle time: Elapsed time from entry-gate completion to recorded decision.
- Decision completeness: Decisions satisfying all required fields and controls divided by all decisions.
- Connected handoffs: Approved decisions acknowledged by the designated downstream process with the correct version divided by all approved decisions.
- Unauthorized starts: Roles, supplier requests, or material work changes initiated without a valid decision divided by all initiated responses.
- Need resolution: Structured review of the original outcome and indicators at the assigned review point; it does not attribute the result to this decision process alone.
- Work displacement guardrail: Review of overtime, backlog, quality, safety, manager load, and hidden external work after implementation.