Headcount Happenings: November 2024

Welcome to Headcount Happenings: November 2024. It’s tradition in my family to go around the room at Thanksgiving and say what we’re thankful for (I have to think this is pretty common). Most of the answers are pretty cliché, but only because they are truths that resonate universally: thankful for family, for good health, for food on the table.?

It is pretty cliché for a software company to be thankful for its customers. Yet here we are, two days before Thanksgiving, saying thank you to ours. Not just because they’re customers and they pay us, but because of how they treat us. They challenge us, believing that we can rise to to the moment. They teach us, knowing that we will listen and learn. They help us, because we help them.

If I’ve learned anything in two years at TeamOhana, it’s that our customers are a special group of innovators, community builders, and even heroes. Read on to learn more. Happy Thanksgiving.

– Charlie Schrier, Head of Marketing at TeamOhana

What we're thankful for

Our innovators

We’ve shared stories of the innovative leaders we get the privilege to work with regularly. You can read a few of them here. But there are literally hundreds more innovators whose stories we haven’t yet told.

Thanksgiving inspired us to bring these stories to the forefront, starting with Emily Sung-Simon.

Emily is an amazing Recruiting Operations leader from Postman. While Postman is a longtime customer, Emily is pretty new to the company. After connecting with her at a conference, she generously spent more time with us to teach us all about recruiting ops: why Postman hired her, what her goals are, and how she partners across the business.

All of her insights are featured in a guest post on our blog, From spreadsheet prisoner to strategic partner: How I “do it all” as a RecOps manager.

As an added bonus, Emily is joining us for our first ever RecOps focused webinar on December 11th! If manual spreadsheets, endless meetings, and siloed communication sound familiar, you'll want to hear Emily tell her story live. Register here.

Our community

The community of Finance and Talent leaders who care deeply about headcount management continues to show out. We’re thankful for such an engaged group.

Earlier this month, we hosted a Workforce Planning Leaders Dinner in Seattle, WA. It was an inspiring showcase of 12 Finance & Talent leaders reaching across the aisle to discuss how they can partner better on headcount planning. One of the major topics was how to bridge communication gaps and fix data siloes in order to drive more effective coordination between their respective functions.

Workforce Planning Leaders Dinners are coming to a city near you in 2025! Follow TeamOhana to make sure you don’t miss out on a great learning and networking opportunity.

From L-R: Chelsea C. , The D. E. Shaw Group ; Salehah Hassan , Grammarly ; Isaac C. , NorthStar Energy, LLC ; Lilli Vesala , Helion ; Alayna Kolb , TeamOhana ; Annie Philipsen , IonQ ; Josh Rappoport , Acumatica ; Tushar Makhija , TeamOhana ; Jennie Stearns , IonQ ; Ali Yousaf , Helion ; Samantha Walior, CPA , Vercel ; Brad Moodie , OfferUp

Our Heroes

Starting this week, TeamOhana’s Founder & CEO is sharing personal stories celebrating extraordinary people who make our journey meaningful. They are our TeamOhana Heroes.

Follow Tushar Makhija to read their stories and see what makes them heroic.

Top: Teddy Collins, CMA , SeatGeek ; Tracie Akers, SHRM-CP, PHR , Metronet ; Rebecca Krus Nash , Gravie ; Jen Mease , Zipline ; Frank Cebek , SeatGeek

Bottom: Amanda Gregg , Second Front ; Stuart Rowland , Multiverse ; Amanda Tarkenton , Vercel ; Johnnie Thompson, MSHRM, CCP , Bluevine ; Kasey Sullivan, MSM , Metronet

The feature we love this month

Transforming annual planning

When companies do annual headcount planning, they typically don't start with a "blank slate." Instead, the process begins with an evaluation of the current state: all of the approved headcount from this year’s plan that have not been hired.

For most companies, the current state lives in a spreadsheet, which needs to be copied and shared for each stakeholder and hiring manager to build their plan. Then, more copies: hiring managers copy and paste roles they want to carry over into a new spreadsheet, and share it back to Finance and Talent to combine into a master sheet. All of this manual work is littered with points of failure and inaccuracy.

TeamOhana’s Advanced Scenarios module simplifies annual planning by enabling customers to build a plan for next year with the full context of this year’s plan. Check out the video to learn more.

Community news and events

From spreadsheet chaos to strategic partner: A RecOps blueprint for 2025, with Emily Sung-Simon (Sr. Recruiting Ops Manager, Postman )?

Organizational Debt Kills ??, a deep dive into annual planning from OnlyCFO

Discovering RecOps: Passion and Problem-Solving by Geva Whyte, a lighter read from our friends at RecOps Collective

Finance Executive Leadership Dinner @ Osito on December 12th, hosted by SIERRA Ventures and Recall Capital , in partnership with Stifel Bank and TeamOhana (by invitation only, contact Charlie Schrier for more information)

Get in touch

We love talking about headcount management, even if you just want some fresh ideas or insights on how other companies are doing it. Book time with us here.