Jeff Merlin is the Senior Director of Strategic Finance at Harness, a well funded Series D startup with over 800 employees. He's helped the company manage exponential growth since joining and building out its strategic finance function. Prior to Harness, he led FP&A at OneLogin, and worked in FP&A at Gap Inc.

In this episode, Jeff talks about the strategic side of headcount planning and management, and focuses in on how to utilize tools to provide highly accurate, near real-time data about the current and future team at Harness. He also talks a bit about capacity planning, headcount modeling, and provides guidance for other FP&A leaders around managing up and across as it relates to headcount spend and forecast.

00:00 - Cold open

01:27 - Meet Jeff Merlin

02:38 - What does your Strategic Finance team look like?

03:58 - Why is headcount planning important for companies to invest in?

05:02 - How do you do headcount planning at Harness?

06:37 - What is your headcount planning process?

11:07 - How are you determining the total envelope for headcount?

13:15 - How do you determine the ratios that go into your headcount model?

14:52 - What are the ratios to consider for Sales and Product roles?

19:12 - What are the best practices for managing and executing the headcount plan?

20:56 - How are you operating when you have to make these decisions?

22:31 - Guidance for other finance leaders?

25:41 - What are the tools that you use for managing headcount?

29:54 - How much time is spent syncing data and workflows?

32:12 - How did you streamline your headcount workflows?

34:44 - C-suite perspective on headcount management for next 12-24-36 months?